Archived: Hussein Ghrer speaks in the UN

Excellences, Ladies and gentlemen, dear colleagues,
I would like to thank the Mission of Germany to the United Nations for their efforts in organizing this event. I also thank Amnesty International for all the work to make this event possible, and for the continued defense of all human beings whoever and wherever they are. Thanks to all of you for coming and listening to a fraction of the story of the Syrian people’s pain. I was eager to be with you today at this event, which means a lot to us: human rights defenders and victims of crimes against humanity; but unfortunately, I didn’t get VISA on time.
My son Ward was four years when Air Force Intelligence arrested me in Damascus. Ward loves drawing, and he liked to draw the family. After a period of being disappeared, he stopped drawing me with them. His mother asked him “why?”, he replied “Because he left us, and I will draw him when he is back!”. It was possible that I did not come back, just as the wonderful lawyer Khalil Maktouk and the amazing activists Yahya Shurbaji and Nabil Shorbaji who presented roses and water to the army and security forces in Darya during peaceful demonstrations, they are still disappeared in the government detention places.
When I was in the Air Force Intelligence prison in al-Tahrir Square, in the capital, I fainted due to lack of oxygen and sleep deprivation. A guard hurried to wake me up, he hit me on the head by a green pipe stick. I woke up and bled, and I could have died; then the regime would have said I was not in any prison, or would have faked a false medical report stating that my death was for natural causes; as it did thousands of times as Caesar witnessed. The regime practiced terrorism against Syrians systematically for decades.
Our parents begged us to be silent; so that our fate, and the fate of the family, would not be like those thousands of people who had been subjected to enforced disappearance during events in the eighties in Hama. But, at some point, we decided to stop being silent, so our revolution started in March 2011. The regime followed the same approach on a very large scale on hundreds of thousands of people. Some of them came out, more than 2,100 were killed under torture in 2014 according to Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, and 11,000 according to Casers report between 2011 and 2013.
The international law considers that the systematic use of enforced disappearance is a crime against humanity. Unfortunately, there are states supporting the Syrian regime, and there are those who turn a blind eye to it for their political interests. I will tell you some figures here. Assad regime killed 96.3% of the total civilian victims since the beginning of the revolution until the end of August 2015, while ISIS killed about 1%, according to the Syrian Human Rights Network. The regime is responsible for 99.5% of deaths under torture in the same period. On the other hand, Google statistics tell us that the number of searches for ISIS is 43 times of the number searches for Bashar al-Assad a year ago.
Western media says that the Syrians are risking their lives on the road to Europe, fleeing from ISIS terrorism and violence in Syria. This is only the tip of the mountain, a small part of the truth: The distorted truth. In the first survey among Syrian refugees in Germany, carried out by “Planet Syria”, 70% of the refugees said that they fled from Assad’s campaign of violence. 86% also said they feared arrest and kidnapping, 77% of them pointed the Assad regime. I call on governments and international organizations to do surveys of their own to make sure the facts are right.
Do these numbers tell us something? Yes! They tell us that the regime practiced terrorism on a large scale in Syria. They also tell us that the governments of influential countries deliberately cover up the regime’s terrorism. And they tell that the media stopped talking about the Assad regime, while it is full of stories of ISIS horror. They want people to forget Assad regime’s crimes and to focus only on ISIS. This is not a defense of the terrorist ISIS, but we should not forget that the Assad regime is the origin of terrorism in Syria. I promise that we will not forget, and we will do whatever is necessary to prosecute the criminals according to the requirements of justice and international law. Because we believe that impunity threatens the fate of humanity.
“I had to find Caesar. The spectacular advances made by Isis, and the growing number of terrorist attacks by its followers, were drowning out revelations about the Syrian regime’s atrocities. The conflict had already left more than 220,000 dead. Half of all civilians had been forced out of their homes, others had been shelled, their towns and villages besieged by Assad’s army. Caesar’s pictures could put Damascus’s abuses centre stage again” Garance le Caisne said. We all have to find Caesar, who shouts inside of us and tells us that the evidence exists for anyone who wants to see.
What follows enforced disappearance is either death in prison or arbitrary arrest, and this is another side of the regime’s terrorism: Anti-terrorism court , which has replaced the well-known Supreme State Security Court. I have seen everything in the court. We were more than one hundred detainees in a small room no larger than 15 square meters waiting participate in the “trial.” The policeman shouted at us, insulted us and beat us using a cable or an electric stick. The judge treated us just like an investigator in one of the Intelligence branches, and always said, “You are liars”, he didn’t allow us to speak. On one occasion we measured the time it took for a hearing. The judge was done with thirty-five of the detainees in only twelve minutes! There was a security agency representative in each of the judges’ rooms. We were able to distinguish one from the investigation branch, known as branch 285, in the General Intelligence Directorate. The anti-terrorism court violates the most basic rules of a fair trial in violation of the regime’s constitution itself.
Each time the regime is accused of carrying out enforced disappearances and torture, it denies them. Here I am in front of you, I was subjected to enforced disappearance three times. The longest was for more than nine months, during which I was tortured and was closed to death on August, 2012. Bassel Khartabil was in the Central Prison of Damascus until October 3, 2015. He used to phone his beloved wife the lawyer Noura Ghazi. On that day, he disappeared from the prison without a trace, and there are great fears for his life, especially he is in front of the Military Court of the field, a secret court that does not accept any inquiry and does not allow lawyers to defend the detainees. 
The regime does whatever it takes to gloss over the issue of enforced disappearances and arbitrary detention in Syria, and to keep it away from the reach of international organizations and parties. The regime left thousands of evidences against it during five years, and continues to deny. In order to maintain its role in the world, the United Nations must take a firm decision to get international observers to visit the regime’s places of detention, which should be done without prior coordination, because we experienced the failure of previous missions which coordinated visits with the regime. The United Nations must act immediately, otherwise it sends a message to the regime to continue committing the crimes of enforced disappearances and torturing to death. It also sends a message to others to commit the same crimes as long as they are far from scrutiny, as happened with the human rights activist Razan Zeitouneh and her companions Samira Khalil, Nazim Hammadi and Wael Hamadeh.
Hussein Ghrer

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http://webtv.un.org/meetings-events/watch/between-prison-and-the-grave-enforced-disappearances-in-syria/4570872188001#full-text