Activists held a sit-in protest the city of Suweida on Tuesday to demonstrate solidarity with the detainees in the prisons of the Assad regime and the forcefully disappeared people.
The activists, who gathered outside the mayor’s office, held signs that read ‘freedom for the prisoners of opinion,’ ‘freedom for the forcibly disappeared,’ ‘no more kidnappings, no arrests,’ ‘we are waiting for your return, dad.’ They demanded the release of local activist Muhannad Shahabuddin and all other detainees.
The participants stressed that the Assad regime kidnapped the activist Shahabuddin, noting that the regime has a proven track record of arbitrary arrest. They noted that Shahabuddin was kidnapped by members of the Assad regime’s military security branch who took the activists in a white van on Sunday.
Swaida 24 news network reported the participants in the sit-in condemned the detention of Shahabuddin. They held signs that read ‘Muhannad is not a criminal, a drug dealer, or terrorist to end up in prison.”
Furthermore, the participants said that the Assad regime bears full responsibility for all the violations taking place in the province.
On May 13, eight Syrian civil society and international human rights organizations called on a number of UN Security Council member states to urgently address the widespread arbitrary detentions, kidnapping, torture and other-ill treatment, and enforced disappearances of tens of thousands of Syrians at the hands of the Assad regime.
The rights organizations, which included Amnesty International, called for disclosing the names, locations and legal status of all those being deprived of their liberty. They also called for supporting the creation of a unified system for logging all cases of missing persons in Syria.
To date, the Assad regime continues to detain and subject tens of thousands to enforced disappearance. Their families are rarely told where their loved ones are held or whether they are still alive. (Source: Syrian Coalition’s Media Department)
