Please Click here to Read the Hearing Details – PDF
Since March 2011, growing numbers of anti-government protests in Syria have been met with a brutal crackdown by the Syrian government, including widespread killings, torture, and indiscriminate shelling of cities. More than 8,000 people have been killed, and over 200,000 people have been displaced. The Syrian government is even using landmines as a deadly tactic to prevent civilians from escaping.
An Assessment by the United Nations Independent Commission of Inquiry
Please Click here to Download the Full Report
For the past year, the international community has been largely paralyzed in responding to Bashar al-Assad’s violent repression of protests in Syria.
March 20, 2012
(New York) – Armed opposition elements have carried out serious human rights abuses, Human Rights Watch said today in a public letter to the Syrian National Council (SNC) and other leading Syrian opposition groups. Abuses include kidnapping, detention, and torture of security force members, government supporters, and people identified as members of pro-government militias, called shabeeha.
Amnesty International 03-16-2012
Student activist, Jaqar Khoen Mullah Ahmed, a member of Syria’s Kurdish minority, has not been seen since 3 March. There are fears he may have been arrested by the security forces. If so, with the security forces denying he is in their custody, he has been subjected to enforced disappearance. He is at risk of torture and other ill-treatment.
March 15, 2012
(New York) – Accounts from witnesses reveal significant destruction and a large number of deaths and injuries of civilians in Syria’s bombardment of the city of Idlib, Human Rights Watch said today.
Please Click here to Read the Full Report
A grim catalogue of torture has emerged from former detainees describing their treatment in Syria’s detention centres since the predominantly peaceful protests against President Bashar al-Assad’s government began in March 2011. This report reveals that all the various security forces are routinely torturing and ill-treating detainees held in the context of the protests and unrest, using methods of cruelty mostly used for decades. The torture carried out appears to be part of a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population as part of Syrian government policy to crush dissent.
Geneva-Paris, March 15, 2012. On March 8 and 9, 2012, the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a joint programme of the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) and the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), organised the fourth “inter-mechanisms” meeting, which was hosted by the Office of the United Nations (UN) High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Geneva, Switzerland.
15 March 2012
Please Click Here to Read the Statement
Human Rights Council adopts Universal Periodic Review outcome on Syria
During the review of Syria in October 2011, the authorities accepted recommendations to guarantee the rights to freedom of expression, opinion and assembly, to end conflict and violence and find a peaceful political solution to the situation in the country, and to investigate alleged cases of violence and deaths, bringing those responsible to justice.
By EMHRN March 14, 2012
The undersigning organizations express their grave concerns for the safety of Mr. Mazen Darwish, Head of the Damascus based Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM) and seven of his colleagues, arrested by Air Force Intelligence members on February 16, 2012 during a raid on their Damascus offices.
March-14-2012
People caught up in the massive wave of arrests in the wake of the Syrian uprising have been thrust into a nightmarish world of systemic torture, a new report by Amnesty International says today.