Stop Enforced Disappearances
Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression-SCM
July 19th 203 – On 18th 2013, the forces of the Syrian regime arrested the Syrian artist, Yousef Abdulki(born in Qamishli, 1951) along with Adnan Addibis and TawfikOmran, at the checkpoint of the coastal city of Tartus, which is supervised by members of political security forces,no information about the reasons of the arrest yet.
Abdulki has been arrested in the late ’70s (1978-1980) during the reign of the late Hafez al-Alasad, because he was a member of the Communist Labour Party, he left for France after he was released, and stayed there for a quarter of a century when he came back in 2005.
Academic merits:
Fine Arts license from Damascus University, 1976
Diploma of Carving from the Higher National School of Fine Arts in Paris 1986.
Doctorate from the Eighth University of Paris 1989.
Abdulki is one of the most famous carving artists in the Arab world.
He was one of the first Syrian artists who expressed clearly their solidarity with the revolutionary movement in Syria, stressing the importance of keeping it peaceful and refusing militarizing it.
SCM calls upon the concerned authorities to immediately disclose the fats of the artist Abdulki and his two colleagues, and we hold them responsible for their safety.
We call upon the Syrian government to stop the policy of enforced disappearance as a terrorizing and punitive tool against the peaceful and humanist activists and the defenders of freedom of expression and opinion, and against all those who try to practice their constitutional rights of freedom of opinion and expression, when several peaceful and humanist activists and intellectuals were subjected to enforced disappearance especially in the last year, like the human rights lawyer Khlil Matouk(53 years old) who was arrested on Nov 2nd 2012with lungs of which 60% is disrupted because of fibrosis, he is in real need for close and permanent medical care, he needs special drugs to be taken in an accurate and regular way, andhe is one of the leading lawyers in the nineties who worked in defending prisoners of conscience and political prisoners, and the political activist Doctor Abdul Aziz Alkhaiyer(born in Qirdaha 1951) and he was a member of General Secretariat of the National Coordination Body for Democratic Change in Syria – NCB, who was arrested on Sep 21st 2012 along with his two colleagues, Maher Attahan and IyasAyash while they were getting out of international airport of Damascus, and there is no information about them yet.
Enforced disappearance violates the following rights:
The right to safety and dignity
The right of not to be tortured or subjected to any other kind of inhumane, violent or humiliating treating or punishment.
The right to be prisoned under human circumstances.
The right to know and the personal and legal follow up and the right of fair trial, and last but not least the right to live, if he was killed, so enforced disappearance is a crime according to the international law.
On 20th December theUnited Nations General Assembly passed the Resolution 61/177 concerning (the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearances), in its preamble, it says : (The States Parties to this Convention, aware of the extreme seriousness of enforced disappearance, which constitutesa crime and, in certain circumstances defined in international law, a crime againsthumanity,determined to prevent enforced disappearances and to combat impunity for thecrime of enforced disappearance, Considering the right of any person not to be subjected to enforceddisappearance, the right of victims to justice and to reparation,The Convention entered into force after four years as adopted by only 29 countries out of 88 countries signed. Knowing that the file of missing and disappeared in Syria is one of the largest files globally as it extends back decades to include missing after “the events of Hama 1982” with estimation ofmore than 17 thousand missing.
