Syria: Human Rights Watch Urges Public Rebuke of Syria’s Human Rights Violations

Human Rights Watch (HRW) released a statement yesterday urging leaders of Western countries – specifically Catherine Ashton, the EU foreign relations chief, who will meet with Syrian officials next week – to hold Syria accountable for their repeated human rights transgressions.

“Talking to Syria without putting its rights record on the table emboldens the government to believe that it can do whatever it wants to its people, without consequences,” said HRW’s Middle East director Sarah Whitson. “A message to Syria that says, ‘We only care about your external affairs’ is a green light for repression.” HRW notes that Syria has welcomed a steady stream of high profile Western officials in the past three months, including U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs William Burns and French Prime Minister Francois Fillon, neither of whom condemned the country’s record of unlawful detentions and harassments.

Gregg Carlstrom believes that “the Syrian case illustrates why it’s bad policy to downplay human rights concerns in the interest of securing a government’s ‘cooperation,’” arguing that since Burns’ unproductive visit was essentially “a wash,” he had nothing to lose by expressing US displeasure with Syria’s human rights record.