Human rights in Ba'athist Syria

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Human rights in Ba'athist Syria were effectively non-existent. The government's human rights record was considered one of the worst in the world. As a result, Ba'athist Syria was globally condemned by prominent international organizations, including the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International,^[1][2][3] and the European Union.^[4] Civil liberties, political rights, freedom of speech and assembly were severely restricted under the neo-Ba'athist government of Bashar al-Assad, which was regarded as "one of the world's most repressive regimes".^[5][6] The 50th edition of Freedom in the World, the annual report published by Freedom House since 1973, designated Syria as "Worst of the Worst" among the "Not Free" countries. The report listed Syria as one of the two countries to get the lowest possible score (1/100).^[7][8]

The 1963 coup d'état by the Military Committee of the Syrian Ba'ath party propelled the neo-Ba'athists into power, allowing them to establish a totalitarian state in Syria. Following a period of intra-party power-struggles that culminated in the 1970 coup, General Hafez al-Assad became the Syrian President; establishing a hereditary dictatorship of the Assad family. During the six decades of its rule, the security apparatus banned all social, political and economic groups independent of the Ba'ath party or the regime; ensuring that the state had total monopoly over all forms of organizations.^[9] A state of emergency was in effect from 1963 until April 2011, giving security forces sweeping powers of arbitrary arrests and detentions of civilians; including prisoners of conscience.^[3] From 1973 to 2012, Syria was a single-party state. While the 2012 Syrian constitution nominally affirmed the formation of political parties; registration process in practice was difficult and thoroughly scrutinized by the regime. Political activities independent of the Ba'ath were discouraged in regime-controlled territories and strictly monitored by the Mukhabarat.^[10]

There was no independent judiciary, as it was mandatory for all judges and prosecutors to be approved members of the Ba'ath party. The Ba'athist military forces had the power to arbitrarily arrest civilians and put them to trial.^[11] The authorities have been accused of harassing and imprisoning human rights activists and other critics of the government.^[12] Freedom of expression, association and assembly were strictly controlled, and ethnic minorities faced discrimination.^[3][12] Throughout the decades-long reign of Assad dynasty between 1970 and 2011; over 70,000 Syrians were subjected to forced disappearances, more than 40,000 were executed through extrajudicial killings and hundreds of thousands of civilians became displaced through deportations.^[13]

After an initial period of economic liberalization that failed to improve human rights in the early 2000s,^[14] Bashar al-Assad launched a string of crackdowns that imprisoned numerous intellectuals and cultural activists; thereby ending the Damascus Spring.^[15] At the onset of the Arab Spring in 2011, the country's human rights situation remained among the worst in the world; characterized by arbitrary arrests, mass surveillance by the dreaded secret police and systematic repression of ethnic minorities, such as the Kurds.^[16] The government was guilty of crimes against humanity based on witness accounts of deaths in custody^[17] including extrajudicial executions,^[a] torture,^[b] rape,^[c] arbitrary detentions, ethnic cleansing, genocides, massacres, state terrorism and forced disappearances^[30] during the crackdown against the 2011 Syrian Revolution and the ensuing Civil War.^[31] The government had also conducted numerous chemical attacks against its own civilians.^[d]

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