The authorities remained intolerant of dissent. Those who criticized the government,
including human rights defenders, faced arrest and imprisonment after unfair trials,
and bans from travelling abroad. Some were prisoners of conscience. Human rights NGOs
and opposition political parties were denied legal authorization. State forces and
the police continued to commit torture and other ill-treatment with impunity, and
there were at least eight suspicious deaths in custody. The government failed to clarify
the fate of 49 prisoners missing since a violent incident in 2008 at Saydnaya Military
Prison, and took no steps to account for thousands of victims of enforced disappearances
in earlier years. Women were subject to discrimination and gender-based violence;
at least 22 people, mostly women, were victims of so-called honour killings. Members
of the Kurdish minority continued to be denied equal access to economic, social and
cultural rights. At least 17 people were executed, including a woman alleged to be
a victim of physical and sexual abuse.
Syria remained under a national state of emergency in force continuously since 1963,
which provides the authorities with wide powers of arrest and detention.
In January, a progressive law was adopted to prohibit and criminalize the trafficking
of people.
In July, the Ministry of Higher Education prohibited women from wearing the niqab (face-covering veil) in universities.
In September, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food expressed concern that
an estimated 2 to 3 million people in Syria were living in “extreme poverty” and urged
the government to develop a comprehensive national strategy aimed at realizing the
right to adequate food.
In October, arrest warrants were issued against 33 Lebanese and other nationals in
response to a case initiated by Jamil al-Sayyed, one of four senior Lebanese officials
who were detained without charge or trial in Lebanon for more than three years in
connection with the investigation into the assassination of former Lebanese Prime
Minister Rafic Hariri in 2005. The four officials had been released by the Lebanese
authorities in 2009 after the prosecutor of the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL)
confirmed that the STL was unable to indict them within the legal timeframe.
A new law apparently intended to tighten controls on internet-based media was reported
to be under consideration.
The authorities continued to use state of emergency powers to punish and silence their
critics, including political activists, human rights defenders, bloggers and Kurdish
minority rights activists. Critics were arbitrarily arrested and detained for long
periods without trial or imprisoned after unfair trials before the Supreme State Security
Court (SSSC) or military or criminal courts. Human rights NGOs could not obtain licences
to operate, exposing members who are lawyers to disciplinary action by the government-controlled
Bar Association. Hundreds of people considered to be dissidents, including former
political prisoners and members of their families, were barred from travelling abroad;
some were barred from working in the public sector.
Muhannad al-Hassani, a leading human rights lawyer, was sentenced to a three-year
prison term in June after the Damascus Criminal Court convicted him of “weakening
nationalist sentiment” and disseminating “false news” by publishing information about
unfair trials before the SSSC on the internet. He was held at ‘Adra prison near Damascus
where, in October, he was assaulted by a criminal inmate who had been moved into his
cell.
Haytham al-Maleh, aged 79, a human rights lawyer and government critic, was sentenced
to three years in prison in July after being convicted of “weakening nationalist sentiment”
and disseminating “false news” on account of comments he made in a telephone interview
with a foreign satellite TV channel in September 2009. He was held at ‘Adra prison,
prompting concern for his health; he suffers from diabetes and other ailments.
Three senior members of the unauthorized Kurdish Yekiti Party continued to be detained
incommunicado at ‘Adra prison and on trial before the SSSC. Hassan Saleh, Ma’rouf
Mulla Ahmed and Muhammad Ahmed Mustafa were charged with “aiming at separating part
of the Syrian lands” and “joining a political or social international organization”,
and faced long jail terms if convicted. They were arrested shortly after they allegedly
called for Kurdish areas of Syria to be granted autonomy at a Yekiti Party conference
in December 2009.
Raghdah Sa’id Hassan, a writer, was arrested in February, detained incommunicado for
three months and then charged with “weakening nationalist sentiment” and spreading
“false news”. At the end of 2010, she remained held at Douma women’s prison and on
trial before a military criminal court.
Radeef Mustafa, a lawyer and leading figure in the unauthorized Kurdish Committee
for Human Rights in Syria (RASED), faced disciplinary proceedings by the Syrian Bar
Association for engaging in these activities and criticizing the state of emergency
in articles he published on the internet; he was at risk of being banned from working
as a lawyer.
Suhair Atassi, President of the unauthorized Jamal Atassi Forum, a pro-democracy
discussion group, was one of at least seven human rights defenders and political activists
who were prevented from travelling abroad.
Suspected Islamists and suspected members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood faced arbitrary
arrest, prolonged detention, torture and other ill-treatment, and unfair trials, usually
before the SSSC which rarely imposes prison sentences of less than five years. Those
convicted of belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood were sentenced to death but their
sentences were immediately commuted to 12-year prison terms. Hundreds of convicted
Islamist prisoners were held at Saydnaya Military Prison, where conditions were harsh.
The fate and whereabouts of Nabil Khilioui, a suspected Islamist detained by Military
Intelligence officials in August 2008, remained unknown; he was a victim of enforced
disappearance.
Usra al-Hassani was arrested on 2 January and held incommunicado for several months.
She was still held without charge at ‘Adra prison at the end of the year. She had
previously been detained incommunicado for almost a year prior to July 2009 for contacting
an international organization about her husband’s detention by US authorities at Guantánamo
Bay.
Ziad Ramadan, a former work colleague of a suspect in the 2005 assassination of former
Lebanese Prime Minister Rafic Hariri, remained detained since July 2005 without charge
and in harsh conditions at the Palestine Branch of Military Intelligence in Damascus,
although the STL had informed the Syrian authorities that it saw no grounds for his
detention.
Torture and other ill-treatment were used extensively and with impunity in police
stations and security agencies’ detention centres. According to reports, suspected
Islamists and members of the Kurdish minority were subject to particularly harsh abuse.
The SSSC and other courts often convicted defendants on the basis of “confessions”
alleged to have been extracted under torture or other duress.
‘Abdelbaqi Khalaf, a Syrian Kurdish pro-democracy activist detained in September 2008,
was reported to have been shackled by his wrists to a wall for eight days, tortured
and otherwise ill-treated during more than a year in incommunicado detention. In August
2010 it was reported that he was being tortured to force him to “confess” to killing
two members of the security forces. He was held at ‘Adra prison.
In May, the UN Committee against Torture expressed concern about “numerous, ongoing
and consistent” reports of torture by law enforcement and investigative officials,
at their instigation or with their consent, particularly in detention facilities,
and criticized the “quasi permanent” status of state of emergency legislation which
“allows the suspension of fundamental rights and freedoms”. The government did not
respond and had not implemented any of the Committee’s many recommendations by the
end of 2010.
Eight deaths in custody possibly as a result of torture were reported; none was known
to have been investigated by the authorities.
Jalal al-Koubaisi died in Criminal Security custody within days of his arrest on 27
May, apparently for encouraging people to shop at a particular store. He was held
incommunicado. On 1 June, his family was told to go to a hospital to collect his body.
The body had bruising and other marks indicating that he may have been tortured. No
official investigation was known to have been held.
The authorities took no steps to account for thousands of people, mostly Islamists,
who disappeared in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and others abducted in Lebanon
by Syrian forces or by pro-Syrian Lebanese and Palestinian militias, who then handed
them over to Syrian forces in the years before they withdrew from Lebanon in April
2005. The authorities also failed to disclose what occurred at Saydnaya Military Prison
in July 2008, when 17 prisoners and five other people were reported to have been killed
and since when there has been no information or known contact with 49 prisoners held
there at the time. In May, the UN Committee against Torture urged the government to
carry out an independent investigation and to “inform the families of those prisoners
if their relatives are alive and still held in prison”.
Nizar Ristnawi, a prisoner of conscience and one of the 49 Saydnaya prisoners whose
fate remained unknown, should have been released on 18 April 2009 when his four-year
prison term expired. In March 2009, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention declared
his detention to be arbitrary and urged the government “to take the necessary steps
to remedy his situation”.
Women faced discrimination in law and in practice, and high levels of violence, particularly
within the family. Laws assigning inferior status to women as compared to men, notably
the Personal Status Law governing marriage and its dissolution, inheritance and other
matters, remained in force. Such discrimination was reinforced by social customs.
Women and girls were inadequately protected from violence within the family: the Penal
Code prescribes lower penalties for murder and other violent crimes committed against
women when defence of family “honour” is considered a mitigating factor. At least
16 women, two men and four children under the age of 18 were reported to have been
victims of so-called honour killings. In November, a joint study by the government
and the UN Population Fund reported that one in three women suffers domestic violence
in Syria. The government was reported to be planning to establish a National Family
Protection Unit and a National Observatory for Domestic Violence.
Kurds, who comprise up to 10 per cent of the population and live mostly in the north-east,
continued to experience identity-based discrimination, including restrictions on use
of their language and culture. Tens of thousands of Syrian Kurds were effectively
stateless, further restricting their access to social and economic rights.
Luqman Ibrahim Hussein and three others were detained for 39 days apparently for observing
a protest of one minute’s silence on 10 September in ‘Amudah. They were protesting
against Legislative Decree 49 of 2008, which further restricted housing and property
rights in border areas, including the predominantly Kurdish-populated north-east border
areas. On 9 November, while free on bail, the four were sentenced to one month in
prison but were not detained as they had already spent over a month in jail.
Syria continued to host hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees who had access to
its education and health infrastructures, but continued to be denied the right to
work.
On 1 February, the authorities and UN agencies permanently closed the desolate camp
at al-Tanf in the border area between Iraq and Syria, where Palestinian refugees who
were long-term residents of Iraq had lived. Out of the 1,300 Palestinian refugees
who had lived at different times in the camp, around 1,000 were relocated to third
countries while the rest were temporarily moved to al-Hol camp in north-east Syria.
Death sentences continued to be imposed and at least 17 people were executed, although
the true number may have been much higher. The authorities rarely disclose information
about executions.
Eliaza al-Saleh, Ahmed al-‘Abbas and Mazen Bassouni were executed on 4 November. All
three had been convicted of murdering Eliaza al-Saleh’s husband. Evidence that she
had suffered years of physical and sexual abuse by her husband was apparently ignored
at her trial and appeal. Her family learned of her execution three days after it
was carried out.
In December, Syria was one of a minority of states that voted against a UN General
Assembly resolution calling for a worldwide moratorium on executions.
