International rights group chief says Syria's reforms are promising but democracy is still lacking

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BEIRUT (AP) — The secretary general of Amnesty International said Saturday that the new authorities in Syria have taken steps to show commitment to reform, transitional justice and reconciliation but says democracy is still lacking.

A year after the fall of President Bashar Assad’s government, Agnes Callamard, who visited Damascus this week, said that having legal reform plans before parliament, committees for transitional justice and welcoming international rights groups and other experts were signs that change is happening in Syria.

“All of those things are very good signs but they are not very deep,” Callamard said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Messages left with Syrian officials seeking comment Saturday were not immediately returned.

After the fall of Assad in an offensive led by the Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham of interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, Syria remains unstable. Forces loyal to the government were blamed for taking part this year in sectarian violence against members of the country’s Druze and Alawite minorities in the coastal region and the southern province of Sweida that left hundreds dead.

The state has formed committees to investigate atrocities against Druze in Sweida and the trial of those suspected of involvement in the violence along the coast in March began last week.

Over the past year, scores of Assad-era officials have been detained and are expected to be put on trial in the near future to face charges for human rights violations committed over decades in the Arab country.

Callamard said she was told by Syrian officials, including the minister of justice, that hundreds of detainees are being held in “relation to abuses by the former regime.”

“There is seemingly a process whereby charges will be drafted very soon,” she said, asking what are the grounds for their arrest and who is going to try them. Callamard added that the legal framework needs urgent reform “because some of the most gruesome crimes under international law have not been domesticated.”

Callamard said that she held talks with members of the National Commission on Transitional Justice and the National Commission for the Missing, on the process of collecting evidence from Assad-era prisons, adding that the process is ongoing and “will be a long process and slow.”

She said that unlike Ukraine, where some European countries established teams of experts to support Ukrainian authorities in their investigation into atrocities “nothing like that is happening in Syria. Nothing. So that needs to change.”

“We really need to see the international community doing a bit more of a leap of faith, hearing the cries for change of the Syrian people,” Callamard said. She added that despite lack of movement by international community, several small civil society organizations are the one providing all that kind of evidence in Syria.

“My impression after that very short visit, arguably, is that for the international community, Syria is a problem that must be contained,” she said. “It seems to me that very few countries are prepared to to do the leap of faith into that and frankly.”

“Without that support, I don’t know whether what’s happening right now will be sustainable,” she said.

Last month, Syria held its first parliamentary elections since Assad’s fall but there was no direct popular vote in the elections. Two-thirds of the 210-member assembly seats were elected through province-based electoral colleges, with seats distributed by population, while one-third will be appointed directly by al-Sharaa. The new parliament will serve a 30-month term while preparing for future elections.