Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies<\/a>,\n <\/p>\nProgram manager, Transitional Justice in the Arab World<\/p>\n
The Syrian revolution began in order to achieve a dream. The dream of all Syrians: the dream of freedom, in its simplicity. However, the price of freedom for the Syrian people has been and continues to be high.\u00a0 We thought that systems such as the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Nazi regime in Germany, the fascist in Italy, and Pinochet in Chile had become extinct. We thought, perhaps sinfully, that the international community had developed to the extent that it would never allow a system similar to those from the past to re-emerge in our time and age.<\/p>\n
However, what Syria is witnessing today, and what Syrians live in every moment, dispels all such hope. After war crimes and crimes against humanity took place in the former Yugoslavia, the General Assembly of the United Nations passed what became known as the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine in 2005, which changed traditional principles regarding the protection of the sovereignty of States. The R2P doctrine stipulates that when regimes commit war crimes and crimes against humanity they lose their sovereignty and the international community has the right to take the necessary measures to protect civilians and prevent crimes against them.<\/p>\n
\nUnfortunately, what is happening in Syria is a different story. The international community has abandoned Syrians to live through their pain alone and to be killed every day. Indiscriminate aerial bombardment has taken the lives of more than 20,000 civilians so far, and today Assad began to intensify the use of far-reaching ballistic missiles – which are classified as weapons of mass destruction – against areas of Syria no longer under control, with utter disregard for the lives of Syrian civilians and the size of the destruction that may take place in residential areas and against infrastructure. This is not to mention a whole arsenal of internationally banned weapons that has been used daily against the Syrian people, ranging from cluster bombs and thermobaric weapons to anti-personnel and marine mines. Certainly Assad would not have dared to use all this arsenal if he had not seen such indifference from the international community. If the international community decides to continue in its indifference toward Al-Assad and his madness in the use of military weapons against his own people, Syria then will become a real hell.<\/p>\n
Western media and officials describe what is happening in Syria as a civil war, despite our certainty that this description is far from the reality of what is happening inside Syria, as it is in fact a popular revolution against an authoritarian regime. If we conduct a simple comparison of the number of victims in Syria with the number of victims in countries in which a civil war has actually occurred, such as Peru, for example, we can see that the conflict in Peru, which lasted for twenty years from 1980 to 2000 and had more than 70,000 victims, is nearly incomparable to the 60,000 victims in Syria in the past two years.\u00a0 According to the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, we found that the number of victims has risen from a thousand a month during the start of the revolution to five thousand per month today due to the intense use of\u00a0 heavy weapons such as missiles launchers and thermobaric and cluster bombs by the regime Air forces.<\/p>\n
All this brings us to guess that if\u00a0 Assad is allowed to continue his war against the Syrian people, the number of victims can be expected to exceed 150,000 due to the increase of violence and the increase in the number of enforced disappearances and detainees who are likely to die under severe torture.<\/p>\n
There is no possibility to start a genuine process of transitional justice or process of political transition toward pluralism, democracy and reconciliation in Syria without a complete cessation of violence. As transitional justice experiences across the world have taught us, reconciliation is closely linked to the path of political transition and it depends mainly on the political will and vision of both the actors and the political forces on the ground. The launch of transitional justice processes can let victims feel that those responsible for committing crimes against their children and daughters will be brought to justice and that the time of impunity is over. With the implementation of a TJ program, Syrians without exception will feel that there is a path of national reconciliation in which their representatives will participate and ensure adequate pluralism and necessary credibility. <\/p>\n
As the representative of the Assembly of Families of the Syrian Victims, whose formation was announced in this conference, I know that not just anyone has the right to speak on behalf of the victims or utter their names. The cause of justice for them will not be tolerant, forgiving or compromising. If we take into account the complete collapse of Syrian institutions as institutions of credibility in the eyes of the Syrian citizens, we realize the size of the extraordinary harm impacted on the judiciary and its role in public life in Syria.
\n Today, we have a large number of judges with us who came from inside Syria and were actively practicing law until their defection from the state justice system. These defected judges then established the so-called Council of Free Syrian Judges. If we take into account the division of the society that is taking place in Syria today, it will not be possible for the judicial system to be properly set up or ready or even able to launch an accountability process. This is because of the position of al-Assad and his militia, and Assad\u2019s escalation through intimidation or provoking the Syrians against each other and, most recently establishment of the so-called Army of National Defense, which is practically a governmental institutionalization of Alassad\u2019s semi-regular militias (Shabiha). There is the option of resorting to international justice, as the crimes of Assad in the war and crimes against humanity are certainly within the scope of work of the International Criminal Court, however Russia, with its position in the Security Council, may prevent the referral of Syrian criminals to the ICC. Any future government formed by the opposition or formed after the fall of the Assad regime should ratify the Rome agreement, which will enable a prosecutor to open an investigation into these crimes. The path of international justice is certainly not an ideal choice as it is too slow, particularly since the Syrian victims need their rights to not be wasted and not be ignored in any political compromises. But the option of International justice in divided societies remains the best option as it will send the message to all Syrians that revenge is not the goal, as well as reassure them that the toughest standards of justice and international transparency will be guaranteed. The goal is not to target a specific religious group and hold them accountable, but to establish the course of justice that can ensure the establishment of future Syria on valid grounds, and at the same time, it gives more confidence to the international community regarding the new system and its commitment to justice and reconciliation and that there is no place for the policies of revenge or retaliation within its program. Syrians will need the international community, which failed them before, to rebuild their country and construct their future institutions in all conditions, and confidence-building in it, which is a very important issue, but they should also realize that there are limits to the help that can be provided by the international community and that they ultimately rely on themselves alone to build their democracy in the future.
\n In order to launch the course of transitional justice in Syria, we have started preparing for this conference, which will be attended by a large number of representatives of political forces, associations, and civil society organizations and human rights activists, judges and lawyers. We will witness the births of two very important initiatives at this conference: the first is the establishment of civic association of the families of the Syrian victims in the presence of representatives of the families of the most prominent revolutionary Syrian victims who allowed, with their sacrifice, the dream of the Syrians to be free from Al-Assad regime to be realized. The second is the establishment of the National Preparatory Committee\u00a0 for Transitional Justice, which will put it upon itself to develop programs, perceptions, and policies necessary for the future transitional justice phase depending on the following key stages:<\/p>\n
A lot of societies have experienced what Syria experienced in the eighties, particularly in Africa and Latin America, but they were able later to get out of those dark periods in their history by opening a new page based on truth, accountability and justice and then reconciliation, the so-called "transitional justice." Transitional justice refers to a field of activity or investigation focusing on communities that have a legacy of human rights violations, genocide, or other forms of violations include crimes against humanity, or civil war, and in order to build a more democratic society for a secure future.<\/p>\n
We can understand the concept through a number of terms such as: social reconstruction, national reconciliation, the establishment of truth commissions, reparations to victims, and the reform of state public institutions that are often associated with suspicion during the internal armed civil conflicts like the police, security forces and the army. <\/p>\n
With a political transition after a period of violence or oppression in society, society finds itself often in front of the legacy of difficult human rights violations, so the state seeks to deal with the crimes of the past with the desire to promote justice, peace and reconciliation, and therefore, government officials and NGO activists think to pursue various judicial and extrajudicial avenues to address human rights crimes, and adopt several approaches in order to achieve a sense of more comprehensive and far-reaching justice, such as lawsuits for violations of individuals in Kosovo, or the establishment of fact-finding initiatives to address the violations of the past, like what happened in Sierra Leone, or to provide compensation to victims of human rights violations, liked what happened the United States, or pave the way for reconciliation processes in divided societies, as happened in East Timor.<\/p>\n
The establishment of a culture of accountability,\u00a0 instead of impunity,\u00a0 gives a sense of security to the victims and sends a warning to those who are thinking of committing violations in the future. It also gives a measure of fairness to the suffering of the victims, and helps to curb the tendency to practice vigilante justice or retribution. It also provides an important opportunity to strengthen the credibility of judicial systems suffering from corruption and destruction, or that did not function properly in the past. This can be achieved through a number of methods or procedures: <\/p>\n
1 \u2013 Truth: <\/p>\n
This takes the form of "truth committees," which are bodies that carry out investigations in the formal patterns of violations that occurred in the past to establish an accurate historical record for the events, as has happened in a number of countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Guatemala, South Africa, Peru, Sierra Leone, and Morocco.<\/p>\n
Learning from past lessons is very important. We must learn from the past in order to make the necessary changes to prevent violations in the future and to recognize victims and what they suffered.<\/p>\n
2 – Prosecution:
\n Setting up criminal justice is an essential element of the integrated addressing of widespread human rights violations; we should strive to prosecute whenever possible. Programs also should be aimed at prosecution to restore the dignity of victims and recover public confidence in the rule of law. <\/p>\n
3 – Compensation: <\/p>\n
Before the widespread violations of human rights, it has become imperative for governments not only to address the perpetrators of these abuses, but also ensure the rights of victims. Governments can create an environment for maintaining the dignity of victims and achieve justice by compensating victims for their suffering. The concept involves compensation of several meanings, including direct compensation (for damage or loss of opportunity), restitution (support victim morally and in their daily lives) and retrieval (restore what was lost as much as possible). A distinction can be made between compensation by type (physical and moral) and the target group (individual \/ group). The moral compensation could be achieved, for example, by issuing a formal apology, devoting a public place (such as a museum or a park or monument) or announcing a national day of remembrance.<\/p>\n
4 – Institutional Reform:
\n Countries emerging from dictatorship often need to adopt reforms to include institutions, laws, and policies with a view to enable the country to achieve long-term social, economic and political goals, which are necessary to avert a collapse of civilization and preserve a democratic future. In periods of conflict, they are usually the suspension of human rights standards and corrupting normal working procedures and mentalities peacetime in many state institutions, if not in its entirety. When the turmoil ends, the institutional reforms in general, the objective of which is to remove the conditions that led to the emergence of the conflict or repression. We will address the following three suggestions for ways to attain this goal: <\/p>\n
(1) restructuring of state institutions that colluded in acts of violence or abuse.
\n (2) Removing the old racial, ethnic or gender discrimination.
\n (3) prevent the perpetrators of human rights violations from continuing to take advantage of positions in public institutions<\/p>\n
Without reforms in areas such as the national judicial system, parliament and the state security services, any accountability process will almost certainly be incomplete, and thus fail to create a positive echo among the general public. Citizens who have learned to regard the police, the army, and the government as untrustworthy will have difficulty believing in the usefulness of any accountability measures that include these institutions, and if they should do so, they have to be convinced that institutional cultures that allowed or fueled human rights violations were finally rectified.<\/p>\n
5 \u2013 Commemoration: <\/p>\n
Commemoration through any event or occurrence, as a mechanism to remember. This can be formal commemoration (such as a monument) or informal (such as the construction of a mural in the community); officially by the state or organically by the citizens. The people seek to commemorate the events of the past for many reasons, including the desire to evoke the memory of the victims and \/ or to identify them, or educate people about their past, or to increase community awareness, support or modify the historical novel, or encourage the adoption of commemoration \/ or transitional justice process from party at a local level.<\/p>\n
The understanding of the needs of victims and their families and survivors of mass atrocities and gross human rights violations is one of the key elements in transitional justice. Although there is no single way to treat the victim, however victims and their associations organization often demanding work to achieve a number of transitional justice goals, including the achievement of justice and accountability, revealing truth, reparation, and ensure what happened will never happen again. Add to all this, there is often a requirement to remember, as remembering the past provides a kind of honoring to those who died. However, the mechanisms of remembering can contribute to achieving the objectives of other transitional justice, including the search for truth, and ensure non-repetition in the future, and to stimulate debate and discussion about the past, and establish an appropriate historical record, and listen to the voices of the victims and pursue the objectives associated with reparations for victims. <\/p>\n
Tens of thousands of mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, wives and children are still under the pressure and suffering of long wait, fear and uncertainty pertaining to their loved ones who were forcibly disappeared. This segment of society, which covers all of Syria’s cities and villages, cannot set aside the suffering, handed down to it for generations and resulting in a hard to heal societal rift, without truth and justice procedures. Those victims have the right to truth, and to know the fate of their loved ones. In order to achieve this, their hand must be taken to help them overcome their pains so that they can restore confidence in themselves and their community and to help the restoration of the structure of society, rocked by grudges of injustices and suffering.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Syrian revolution began in order to achieve a dream. The dream of all Syrians: the dream of freedom, in its simplicity. However, the price of freedom for the Syrian people has been and continues to be high. We thought that systems such as the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, the Nazi regime in Germany, the fascist in Italy, and Pinochet in Chile had become extinct. We thought, perhaps sinfully, that the international community had developed to the extent that it would never allow a system similar to those from the past to re-emerge in our time and age.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dchrs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dchrs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dchrs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dchrs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dchrs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1137"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dchrs.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1137\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dchrs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dchrs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dchrs.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}