The conferences talked a lot at the refugee meeting in Damascus, which ended yesterday, about the safe environment, the regime’s tolerance and comprehensive national reconciliation, in their quest to persuade the international community to take coercive measures against the refugees and return them to the country, given that Syria is living in a state of stability, security and prosperity that helps stimulate investment and reconstruction.
This conference coincided with the Syrian regime’s issuance of a number of amendments to laws, and the issuance of other new laws, and all of these laws and amendments in fact serve to consolidate tyranny and suppress freedoms, justify the crimes of the regime and its allies, and establish the principle of impunity, the last of which were laws to amend a law Penalties, the issuance of the Law on the Prohibition of Torture, and the Cybercrime Law, the most dangerous of which is Law No. 7 of 2022 called the General Amnesty Law. To expose these lies and indicate their danger, the following must be stated:
• The security environment, The Security Services are still carrying out arbitrary arrests and killing under torture and extortion, and Iranian militias, sectarian gangs, and Russian and foreign mercenaries still control large swathes of Syrian lands away from the control of the authority, and their immunity from legal prosecution and their non-subjection to national law according to the bilateral agreements signed by the regime with Russia and Iran.
• Legal environment:
The “Amnesty” Law No. 7 of 2022 is nothing but a major deception, because it was limited and has so far only included “539” people, most of whom are detainees from the security settlements operations, and search radios and arrest warrants “issued by terrorism courts, or from The Security Services are in force and are not covered by the “amnesty” in the first place.
– As well as by excluding persons who are proven to continue to belong to “terrorist organizations or their association with other countries” without specifying those countries or organizations and their type, which could be acquiring foreign citizenship or membership in a local council or humanitarian, relief, human rights, media or medical organizations, or partisan.
And the failure of the dissident military or any other person who is wanted for other crimes associated with the terrorist crimes intended by the “amnesty” law that are not covered by it, which prevent the suspension of prosecution or the dropping of charges, such as “military” crimes, “state security crimes” and “electronic crimes”, and ordinary criminal crimes that may be assigned to the wanted.
– Law on the Prohibition of Torture No. 16 of 2022: This law is the main gateway to impunity and immunization of criminals responsible for crimes of torture by keeping “the system on the text of Article “391” of the General Penal Code, which is the only text criminalizing torture, which is described as a delinquent crime, and enabling impunity through the implementation of stable legal principles that are considered peremptory rules, known as “public order”, which is the principle of the non-applicability of penal laws retroactively, the principle of applying the law that is best for the accused, and the application of the provisions of penal statutes of limitations, which They all end in perpetuating impunity for criminals, given that crimes of torture committed before the effective date of Law No. 16 of 2022 are not covered with its provisions.
– Amendments to the Penal Code: it introduced new crimes with loose words, namely: “the crime of improving the image of a state hostile to prejudice the status of the Syrian state, and the crime of writing or any speech calling on its owner to cut off part of the Syrian land or give it up, and replace the prison sentence with imprisonment.” In the crime of resisting an employee, that is, he changed the criminal description from a misdemeanor to a felony.
– The Electronic Crimes Law: which included “political crimes and crimes against the security of the state.” These crimes are criminal, and the description obligates the imposition of penalties for “legal confinement, civil dispossession, and prevention from exercising civil rights” as original penalties, and it is considered an additional penalty imposed in the rest of the crimes along with the penal penalty in accordance with the provisions of the two articles “49” and “63” of the General Penal Code, the order will open the door for this system to deprive its opponents, or whoever tries, thinks, or attempts to oppose it, of his movable and immovable property, and deprives him of his right to employment, candidacy or vote.
– The other common denominator in these laws is the exorbitant fines and financial penalties that the vast majority of Syrians are unable to achieve, and which confirm that the goal of these legislation is to exhaust the Syrians economically and make it one of the tributaries of supporting the regime’s treasury, in addition to being unfair laws that are not incompatible with the Bill of Human Rights nor with constitutional and legal principles and customs.
• The regime’s insistence and his Russian and Iranian allies to return the refugees, before achieving the demand for the transfer of power in accordance with the relevant UN Security Council resolutions, confirms the criminal nature inherent in it, with which neither rules of discipline nor punishment work, and which confirms that the only solution to get rid of its evils is to eradicate it from the lives of Syrians until the safe and stable environment that all Syrians aspire to return to their homes, restore life and rebuild it, is achieved.