Immediately, with the backing of the UN, a type of former detainees, Syrian human rights defender Riyad Avlar, is working to search out out what occurred to those that didn’t make it out – and searching for justice for the disappeared.
He recollects one mom’s shocked response when he advised her that her son had died in detention: “I settle for this, however I’ve not misplaced hope. In the future, my son will stroll in and meet you right here.”
Her phrases replicate the resilience of households who proceed to hunt reality and justice after years of uncertainty, insists Riyad, who was imprisoned for greater than twenty years after being arrested in 1996 aged 19.
Documenting absence, preserving reality
For Riyad, his battle for justice didn’t finish together with his launch in 2017.
Earlier than his appointment to the UN Unbiased Establishment on Lacking Individuals in Syria’s first Advisory Board, Riyad channelled his expertise into supporting survivors of detention and their households by the Affiliation of Detainees and the Lacking of Sednaya Jail (ADMSP).
The affiliation’s founders embody former detainees like Riyad and have change into a vital supply of documentation, help and advocacy.
“Our mission,” he explains, “is to empower survivors and the households of the disappeared to be central actors in transitional justice, accountability and reparations in Syria.”
Since its institution, ADMSP has created two databases: the primary information testimonies from survivors of Sednaya and, since 2021, from detention centres throughout Syria.
These testimonies establish perpetrators of abuse, final sightings of detainees and patterns of violations. The second database collects info from households trying to find family members, typically offering them with the primary dependable affirmation of what occurred.
Cages through which prisoners have been apparently held are pictured on the notorious Sednaya jail in Damascus.
A do-no-harm method
“Each interview is performed face-to-face, with cautious consideration to keep away from re-traumatisation,” Riyad explains. Alongside documentation, the affiliation runs a centre providing psychotherapy, physiotherapy and group remedy for survivors and households dealing with the trauma of disappearance. It additionally shields households from being extorted by people promoting lies concerning the destiny of their disappeared kin by serving to them to test what they’ve been advised.
Fixed concern of execution
Riyad’s dramatic story started when he left his rural village in Turkey to pursue his research in Syria. Arrested in 1996 by the Assad regime and never even 20 years outdated, he was then held incommunicado for 15 years. His household solely discovered he was alive because of the intervention of a good friend’s mom.
Throughout his detention, Riyad endured solitary confinement, torture and near-total isolation. “I noticed my brother twice, for quarter-hour every, in additional than twenty years,” he recollects. “After I was launched, my mom simply held me and breathed me in; she wished to recollect the scent of her son. Later, when my son was a 12 months and a half outdated, I lastly understood why my mom clung to me like that.”
Denied a good trial and charged with fabricated accusations, Riyad lived in fixed concern of execution. These experiences, he says, are what drive him to make sure that survivors’ voices form the pursuit of accountability and justice.
Everybody suffers in their very own method
Along with the horrors meted out to Syria’s disappeared, one other frequent denominator is the anguish that torments their households. Moms stay for years with out solutions, whereas wives and kids face stigma, harassment and exile, Riyad explains.
“Each member of the family suffers in a different way,” he says. “However what unites them is the suitable to know.”
Riyad Avlar was detained for 21 years. Throughout his detention in Syria’s Assad regime prisons, Riyad endured solitary confinement, torture and near-total isolation.
A world mandate for justice
Immediately, Riyad serves on the Advisory Board of the Unbiased Establishment on Lacking Individuals in Syria, established in 2023 by the UN Basic Meeting to deal with one of many battle’s most painful legacies.
Chosen from greater than 250 candidates, the 11-member board contains representatives of victims’ households, Syrian civil society and worldwide specialists. It’s mandated to make clear the destiny of the lacking, help households and contribute to accountability.
In keeping with the NGO Syrian Community for Human Rights, a minimum of 181,312 people stay arbitrarily detained or forcibly disappeared, together with 5,332 kids and 9,201 ladies.
“The duty is immense,” Riyad tells UN Information, from his dwelling in Turkïye. “However with cooperation between Syrian organizations and the worldwide neighborhood, the establishment can set up clear protocols for notification, psychological help and recognition of the disappeared.”
A heavy duty
To survivors of detention, Riyad sends a message of solidarity: “We should elevate our voices and demand justice – not revenge – however accountability and reparations. We’re alive, and that may be a duty.”
His message can be one among survival. “After I was arrested, the telephones have been the outdated push-button ones. And once I acquired out, I noticed telephones you simply contact together with your finger…Life had modified a lot, I used to be shocked. The village I had left behind was very underdeveloped, however now they’d paved roads, individuals had vehicles; there have been water faucets inside the homes, even a sewage system.
“Little by little, I tailored. I made a decision I needed to transfer ahead, as a result of after such a protracted absence – 20 years – it was as if somebody had frozen me in a freezer after which abruptly, I used to be launched right into a science fiction film.”
He stresses that households of the lacking mustn’t ever be left with out solutions, and each Syrian household has the suitable to know the destiny of their family members, to put them to relaxation with dignity and to start the method of therapeutic.
And if reality is the cornerstone of Syria’s future, so too is transitional justice, Riyad maintains, with survivors and households enjoying a central function in shaping what comes subsequent.
