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1994-05-02
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<text>
<title>
Syria And Syrian-Controlled Lebanon
</title>
<article>
<hdr>
Human Rights Watch World Report 1992
Middle East Watch: Syria and Syrian-controlled Lebanon
</hdr>
<body>
<p>Human Rights Developments in Syria
</p>
<p> During 1991, Syria took steps to improve its long dismal
human rights record. In May, the government of President Hafez
al-Asad released around 1,500 Palestinian detainees, and
between November 28 and December 18, it pardoned over 3,500
Syrian political prisoners. It is too early to determine whether
these releases mark a new trend, since Syria continues to hold
without trial over 2,500 detainees--some held since President
Asad assumed power in November 1970. (Middle East Watch's
estimate of the number of political prisoners held in Syria is
conservative. In its annual report issued on December 13, the
major Syrian human rights group, Committees for the Defense of
Democratic Freedoms and Human Rights, put the number of
political detainees at 14,000, over and above an estimated 3,000
suspected dissidents who disappeared without trace.)
</p>
<p> The Syrian government still denies the freedoms of
expression and association to its twelve million citizens and
puts severe restrictions on democratic participation in
government. Despite recent gestures of political liberalization,
real power remains in the hands of President Asad, who was
confirmed for a fourth seven-year term (1992-99) by an
officially reported 99.98 percent of the vote in a December 2
referendum in which he was the only candidate.
</p>
<p> The government in 1991 succeeded in concluding two pacts
with the Lebanese government of President Elias el-Hrawi that,
in effect, recognize Syria's hegemony over Lebanon. Ostensibly
limited to security and foreign-policy issues, the accords in
practice give Syria the opportunity to restrict a range of
human rights.
</p>
<p> The state of emergency declared in Syria in March 1963 when
the Baath Party first seized power and extended regularly
thereafter gives Syrian security agencies free rein to arrest
and detain suspected political opponents. Using a complicated
web of martial-law regulations enacted under state-of-emergency
powers, Syrian security forces have detained without trial
thousands of prisoners, many of whom have been held in
prolonged incommunicado detention. The scope of the state of
emergency and martial law regulations was narrowed in 1990 and
1991 to permit the civilian courts to treat cases of
embezzlement, smuggling, rations violations and other economic
crimes as well as cases of official corruption--offenses which
previously would have elicited the death penalty for serious
offenders. However, cases relating to "state security" are still
governed by martial-law rules. State-security crimes are loosely
defined to include speaking out critically about the regime or
joining outlawed political organizations such as the Muslim
Brotherhood and the Party for Communist Action (PCA). Entrusted
with carrying out the government policy of stamping out dissent
are a dozen secret-police organizations employing thousands of
agents and informers throughout Syria and Lebanon.
</p>
<p> The release in May of some 1,500 Palestinian detainees was
apparently a result of the growing detente between the Syrian
government and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in
preparation for the Middle East peace talks. During the first
ten months of the year, a total of 182 Syrian political
detainees--127 from the banned Party for Communist Action
(PCA) and thirty from the Muslim Brotherhood--were also
released.
</p>
<p> The pardon of 3,500 Syrian political detainees near the end
of the year was unprecedented. In the last week of November,
some seven hundred detainees were released, immediately before
the December 2 popular referendum on President Asad's fourth
term. According to preliminary reports received by Middle East
Watch, those released included opponents of the Persian Gulf
war detained earlier in the year, four Jews detained in 1990
and 1991 for trying to emigrate without permission, and other
recent detainees. Among the released were over thirty women
arrested between 1984 and 1987, including Mona al-Ahmar, Sana'
Huwaijeh, Wafa' Idris, Zahra Kurdiyyeh, Rana Mahfouz, Lina
al-Mir and engineer Hind al-Qahwaji.
</p>
<p> On December 17, Muhammed Harba, Syria's minister of
interior, announced that President Asad had pardoned 2,864
prisoners who had been detained "for acts committed against the
state's security." Those pardoned were to be freed immediately.
Diplomatic sources told Reuters that most of those pardoned
were members of the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood who had
committed armed attacks against the state. (Reuters, December
17, 1991; Associated Press, December 17, 1991; the official
Syrian Arab News Agency, December 17, 1991.) Syrian officials
contacted by Middle East Watch put the number pardoned at
2,826. They also confirmed that the pardoned included Muslim
Brotherhood and PCA members. Among those released were artists
and writers associated with PCA, including Ali Sabr Darwish,
Qassi al-Jundi, Ali al-Shehabi, Mustafa Latheqani and
Abdel-Hakim Qtaifan. Thirty leaders of the Popular Nasserist
Organization, an opposition group, including lawyer Muhammed
Dakkou, journalist Abdel-Karim Jabr, Dr. Khaled al-Nasser, Dr.
Mahmoud al-Oryan, and engineers Badreddin Fattal and Ali
Ghabshah, were also pardoned.
</p>
<p> Senior officials of the pre-Asad regime--some in detention
for over twenty years--were not included in the amnesty. For
example, Ahmed al-Swaidani, a former leader of the ruling Baath
Party, entered his twenty-third year in prison, while former
Syrian President Nour el-Din al-Atasi and twelve of his
ministers and senior supporters entered their twenty-first year
in prison; none has been tried. In addition, dozens of
long-term convicted political prisoners await release long after
their sentences have expired. One is Mustafa Khalil Brayez, who
was abducted in 1970 while in self-imposed exile in Lebanon and
sentenced to fifteen years in prison for writing Suqut
al-Jaulan (The Fall of the Golan Heights). The book blamed Hafez
al-Asad, then minister of defense, for the military defeat at
the hands of Israeli forces in June 1967. After Brayez's
sentence expired in August 1985, his family lost contact with
him and his whereabouts were unknown for several years. In
November 1991, Middle East Watch received reports that he was
being held in the general wing of al-Mezze prison in Damascus.
</p>
<p> New political prisoners in 1991 include four members of the
Workers Revolutionary Party and twenty-nine from the Arab
Socialist Union Party (ASU). They were arrested even though the
parties themselves are legal, apparently because they had
distributed leaflets criticizing the Baath Party's monopoly of
power. Among the ASU members arrested were Ahmed al-Khatib, a
lawyer; his son, Tha'ir; and Najib al-Derdem, also a jurist.
Hassan Isma`il Abdel Azim, a member of the ASU Politburo, was
detained for two months during 1991 and then released. ASU
publishing equipment was also confiscated.
</p>
<p> With the Syrian government having joined the anti-Iraq
alliance in the Persian Gulf conflict, scores of people were
arrested and some detained for opposition to the Gulf war. In
late January 1991, when fifty-three members of the Syrian
Lawyers Association signed a statement criticizing the war,
they were summoned before security officials and questioned, and
some were arrested. The same fate befell fifty-two writers and
artists who signed an anti-war protest.
</p>
<p> Torture is routinely used in Syrian prisons to extract
confessions. It is also used as a form of extrajudicial
punishment that can be applied throughout a detainee's
incarceration, leading to death or permanent injury in many
cases. As in previous years, there were a number of deaths in
custody, or soon after a prisoner's release from injuries
believed to have been sustained while in prison. J