• Syria: Rights Activists Face Terrorism Charges
    Written statement
    May 17, 2013
    The international community should urge the Syrian authorities to immediately and unconditionally release and drop all charges against a freedom of expression activist and two of his colleagues, 19 regional and international human rights organizations said today. Mazen Darwish and two of his colleagues from the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM), Hussein Gharir and Hani Zaitani, are facing trial on terrorism charges for their peaceful activism, the groups said.
  • Syria: Visit Reveals Torture Chambers
    Press release
    May 17, 2013
    Government security branches in Raqqa city hold documents and potential physical evidence indicating that detainees were arbitrarily detained and tortured there while the city was under government control. Human Rights Watch researchers visited the State Security and Military Intelligence facilities in Raqqa, now under the de facto control of local armed opposition groups, in late April 2013.
  • Syria: Brigade Fighting in Homs Implicated in Atrocities
    Press release
    May 13, 2013
    Human Rights Watch has reviewed graphic evidence that appears to show a commander of the Syrian opposition “Independent Omar al-Farouq” brigade mutilating the corpse of a pro-government fighter. The figure in the video cuts the heart and liver out of the body and uses sectarian language to insult Alawites. The same brigade was implicated in April 2013 in the cross-border indiscriminate shelling of the Lebanese Shi’a villages of al-Qasr and Hawsh al-Sayyed
  • Is This the Most Disgusting Atrocity Filmed in the Syrian Civil War?
    Commentary
    May 13, 2013
    Even by the standards of Syria's ever-worsening stream of atrocity and massacre videos, the latest footage from the country cannot fail to shock for its sheer savagery. The video, posted on May 12 but filmed on March 26 near the Syrian town of Qusayr, on the border with Lebanon, opens by calmly filming a rebel commander cutting open the chest of what we assume is a deceased pro-Bashar al-Assad fighter, removing his heart and liver with surgical precision and sang-froid.
  • Lebanon: Tit-for-Tat Border Kidnappings
    Press release
    May 2, 2013
    The Lebanese government has failed to take adequate measures to protect against, deter, and punish retaliatory kidnappings along sectarian lines in border regions. Human Rights Watch interviewed both victims and family members who carried out retaliatory kidnappings, prompted by alleged detentions and kidnappings of their relatives by the Syrian government forces and armed opposition groups.
  • Syria’s River of Death
    Commentary
    Apr 30, 2013
    Syrian men don’t usually cry. But for Yasser, the memory of his son, Mohammed, hurt too much. Sitting in the dark inside his shop on a bustling market street in Aleppo, the 63-year-old, hunched over in his chair, kept asking me: “Why did he deserve to die that way?” Yasser’s grief over his son who was apparently executed is shared by far too many Syrians caught up in this grisly war.
  • Syria: New Air, Missile Strikes Kill Civilians
    Press release
    Apr 26, 2013
    New Syrian government air and missile strikes are causing high civilian casualties in opposition-controlled areas of Aleppo in violation of the laws of war. A Human Rights Watch team in northern Aleppo province has investigated recent attacks that killed scores of civilians and destroyed dozens of civilian homes without damaging any apparent opposition military targets.
  • Blocking Syrian Refugees Isn’t the Way
    Commentary
    Apr 23, 2013
    The refugee burden that Syria’s neighbors are shouldering is heavy and should not be borne alone. But keeping people fleeing for their lives in buffer zones inside Syrian borders risks trapping rather than protecting them.
  • Lebanon/Syria: End Indiscriminate Cross-Border Attacks
    Press release
    Apr 22, 2013
    All parties to the conflict in Syria should stop indiscriminate cross-border attacks on inhabited areas in Lebanon.
  • Why So Many Syrians Wish For Rain
    Commentary
    Apr 16, 2013
    Life in Aleppo is not easy. People here have suffered from shortages of food, electricity and running water, and there has been little humanitarian assistance. The long, cold winter months were particularly rough. The only possible consolation was that there were fewer air strikes because of the cloudy, rainy weather. The government’s jets only seem to fly – and drop bombs – when the sky is blue.
  • Syria: Aerial Attacks Strike Civilians
    Press release
    Apr 10, 2013
    The Syrian Air Force has repeatedly carried out indiscriminate, and in some cases deliberate, air strikes against civilians. These attacks are serious violations of international humanitarian law (the laws of war), and people who commit such violations with criminal intent are responsible for war crimes.
  • Testimony of Tom Malinowski Before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on Syria’s Humanitarian Crisis
    Testimony
    Apr 2, 2013

    Since the beginning of the uprising in Syria, Human Rights Watch has made numerous trips to the northern part of the country from across the Turkish border. I was there in December for four days, visiting several towns in the countryside north and east of Aleppo City. Some of my colleagues went to Aleppo in February; we have also conducted research trips in the last year in Idlib and Latakia provinces. The Syrian opposition controls the ground in these areas, and is struggling, with growing but still insufficient international help, to provide for the civilian population. The Syrian government, meanwhile, still controls the skies.

  • What Are the BRICS Building?
    Commentary
    Mar 30, 2013
    The Chinese call it jin zhuan, or golden brick. The Russians have suggested calling it briuki, an acronym meaning trousers in Russian. And what about the ambiguous S? It originally was just a plural for the emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, and China, places where a Goldman Sachs analyst was urging greater investment. Now it stands for South Africa, which joined in 2010 despite having an economy roughly on the order of China’s sixth-largest province.
  • No free pass for Jordan on refugees
    Commentary
    Mar 27, 2013
    The United States should provide aid to the refugees but ensure that no aid money goes to or through the Jordanian government as long as Jordan sends some refugees back to face death - even as it welcomes others.
  • Russia wants BRICS partners to ignore its transgressions
    Commentary
    Mar 26, 2013

    Official communiqués on the BRICS summit in Durban are promising new initiatives on trade, economic development and technical co-operation. But Russia wants more from its partners than just trade. With concern rising in Europe over the worst crackdown on Russian democracy since the Soviet Union collapsed more than 20 years ago, Vladimir Putin is coming to Africa to find supporters of its world view.

  • BRICS: Take Concrete Steps to Help Syria’s People
    Press release
    Mar 26, 2013
    The BRICS countries should call for an end to indiscriminate attacks on civilians and civilian-populated areas in Syria, and insist that cluster munitions and incendiary weapons should not be used. Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa are meeting in Durban for the annual BRICS summit on March 26 and 27, 2013.
  • Fleeing Syria: Insights on Lebanon’s open border
    Commentary
    Mar 24, 2013
  • Jordan: President’s Visit Shouldn’t Ignore Refugees in Peril
    Commentary
    Mar 22, 2013

    During his visit Friday to Jordan, there’s little doubt President Obama will praise it for its hospitality toward some 350,000 Syrian refugees. While praise and support for Jordan’s reception of many Syrian refugees is deserved, the president should not give Jordan a free pass when it comes to its forcible returns of Palestinian refugees to Syria.

  • Time for Brics to stop sitting on the fence over Syria atrocities
    Commentary
    Mar 22, 2013
    Brics should call for the Syrian government to permit the delivery of humanitarian aid across its borders, including from Turkey
  • Jordan: Obama Should Press King on Asylum Seeker Pushbacks
    Press release
    Mar 21, 2013
    Jordan is routinely and unlawfully rejecting Palestinian refugees, single males, and undocumented people seeking asylum at its border with Syria, said Human Rights Watch and Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic (the Harvard Clinic).
  • Syria: Mounting Casualties from Cluster Munitions
    Press release
    Mar 16, 2013

    Syrian forces’ use of cluster munitionsin residential areas is causing mounting civilian casualties. An initial review of available information has identified at least 119 locations across Syriawhere at least 156 cluster bombs have been used in the past six months.  

  • Syria: Unlawful Missile Attacks Kill More Than 140
    Press release
    Feb 26, 2013

    The Syrian government launched at least four ballistic missiles that struck populated areas in the city of Aleppo and a town in Aleppo governorate during the week of February 17, 2013, Human Rights Watch said today. The attacks killed more than 141 people, including 71 children, and caused immense physical destruction.

  • Russia: Hollande Should Press Putin on Rights
    Press release
    Feb 22, 2013
    President Francois Hollande of France should urge President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia to reverse his administration’s crackdown on civil society and erosion of human rights when the two leaders meet on February 28, 2013.
  • Syria: Activist Dies in Jail, Second Feared Dead
    Press release
    Feb 22, 2013
    A peaceful activist who had been helping local committees deliver aid died in detention in Syria on February 16, 2013. A second detainee died in detention in November, a released detainee recently told his family. The reported deaths highlight the urgent need for the UN Security Council to require the authorities in Syria to grant international monitors immediate and unhindered access to all detention facilities.
  • Letter to Kuwait Foreign Minister on Supporting Syria Accountability Initiative
    Letter
    Feb 19, 2013

    We write to request that your government support an initiative led by Switzerland calling on the United Nations (UN) Security Council to refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court (ICC). The letter, delivered by Switzerland on January 14, 2013, points to a record of severe human rights violations in Syria with no prospect of justice at the local level, and appeals to the Security Council to therefore take up the issue of accountability. It is time Kuwait joins the over 50 nations, including Tunisia and Libya, that have supported this call and signal to all sides in Syria that the days of absolute impunity for these severe human rights violations are at an end. 

  • Syria: Authorize Cross-Border Humanitarian Aid
    Press release
    Feb 11, 2013
    Syria should urgently agree that humanitarian aid may be brought into the country across all of its borders, including from Turkey.Syria’s allies, including Russia, should press Syria to consent to such transfers. Donors should not wait for Syria’s go-ahead, but instead should immediately expand support to non-governmental organizations already able to deliver aid from Turkey into opposition-held areas of Syria.
  • How to Ease Syrian Suffering
    Commentary
    Feb 8, 2013
    The Syrian people are caught in a horrible downward spiral. The government’s slaughter seems only to intensify as President Bashar al-Assad pursues a ruthless strategy of draining the sea to get the fish — attacking civilians so they will flee and leave the armed opposition isolated.
  • How to Keep the Arab Spring Blossoming
    Commentary
    Feb 4, 2013
    As rioting resumes in Egypt, militias reign ominously in parts of Libya, and relentless slaughter proceeds in Syria, some are beginning to question whether the Arab Spring was such a good idea after all. But would we really want to condemn entire nations to the likes of Mubarak, Gadhafi and al-Assad? As we know from the fall of military dictatorships in Latin America and the demise of the Soviet Union, building a rights-respecting democracy on a legacy of authoritarian rule is not easy. However, there are steps that both the people of the region and the international community can take to make a positive outcome more likely.
  • The New Syria Will Need Human Rights, Not Reprisals
    Commentary
    Feb 4, 2013
    The top priority is bringing an end to the slaughter. But we must ensure that, after Assad, revenge does not lead to abuses.
  • Joint letter to protest the use of cluster bombs in Syria
    Letter
    Feb 1, 2013
    We, the citizens of Japan, deeply regret that a large number of Syrian citizens have been victimized in the recent conflict that has been escalating since March 2011. We hope the conflict to end promptly without further sacrifice in our friendly nation of Syria.
  • Holding the Security Council to Account on Syria
    Commentary
    Jan 29, 2013

    Unusual currents have been swirling around the United Nations Security Council’s shameful paralysis on Syria, a product of repeated vetoes by Russia and China. On January 14, a group of 58 governments urged the council to ask the International Criminal Court (ICC) to prosecute those responsible for the egregious crimes in Syria. In the face of the spiraling carnage on the ground, these governments, in an unprecedented act of “justice diplomacy,” insisted that the time for Security Council silence is long past.

  • Syria: Attacks on Religious Sites Raise Tensions
    Press release
    Jan 23, 2013
    Armed opposition groups appeared to have deliberately destroyed religious sites in mixed areas of Northern Syria, in November and December 2012.An armed opposition group destroyed a Shia place of worship in Idlib governorate, and two Christian churches in Latakia governorate were looted.
  • Egypt: Don’t Force Palestinians Back to Syria
    Press release
    Jan 18, 2013
    Two Palestinians being held at the Cairo airport, apparently refused entry to Egypt, are at risk of deportation to Syria. The man and his son would face indiscriminate violence and possible persecution if returned to Syria.
  • The gruesome toll of deadly cluster bombs in Syria
    Commentary
    Jan 16, 2013

    It was cloudy the afternoon of January 3 when residents say the cluster bombs fell on the Syrian town of Latamneh. Three rockets containing the cluster munitions fell in nearby fields, apparently doing no harm, but a fourth landed on the street between residential buildings. Its impact was devastating.

  • Syria: Seeking Justice
    Commentary
    Jan 15, 2013
    In the absence of a reliable mechanism that Syrians know will bring them justice, revenge killing on a wide scale will be likely. And unless Syrian and international players move beyond promises for accountability and offer a concrete plan for justice, Syrian soldiers and armed militias would not be deterred by the possibility of standing trial for their atrocities.
  • UN Security Council: Heed Call for Justice in Syria
    Press release
    Jan 14, 2013

    A letter sent to the United Nations Security Council on behalf of 57 states calling for a referral of the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court (ICC) gives momentum to international efforts to stop grave abuses committed there. More countries should join the call and impress on reluctant Council members the urgency of taking up the issue of accountability.

     

  • Syria: Army Using New Type of Cluster Munition
    Press release
    Jan 14, 2013

    Syrian forces are using notoriously indiscriminate rockets that contain explosive submunitions. Evidence indicates that Syrian forces used BM-21 Grad multi-barrel rocket launchers to deliver cluster munitions in attacks near the city of Idlib in December 2012 and in Latamneh, a town northwest of Hama, on January 3, 2013.

  • Letter to Egyptian Foreign Minister on Syria and the ICC
    Letter
    Jan 13, 2013

    We write to request that your government support an initiative led by Switzerland calling on the United Nations (UN) Security Council to refer the situation in Syria to the International Criminal Court (ICC). The letter, set to be delivered by Switzerland on January 14, 2013, points to a record of severe human rights violations in Syria with no prospect of justice at the local level, and appeals to the Security Council to therefore take up the issue of accountability. It is time Egypt join the over 50 nations, including Tunisia and Libya, that have supported this call and signal to all sides in Syria that the days of absolute impunity for these severe human rights violations are at an end.