Criminalizing torture in Syria not April Fools’ joke, HRW
![Ten years into the Syrian conflict, conditions for prisoners are in the spotlight with the conviction of a former Syrian intelligence agent in Germany [File: Goran Tomasevic/Reuters]](https://npasyria.com/en/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/DF.jpg)
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – Syria, where torture is routine and pervasive, has passed a law criminalizing the practice, in a statement on Friday, Human Rights Watch (HRW) criticized the law.
A new law criminalizing torture in Syria, after decades of human rights violations by the Bashar al-Assad regime, has drawn criticism from international human rights groups.
The Syrian government passed an anti-torture law, on March 30 2022, criminalizing torture and assigning a penalty of at least three years’ imprisonment, and up to the death penalty where the torture results in death or involves rape, HRW said in a statement on April 1.
The statement said the announcement of the law by the Syrian regime “might have appeared as satire.”
“Syria has arbitrarily detained and tortured tens of thousands of people in what amount to crimes against humanity as HRW and others have extensively documented,” the statement read.
53,275 photos of tortured, mutilated and starved bodies were smuggled out of Syria and first came to public in January 2014 by a military defector code-named Caesar. The photos provide irrefutable evidence of widespread torture, starvation, beatings, and disease in Syrian government detention facilities.
Human rights groups believe Caesar’s photos contain images of former detainees, most tortured to death by the Syrian authorities in the early months of the Syria’s civil war.
“Yet, despite the condemnation, the Syrian government has done little to stem the use of torture by its agents,” according to the HRW.
In 2011, popular demonstrations began in Syria against the Syrian government and demanded change, but later they turned into an armed conflict.
Over the past 11 years, the country witnessed political, military and economic transformations, tens of thousands of missing, detainees, deaths in detention centers, yet the Syrian government didn’t stand trial to try those responsible for these crimes over the past decade.
“The government needs to do far more than pass a law to show that it is reforming.”
The statement called for holding “those responsible for torture over the past decade accountable, releasing all those arbitrarily detained in official and unofficial detention facilities, and by seriously contributing to an international and independent effort to determine and reveal the fate of the thousands who have been disappeared.”