Syrian Kurds to investigate thousands of detained, abducted, or missing persons
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – A local governing council that serves as the political wing of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDC) announced on Saturday that it had formed a working committee to investigate the status of detained, abducted, or missing Syrians that number in at least the tens of thousands.
The new committee comes after a call by UN Special Envoy for Syria Geir Pedersen last week to release detainees due to the high risk of the spread of the coronavirus.
According to UN data from 2019, there are an estimated 100,000 Syrians whose whereabouts are unknown and likely fall into the three categories listed above.
Ilham Ahmed, President of the Executive Committee of the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), read a statement at a press conference in the northern city of Qamishli in which she called for the release of all political prisoners, excluding those lawfully detained as prisoners of war or terrorism suspects.
It is also imperative, she argued, that the fate of all missing persons is discovered and revealed to families and the proper authorities or organizations.
“We announce the launch of a working group of families of the kidnapped, the detainees, legal experts and civil society activists, to follow up, cooperate, coordinate and communicate with all local, regional and international bodies, organizations and institutions to collect and define data related to the detainee file,” she said.
The SDC leaders also called on all parties involved in the nearly decade-long Syrian conflict to abide by international humanitarian law and all relevant human rights treaties, adding, “These parties are responsible for physical and psychological safety of people whom they detain; we demand them to release all detainees and abductees.”
Specifically, they demanded that various factions “reveal the fate of missing and forcibly disappeared persons, to grant the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) access to detention centers, in addition to abolishing all exceptional courts, such as field courts, terrorism courts, and legal bodies.”
Ahmed told Kurdistan 24 on Wednesday, “There are thousands of prisoners of conscience and for the sake of democracy they must be released in order to play their ordinary role in society to restoring peace in Syria.”
Read More: Kurdish leader supports UN call to release Syrian political prisoners amid COVID-19 crisis
She warned at the time that the “weakness of (health) infrastructure in detention centres could turn (them) into a dangerous epicentre for the (coronavirus) disease to spread.”
The spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), Rupert Colville, on Friday urged the Syrian government and multiple armed groups to take urgent action – “following the example of other countries -- to release sufficient numbers of detainees to prevent COVID-19.”
“We also call on all parties to allow humanitarian actors and medical teams unhindered access to prisons and other places of detention to check the conditions under which the detainees live and asses their needs,” he added.
Colville said that OCHR has similar, though less immediate, concerns about the risk to people detained in “overcrowded and unhygienic facilities run by non-State armed groups in the north-west, north and east of the country.”
According to what the Syrian government has reported to the World Health Organization (WHO) from Saturday, there are a total of only 16 cases of COVID-19 in the country and two deaths.
Multiple reports, however, suggest that there a substantially higher number of infections than are being reported by Damascus.
Editing by John J. Catherine