BaShaR AL ASSad: CRIMINAL AGaiNST HUMANITY Report of human rights violations committed in Syria. March – July 2011 of person. Article 4: No one shall be held in slavery Article 1: All human beings are born free and equal or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms. Article 5: No one shall be subjected to in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment. Article 6: Everyone has the right to recognition spirit of brotherhood. Article 2: Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, everywhere as a person before the law. Article 7: All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimi- without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, nation to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination. Article 8: Everyone has the right to an effective rem- basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person edy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty. by law. Article 9: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, Article 3: Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security July 2011 N°570a ©Filippo Monteforte / AFP 2 / Titre du rapport – FIDH I – Introduction --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------6 II – Examination of crimes committed -----------------------------------------------------------------7 A) Extra-judicial killings, attempted killings and injuries of civilians ----------------------------- 8 B) Arbitrary arrests and detentions, acts of torture and ill-treatments -----------------------------12 C) Military operations and besieged cities: practices amounting to collective punishments committed against population -------------------------------------------------------------------- 19 III – Conclusion and Recommendations ------------------------------------------------------------- 26 IV – Annexes -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 29 A. List of the names of children and teenagers killed during unrest, as of June 3rd, 2011 Comprised by The Damascus Center of Human Rights ---------------------------------------------29 B. Names of disabled individuals victim of repression by the Syrian authorities, as of June 25th, 2011 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------31 Names of eldery individuals victim of repression by the Syrian authorities, as of June 21st, 2011 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------31 C. List of the names of individuals who died from May 18th, 2011 up to June 29th, 2011. Comprised by “The Committee of the martyrs of the revolution” --------------------------------33 FIDH – Bashar Al Assad: Criminal Against Humanity / 3 NB: Most of the information presented in this document has been collected by the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies (DCHRS), FIDH member organisation in Syria*. Additional information comes mainly from statements and press releases of a coalition of 7 Syrian human rights organizations and among them the Committees for the Defense of Democratic Freedoms and Human Rights (CDF), also member organisation of FIDH **. *See the website: http://www.dchrs.org/english/news.php?aboutus **These organisations are: Arab Organization for Human Rights in Syria (AOHR-S); Committees for the Defence of Democratic Freedoms and Human Rights in Syria (C.D.F); Human Rights Organization in Syria – (MAF); Kurdish Organization for Defending Human Rights and Public Freedoms in Syria (DAD); Kurdish Committee for Human Rights in Syria; National Organization for Human Rights in Syria. (NOHR-S); Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Damascus, Syria. Working together since the beginning of the Syrian uprising to monitor human rights violations, these NGOs will be referred to as “the Coalition of Syrian NGOs”. 4 / Bashar Al Assad: Criminal Against Humanity – FIDH Reporting Human Rights Violations Since the beginning of the uprising in Syria in March 2011, the Damascus Center for Human Rights Studies (DCHRS) received a considerable amount of reliable information of grave human rights violations committed against civilians in Syria, on a quasi-daily basis. FIDH decided to support its member organisation in collecting information and preparing this information paper. This document will examine the trends behind the major and most pervasive crimes and human rights violations reported during the Syrian uprising between March 15th and July 15th 2011. Rather than a comprehensive report examining all the reported human rights violations, this information paper will shed light, on the basis of received information, on categories of severe human rights violations that have occurred recurrently and even systematically in Syria. The main trends observed behind these human rights violations are: • Extra-judicial killings and increasingly systematic use of violence by governmental forces, most often within the context of anti-government demonstrations; • Mass arrests, abductions, enforced disappearances and detention of civilians, most often of arbitrary nature; • Acts of torture, degrading or inhumane treatment; • Repression of free assembly and violations of the freedom of information, notably targeting media and human rights defenders; • Military operations and besieged cities: practices amounting to collective punishments committed against the civilian population; • Restriction and denial of access to hospitals. FIDH – Bashar Al Assad: Criminal Against Humanity / 5 I. Introduction The spark of the Syrian uprising was lit in Daraa on March 6, 2011, following the arbitrary arrest of 15 young boys, who were subsequently detained and tortured for painting anti-government slogans on a wall. The sentence: “People / want / to topple the regime!” echoed some of the slogans heard by the children during the uprisings in Tunis and Cairo. On March 18, 2011, some inhabitants of the city of Daraa organized a march calling for the release of these children. The march was violently repressed by the Syrian authorities, who used lethal weapons against the peaceful crowd. Within a week of the first protest, the Security Forces had killed at least 55 demonstrators in and around the city of Daraa. Protests remained localized in the South of the country for at least a month, before the wave of demonstrations made its way up, sweeping the unrest across Syria, from the West coast to the Eastern province of Mesopotamia, to the inner walls of the University City in Damascus and Aleppo and finally to the northern province of Idleb, near the Turkish border. Demonstrations have and are still breaking out all across Syria in unprecedented numbers. In total, thousands of people have now already challenged the regime calling for freedom and reforms and for the very most part, peacefully. These demonstrations are explained by the deterioration of the economic, political and social conditions in Syria1, against financial and political corruption, and amid general demands for reforms across the Arab world. What started as peaceful demands for political reform became a quest for regime change, and it is in the face of these demands that the Syrian government started exerting an increasingly tough repression. Entire populations have been subjected to repression, notably in the cities that have been besieged by the army. In some of them, inhabitants suffer from a humanitarian crisis, in lack of water, food, and medical supplies. Many of these inhabitants are furthermore being denied access to medical personnel. As an illustration, the unrestricted access to the areas and people affected by the unrest was denied to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) until June 21, 20112. The Syrian government has now blocked territorial access to international journalists, independent NGOs, as well as to the Fact finding mission on the situation in Syria mandated by the Human Rights Council of the United Nations. Media personnel, human rights defenders, local journalists and civil society organizations are also targeted by the regime and often subjected to recurrent measures of repression. These intentional measures sustain a blackout on the human rights violations committed by the Syrian government, and make it moreover difficult to scrutinize and report on these violations. Overall in the last four months and as of July 15, 2011 over 1,665 individuals have died3, including at least 84 children4. Over 11,200 people have been allegedly arrested and the total number of Syrian refugees is said to have surpassed 20,000 people. 1. See the websites: http://www.napcsyr.org/dwnld-files/working_papers/en/17_food_security_syria_en.pdf and http://www. fao.org/giews/countrybrief/country.jsp?code=SYR 2. The city of Daraa could be accessed by a 15-member team from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC),