A Written Statement submitted by the Damascus Center for Human
Rights Studies (DCHRS) and the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies
(CIHRS), a non-governmental organization in special consultative status.
Dr. Radwan Ziadeh
Human Rights Council, Ninth Session
2. This phenomenon goes back to the end of the 1970s, when the Syrian
government used the Syrian army and armed forces to curb the political
violence that erupted between 1979 and 1982. Huge numbers of civilians
were pushed into conflict with the armed opposition. This era saw such
massacres as that in the city of Homah. Reportedly an approximate
figure of 7000 persons is still missing since then.
3. The practice of enforced disappearance remains one of the ongoing
violations, especially, under the state of emergency which has been in
place for more than forty years. Unlawful arrests are still an ongoing
phenomena by some security bodies which usually results in not knowing
the place of the arrestees as well as the destination or the cause of
detention. Due to the non-transparency on this regard it is nearly
impossible for the victim’s families to identify the legal authority to
answer inquiries on their missing relatives.
4. Given the excessive power of the security bodies ( ) and their
intervention in the daily lives of ordinary citizens the families of
the missing do not submit legal complaints to know what became of the
'disappeared' persons due to their fear of the reaction of the
concerned security body. Furthermore, families have no confidence in
the judiciary which has lost its independence in the face of security
bodies. Those missing remain so for months and sometimes years and
their families do not know if they are still alive or not. During this
period, those missing are subjected to all forms of physical and mental
torture, in addition to being held in conditions below the
international minimum standards governing the treatment of prisoners.
This takes the form of poor detention facilities, lack of health care,
malnutrition and other forms of suffering.
5. Enforced disappearance is a violation of the State’s constitutional
obligations. Article 28 of the Syrian constitution stipulates that “no
person shall be investigated or arrested unless by virtue of the Law”
and “no one shall be physically or mental tortured or be treated
degradingly. The Law shall hold person undertaking such acts
punishable”.
6. In complete oblivion of international human rights conventions
Syrian civilians are arrested and unlawfully detained by security
branches at their home, work, or the airport upon their arrival from
outside the country. Whereby no permit for those arrested object, or
contact to their families or to request legal aid. The security bodies
often do not reveal their identity and the reasons for the arrest are
not clarified either to the arrested or their families. Sometimes a
person is summoned to a security body and never comes back from that
visit and when their family inquires about the missing relative from
the security branch that summoned him/her they are also detained and
the presence of their previously detained relative is denied.
7. The lack of supervision of the security bodies’ practices and the
elimination of the law and judiciary from such cases gives free reign
to these bodies. This results in systematic inhuman treatment of
detainees that includes verbal abuse and torture of all forms in order
to extract specific confessions. People are detained without knowing
the reasons, without referral to any court, and without the right to
contact their families, or legal aid. they detained in one of the
wide-spread unsupervised security branches, where all forms of torture
and degrading and inhuman treatment are practiced.
8. There is no information about lawsuits filed against security bodies
in Syria who have carried out enforced disappearance. This is either
due to the fear of the families of the missing or the missing person
themselves (after their release). The situation becomes all the more
complicated as the released person may know the body that arrested them
but may not know the name of those who undertook the arrest,
investigation and torture. In this context, it is worth noting that the
legislative decree No. 14 which established the State Security
department in 1969 stipulates in Article 16 that “none of the
department staff shall be prosecuted for the crimes committed thereby
during the accomplishment of a specific mission assigned thereto or
during the undertaking of such missions unless by virtue of a
prosecution warrant issued by the director”. This Article thus bans the
right to litigate any perpetrator of the 'disappearance' who is
affiliated to the general intelligence. This is a flagrant violation of
international human rights standards.
9. The state of emergency in force in Syria since 1963 and the
consequent absence of law, excessive power held by the security bodies
and the lack of judiciary independence have rendered enforced
disappearance a legally-unsupervised commonplace practice.
Conclusions and Recommendations
Enforced disappearances in Syria is a regular and ongoing violation
protected by the state of emergency and ad-hoc laws and encouraged by
the security forces that has replaced the judiciary, and the ignored
national laws and international standards, especially those ratified by
Syria and thus becoming part of its national Law.
An entitlement to personal security and freedom are the most basic
rights. The unaccountable continuation of enforced dissaperances in
Syria is, thus, unacceptable.
Therefore, we believe that the following steps should be rapidly
implemented to put an end to this blatant violation of human rights in
Syria:
1. The files of all those subjected to enforced disappearance should be
moved from the intelligence to the normal judiciary in cooperation with
the Ministry of Interior.
2. Lists should be prepared of the detainees so that the families and
lawyers can view them anytime, indicating the place of detention and
the charges.
3. The names of those who die during their enforced disappearance should be revealed and their legal status should be settled.
4. The places of detention and arrest should be revealed so that they
may be subject to the required legal supervision. Detention in
unsupervised security branches that are difficult to survey should be
stopped.
5. Any security body that proves to be involved in enforced disappearance should be held accountable.
6. A lawsuit should be filed to indemnify those who forcedly
disappeared or their families in case what happened to their relatives
is not revealed.
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