6. Syria
Points: 5
Areas of human rights violation as identified by HRW: government attacks on civilians; indiscriminate use of weapons; arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, torture, deaths in custody by government forces; Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS abuses; abuses by other non-state armed groups; areas under Kurdish rule; displacement crisis.
War
As said before, this ranking is based on latest available data for 2011. Since then Syria faced one of deadliest conflicts whose death toll reached 250,000 people by October 2015, including more than 100,000 civilians. Additionally, 7.6 million people are internally displaced, while 4.2 million Syrians fled the country.
During last few weeks world was left in shock after pictures from Madaya, a town besieged by pro-Asad forces, reached medias. Pictures of emaciated children and human skeletons were posted on the Internet by town residents who have been feeding on cats and grass to survive. Doctors Without Borders claim that 23 people died of hunger since December. Those who tried to leave Madaya were killed by Asad soldiers or mines.
Although United Nation’s convoys with aid reached the town, UN warns that there are more areas where people need immediate help. Last year Syrian government allowed UN to distribute aid only to a small number of towns – of all requests for aid distribution made by UN, only 10 percent were granted.
Torture
The government used crises to imprison thousands of people, including women and children, and locked them in notorious detention centers run by state’s secret agency. Inconceivable dimensions of torture in jails became known after a former military photographer who worked for the government, known as Caesar, smuggled flash drives with pictures of death bodies.
Prosecutors who examined photographs claim that they provide evidence for systematic killings of 11,000 detainees. In the interview for Guardian, Caesar revealed what he had been seeing daily from 2011 to 2013. “Before the uprising, the regime tortured prisoners to get information; now they were torturing to kill. I saw marks left by burning candles, and once the round mark of a stove – the sort you use to heat tea – that had burned someone’s face and hair. Some people had deep cuts, some had their eyes gouged out, their teeth broken, you could see traces of lashes with those cables you use to start cars.”
Government and ISIS attacks on civilians
Civilians in Syria are under constant threat from all sides involved in the conflict. Although Syrian government obliged not to use chemical weapons in 2014, HRW 2016 reports that toxic chemicals were present in several barrel bomb attacks during 2015. In addition, airstrikes targeted markets, schools, and hospitals, places with a large number of civilians. In August last year, at least 122 people were killed in the bombing of Douma’s popular markets and residential areas. HRW 2016 reports that one local group estimated that by February 22, 2015, aerial barrel bomb attacks had killed 6,163 civilians in Syria, including 1,892 children.
Extremist forces, ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra, show equal cruelty. Use of cluster munitions, mass executions, including killings of children, abduction, sexual slavery, rape are only some of atrocities that extremists committed. Residents of areas seized by ISIS live in a constant terror, as extremists impose severe punishment for what they perceive as religiously offensive. Lack of money, jobs, medical care and constant bombing make things worse.
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