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The Hague – The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) has notified the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing of the case of Syrian citizen A.F., born in 1970, from M’arba town in rural Daraa governorate.
The violation(s) in question took place between 2012 and mid-2018, where Syrian regime forces and pro-regime militias carried out artillery and air bombardment that caused damage and destruction to a residential property and agricultural property owned by A.F. in his hometown. Syrian regime forces also burnt down the residential property owned by A.F. in October 2012. In addition, since 2015, the Syrian regime government’s Ministry of Finance has imposed a provisional seizure order against A.F.’s transferrable and non-transferrable assets in punishment for his involvement in the popular uprising against the Syrian regime, which began in March 2011, and for his anti-regime activism during the uprising.
As is the norm in such cases, the Syrian authorities have not compensated A.F. and have denied him the freedom to dispose of his transferrable and non-transferrable assets, which were placed under provisional seizure.
Since 2011, the Syrian regime has violated residential properties and civilian facilities as part of a policy that also involved laws deliberately designed by the regime to provide quasi-legal cover for and legitimize the looting, seizure, or destruction of properties. The regime has also been using provisional seizures of transferrable and non-transferrable assets as instruments to generate additional income by seizing and then disposing of these properties, and as a means of punishing dissidents and their families by imposing further legal, social, and economic restrictions on them.