For Immediate Release

(Brussels, August 16, 2011) – The European Union (EU) should freeze the
assets of the Syrian National Oil Company, Syrian National Gas Company, and the
Central Bank of Syria until the Syrian government ends gross human rights
abuses against its citizens, Human Rights Watch said today. On August 12, 2011,
Human Rights Watch sent a letter to the EU High Representative and foreign
ministers of the 27 member states urging them to swiftly impose such sanctions.

Since August 1 Syrian security forces have killed at least 231
antigovernment protesters and other civilians in attacks on Latakia, Deir
al-Zor, Homs, and small towns across Syria,
according to local human rights activists. Over the last four days, security
forces have attacked and carried out large-scale arrests in the Latakia
neighborhoods of Slaybeh, Skantouri, Raml al-`Ali, and Sheikh Daher. Security
services have also detained prominent political and human rights activists such
as Abdel Karim Rihawi.

“Syria’s authorities are still killing their own people despite multiple
efforts by other countries, including former allies, to make them stop,” said Lotte Leicht,
EU director at Human Rights Watch. “It’s time to show the government that
Europeans won’t help to fund its repression.”

Under Syrian law the government is the major shareholder in the oil and gas
sector through its ownership of the Syrian National Gas and Syrian National Oil
companies. These two companies have a 50 percent share in every oil and gas
project in Syria. In a March 2010 report, the International Monetary Fund
estimated that the Syrian government earns approximately €2.1 billion from oil
and gas revenues per year. Most of Syria’s oil and gas is used domestically,
but it exports about 150,000 barrels per day, and around 95 percent of that
goes to Europe, primarily to Italy, the Netherlands, France, and Germany.

The EU has already frozen the assets of 35 Syrian officials and four entities
in response to Syria’s widespread human rights abuses. The EU imposed similar
assets freezes against the Libyan oil sector and central bank in March.

In its letter Human Rights Watch urged the EU to conduct regular reviews of the
impact of sanctions to assess any potential humanitarian impact, and to tie the
lifting of the sanctions to measures that demonstrate a change of policy by the
government, such as an end to the use of excessive and lethal force against
peaceful demonstrators, releasing all detainees held merely for participating
in peaceful protests or for criticizing the Syrian authorities, and full
cooperation with the fact-finding mission mandated by the United Nations Human
Rights Council or other international mechanisms tasked with investigating
alleged human rights violations.

“The aim is to harm the government’s ability to fund its repression and not to
hurt the Syrian people who are courageously demanding their basic rights,”
Leicht said.

Since the beginning of antigovernment protests in mid-March Human Rights
Watch has documented a systematic pattern of widespread and serious human
rights violations committed by Syria‘s authorities. According to local
human rights groups, security forces have so far shot and killed around 2,000
civilians, and have detained more than 10,000 activists, protesters, and even
bystanders, regularly subjecting them to torture and ill-treatment.

Despite presidential amnesties and promises of reform, thousands of
activists and protesters remain in detention with no confirmation of their
whereabouts or the legal grounds for their detention. Evidence of systematic
killings, enforced disappearances, and torture by Syrian security forces in
some of Syria’s cities, such as that committed in Daraa, strongly suggest that
these acts rise to the level of crimes against humanity.

Syria’s authorities have sought to hide their violations by preventing access
to protest areas for journalists and independent observers, including the Human
Rights Council’s fact-finding team, and by limiting and sometimes shutting down
internet and telephone communications inside the country.

“Maybe the Syrian regime will treat its people better when it realizes that
it risks being unable to pay its security forces,” Leicht said. “EU member
states should send a clear and united message to the Assad government that
continuing these abuses will bring consequences.”