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Syria: End Repression of Human Rights Groups
Security
Services Regularly Arrest and Harass Activists
(Human Rights Watch)
(New York,
October 17, 2007) – Syrian authorities should stop
restricting the freedom of human rights activists to express
their views and to associate as a group, Human Rights Watch
said in a report released today. The country’s security
services regularly harass the activists by arresting them
and preventing them from meeting or traveling.
The 46-page
report, “No Room to Breathe: State Repression of Human
Rights Activism in Syria,” documents the restrictions
imposed on activists by examining the legal environment in
which they operate and the government practices to which
they are subject. It also charts the development of Syria’s
human rights community and the challenges it faces today. It
is based on extensive interviews with representatives of all
of Syria’s major human rights groups, independent lawyers,
and members of the international diplomatic community in
Damascus.
“The human
rights community in Syria has grown in important ways in the
last few years, but they remain under siege by authorities
that cannot fathom any criticism of their record,” said
Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights
Watch.
Under Syrian
law, the Syrian Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor
controls the registration of all civil society associations
and has wide jurisdiction to intervene in the internal
governance and day-to-day operations of any association by
appointing board members and attending meetings. Despite
these very strict control mechanisms, Syrian authorities
have refused to recognize any of the human rights groups
that have applied for registration.
“Without legal
status, these groups operate at the whim of the authorities
and live in constant fear of being shut down,” said Whitson.
“They cannot even rent a place to meet.”
The report
concludes that the most serious barrier to the rights and
freedoms of Syria’s human rights community lies in the role
of the powerful security services, which routinely harass
human rights groups by breaking up meetings, banning
activists from traveling, and arresting them.
“Activists who
dare to document government violations end up being charged
for dubious crimes such as ‘weakening national sentiment’ or
‘spreading false news’,” said Whitson.
In April 2007,
a Syrian court sentenced one of the country’s most prominent
human rights lawyers, Anwar al-Bunni, to five years in jail
in connection with a statement he had made claiming that a
man had died in a Syrian jail due to inhumane conditions
there.
The Syrian
government often justifies its intolerance of criticism by
arguing that it is presently under threat from the United
States and other Western countries that are seeking to
isolate it, and that any criticism of the government will
only serve the interests of these foreign powers. However,
state repression of human rights activism is not a recent
phenomenon in Syria, and its victims usually have no link to
foreign powers and are themselves critical of US policy in
the region.
Human Rights
Watch called on the Syrian authorities to cease arbitrarily
arresting activists and to free any activists it has
detained for exercising their right to freedom of
expression. It also urged the government to amend existing
law and practice to allow human rights groups to legally
register and operate free from any governmental
interference.
The report
urges the international community to ensure that human
rights concerns are at the core of any future talks or
negotiations with Syria and to support human rights
activists in Syria by advocating on their behalf with Syrian
authorities and providing logistical support through
capacity-building programs.
It also calls
on the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on
human rights defenders to request a visit to Syria to
examine the situation of human rights defenders in the
country.
“No Room to
Breathe: State Repression of Human Rights Activism in Syria”
is available in English and Arabic at:
http://hrw.org/reports/2007/syria1007/
For more of
Human Rights Watch’s work on Syria, please visit:
http://hrw.org/doc?t=mideast&c=syria
For more
information, please contact:
In Beirut,
Nadim Houry (English, French): +961-3-639-244 (mobile)
In Cairo,
Gasser Abdel-Razek (Arabic, English): +20-2-2-794-5036;
+20-10-502-9999 (mobile)
In New York,
Sarah Leah Whitson (English): +1-212-216-1230 |
