SHRC 
Incidents of coercive disappearance have been causing concern to international community. This made UN General Assembly issue resolution No. 137/session 32/dated 20/12/1978 in which a request was made to UN Human Rights Committee to study and investigate the issue of coercive disappearance of individuals, and to take the proper measurement to deal with this issue.
Pursuant to UN Human Rights Committee study of the issue in its 36th session, dated 2/2/1980, the resolution No. 20 was passed to form a five-member working team in order to study the issue of coercive disappearance and to receive information from various governmental and non-governmental sources.
The said working team has submitted five reports with a number of appendices to each one. The last of those reports was submitted in February 1985 under the document No. 15/1985 which included analysis to the manifestation of disappearance, and information passed to the working team on coercive disappearance that recurred in many parts of the world. Syrian regime of president Asad was labelled among the countries that practise coercive disappearance actions on detainees on a very wide scale.
Article 152 of UN Human Rights Committee issued in 1984 said that every individual has the rights of freedom, and that personal security is the principle right of human rights, however this has been denied in the recurrent incidents of coercive disappearance. All other rights related such as stop of arbitrary detention, the right for fair trial and the individual right for recognition of his/her legal entity.
According to this description, every person arrested by authorities denied fair trial or his family has not notified is considered as disappearance case. The report issued by the said committee in 1983 included a special article (125) on Syria which says: The committee, since its responsibilities was renewed, received information on cases of coercive disappearance in the Syrian Arab Republic submitted by non-governmental organisation with a consulting nature in the economic and social council, and a relative to a disappeared person. The committee informed the Syrian government that it received a number of correspondences in respect of coercive disappearance in Syria, and stressed the pure humanitarian part in its letter expressing its hope that the Syrian government will act quickly to resolve all outstanding human rights issues.
In the same month, the committee sent two reports to the Syrian government on cases of coercive disappearance. One of them is about a doctor who was called to the office of Prison's directorate in Homs, then he was arrested and transferred to unknown detention centre. The second report said that a doctor was arrested and accused of membership of Muslim Brotherhood. Since then, nothing has ever been known about him. A third letter was sent to the Syrian government to enquire the case of a student who was arrested with two other student at his home in August 1980 by security forces, it was said that the three were driven to prison. Up to date nothing has been received from the Syrian government in respect of the three cases.
Legal Implications of coercively disappeared political prisoners:
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It deprives citizens from practising their right to apply to the court to judge the legality of their detention, such practise contravene with item 4 of Article 9 of the agreement on civil and political rights. |
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It deprives relatives of detainees to know the accusations and/or the location of their detention. Therefore, it is unlikely to visit them or to verify whether they are alive or dead. According to this, most detainees without trial in Syria, could be counted as disappeared ones because of their mysterious fate. This, in fact, contradicts the minimum rules approved by the Economic and Social Council on 21L7L1957, and with the rule (No 27) saying that detainees have the right to contact their families, and rule (No 44) demanding arresting authorities to inform the detainee's wife or next to kin in case of death or illness, and giving detainee the right, without delay, to inform his family or relatives of his imprisonment or removal to another place. Rule (No. 92) judges that a detainee without trial has the right to contact his family and inform them of his detention. |
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It causes disturbances in social and legal relations as a result to the lengthy detention period, such as matrimonial relationships, inheritance, partnership, ownership, etc., in addition to the economic and psychological implications created by the father's absence, and denying access of any information about him. |
The Syrian Human Rights Committee believes that thousands of political detainees are considered 'disappearance cases' because they have been stripped from their personal rights as stated in the aforesaid international charters.
SHRC appeals to human right and legal organisations to intensify their efforts to highlight the many disappearance cases of political detainees in Syria, to give this issue due attention, and to bear responsibility and work on their behalf, particularly the UN team on disappeared persons. Disappeared political detainees have been kept isolated from the outer world, their relatives, children, everything for two decades. There is no light at the other end of President Asad's hatred and repression.
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