DAMASCUS (AFP) – Families of missing persons have urged Syria’s new authorities to protect evidence of crimes under president Bashar al-Assad, after outrage over volunteers painting over etchings on walls inside a former jail.
Thousands poured out of prisons after rebels toppled Assad last month, but many Syrians are still looking for traces of tens of thousands of relatives and friends who went missing.
In the chaos following his ouster, with journalists and families rushing to detention centres, official documents have been left unprotected, with some even looted or destroyed.
Rights groups have stressed the urgent need to preserve “evidence of atrocities”, which includes writings left by detainees on the walls of their cells.
But a video appearing to show young volunteers paint over such writings at an unnamed detention centre with white paint and adorning its walls with the new Syrian flag, the depiction of a fireplace or broken chains has circulated on social media in recent days, angering activists. “Painting the walls of security branches is disgraceful, especially before the start of new investigations into human rights violations” there, said co-founder of Association of Detainees and Missing Persons of Saydnaya Prison (ADMSP) Diab Serriya.
It is “an attempt to destroy the signs of torture or enforced disappearance and hampers efforts to… gather evidence,” he said.
Jomana Hasan Shtiwy, a Syrian held in three different facilities under Assad, often changing cells, said the writings on the walls held invaluable information.
“On the walls are names and telephone numbers to contact relatives and inform them about the fate of their children,” she said on Facebook.
In each new cell, “we would write a memory so that those who followed could remember us,” she said.
A petition appeared on Tuesday calling for the new Syrian authorities to better protect evidence, and give investigating the fate of those forcibly disappeared under Assad “the highest priority”.
It slammed what it called “the insensitive treatment of the sanctity” of former detention centres.
