90 cases of enforced disappearance in Suwayda in the last three months
Suwayda – North-Press Agency
Jibran Marouf
A state of turbulence, insecurity, and chaos has spread in recent weeks and began to widen day after day in the governorate of Suwayda, showing the failure of the government security forces and local groups in controlling the security, with many enforced disappearance cases in the south of the country.
July statistics
Local human rights organizations had recorded 19 cases of enforced disappearance in Suwayda governorate last July.
Human rights sources, which refused to be identified for security reasons, spoke to “North Press” saying: “Last July 2019, there were 19 cases of disappearance, including 17 cases of kidnapping for ransom.”
The sources confirmed the release of 4 kidnapped, while the fate of the rest is still unknown, as negotiations are ongoing between the kidnappers and the families of some of the kidnapped persons.
While two of the total number of the cases of disappearance were arrested by the Syrian government security authorities.
The last case of kidnapping was a former soldier in the Syrian government forces from Aleppo governorate, who was in Suwayda in the south of the country in order to receive compensation after finishing his military service in the Syrian army.
The sources confirmed that local groups sought immediately to release the kidnapped member.
Causes of kidnapping
For his part, in an interview with “North Press”, Abu Marwan, a social activist in Suwayda, who requested not to be identified for security reasons, said that the reasons behind the kidnappings for ransom are: “The deterioration of the economic situation within the governorate”.
He explained the reasons for kidnapping adding that it’s related to “the absence of development projects and preventing the youth of the governorate from travelling, where a large number of the population depends on the remittances of the expatriates, at the time there is a large mass of young unemployed and besieged within the governorate, either because of the compulsory military service and reserve, or for multiple security reasons.”
Abu Marwan also noted that “prior to Syrian government’s control over the opposition-held areas in Dara’a, the process of transporting fuel and foodstuffs was a source of income for many of the youth in the governorate, where it pumped a large financial bloc into the governorate. This bloc is absent today, in addition to the return of a large number of expatriates to their areas.”
“The deteriorating security situation encourages such acts, from the omission of law implementation institutions to the spread of indiscriminate weapons,” Abu Marwan added.
Crime stopping
“It is said that the authorities want to impose its full control if the people want to stop the crime”, the activist concluded.
There is a widespread concern in the social circles in Suwayda from the spread of crime in the governorate, especially kidnapping, along with more concern about the idea of using military forces and violence to control the situation.
While many of the committers of illegal acts are accused of being linked to “security agencies”, while the latter denies this.
Thus the number of kidnapping cases in the governorate of Suwayda has reached 89, these cases were recorded during the last months of May, June and July 2019, which affected civilian and military personnel.