Attacks Escalated after the Sixth Annual Report on Violations by Russian Forces and the Announcement of SNHR’s Holding a High-Level Event on Accountability on the Sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly Meetings
Paris – Statement by the Syrian Network for Human Rights:
I. The Work of the Syrian Network for Human Rights Exposes and Condemns the Perpetrators of Violations in Syria:
For ten years, since its foundation in June 2011, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) has worked to document violations against Syria’s citizens and state. Through years of exhaustive daily documentation, we have accumulated an extensive database of various types of violations, which SNHR analyzes, and on which it publishes daily news bulletins and reports, as well as identifying and exposing the perpetrators, in preparation for holding them accountable and protecting the collective memory from distortion, which contributes to preventing the recurrence of violations, and to advocating for the rights of victims and defending them.
In addition, the SNHR shares primary data with many UN and international bodies, partner international organizations, research centers, and local and international media. All of this has, for years, greatly angered the perpetrators of violations in Syria, who have reacted by attempting to slander and defame SNHR’s reputation and by hurling baseless accusations, assisted by dozens of social media accounts, sites and pages, to such an extent that the Syrian regime even created an organization using the same name – the ‘Syrian Network for Human Rights’ – which it used for its benefit in its effort to cast doubt on SNHR.
Many of the parties in Syria have issued statements of condemnation, slanderous assertions, and accusations against the Syrian Network for Human Rights in response to reports we issued documenting and condemning their violations; none of the parties to the conflict resorted to responding methodically; the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) has issued numerous statements denying the violations we’ve documented, directing a long list of false accusations against us. As for the ISIS terrorist organization, it has sent us a large number of threatening messages since the SNHR was one of the first institutions to issue an expanded report exposing ISIS’ methods and violations.
Since the Russian intervention in Syria began in September 2015, the SNHR has issued a number of reports documenting war crimes committed by Russian forces, which led to our website being subjected to cyber-attacks, as well as attempts to hack our account on the Twitter social networking platform, in addition to regular scathing and slanderous attacks by the Russian Foreign Ministry and pro-Russian media outlets ever since 2015. The number of reports issued by the SNHR on violations committed by Russian forces has now reached 92, all of which are available within a dedicated section on our website.