Syrian Coalition: Justice is Still Elusive for the Victims of Forced Disappearance in Syria

On the International Day of the Victims of Enforced Disappearances, Nora al-Ameer, Vice President of the Syrian Coalition, expresses hope that one day the world will get rid of injustice and oppression. The forced disappearances practiced by Assad’s security services qualify as war crimes and violate human rights laws. In international human rights law, a forced disappearance occurs when a person is secretly abducted or imprisoned by a state or political organization, or by a third party with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of a state or political organization, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the person’s fate and whereabouts, with the intent of placing the victim outside the protection of the law. By applying this policy, the Assad regime has been seeking to evade all international laws and restrictions that may limit its criminality against the Syrian people. Victims of forced disappearance in Syria face a very bleak fate, and while the detainees represent the unknown soldiers of the Syrian Revolution, the forcibly disappeared are considered the unknown soldiers of the detainees themselves.” Al Ameer concluded her remarks stressing that “the world’s abandonment of Syrian citizens who have being subjected to all kinds of injustices and abuses, and are being dealt with as mere numbers and news stories is shameful and unacceptable and is not commensurate with a society ruled by human rights laws.” The ‏‎Syrian Commission for Transitional Justice‎‏ has released a report in cooperation with the Syrian Coalition to highlight the crimes of enforced disappearance towards the Syrian people. Ammar Tabbab, director of the Syrian Commission for Transitional Justice and director of the file of enforced disappearances, said that “the commission recorded more than 60,000 cases of forced disappearances in Syria, among them 6,722 people who were liquidated including, 1348 children and 1511 women. He also said that “while Syria is not the first country where forced disappearance is recorded, it is the only country where an entire community has been forcibly disappeared,” citing the regime forces’ closing off of whole areas near Wadi al-Daif army base in Idlib province. Survivors who managed to flee those areas were not given the chance to know the fate of their beloved ones. Examples of cases of enforced disappearances have been corroborated by the 55,000 photos leaked by Caesar, which leaves no room for doubt about the regime’s responsibility. However, the world chose to remain silent for political reasons with a complete disregard for human lives. In contrast, the international community lost no time to declare war on ISIS, which shows its double standards as it condoned the original criminal and chose to counter ISIS whose crimes are only an extension and reflection of those of the Assad regime. Ironically, the international community and the Assad regime are trying to find an excuse through an enforced disappearance to extend the scope of the implementation of the UN resolution to Syria, namely the case of the American journalist James Foley, who was executed by ISIS after he went missing in the end of 2012, even before ISIS began to exist. The world’s silence over the photos of 11,000 detainees, leaked by Caesar, proves that in our world the decision to apply justice is determined by the victim’s nationality, as the 11,000 Syrian detainees were not a match to one U.S. national.”