The Illusion of Liberation and the Fate of Political Prisoners in Syria

How Political Change in Syria Reveals the Hollow Promise of Human Rights Rhetoric

In December 2024, as jubilant Syrians stormed the notorious prisons of the fallen Assad regime, many hoped they were witnessing the dawn of justice. Instead, they stumbled into a grim repetition: the same cells once filled with victims of Bashar al-Assad’s tyranny are now overflowing with new detainees—arrested not by Baathist intelligence officers, but by the forces of the new president, Ahmed al-Sharaa. According to a recent Reuters investigation, over 800 people have been detained without formal charges under the new administration, many subjected to the same patterns of arbitrary detention, torture, neglect, and even death that characterized the previous regime.

This is not a story of betrayal alone. It is a cautionary tale about the persistent myth that regime change equates to human rights progress. The identity of the victims may shift—today it’s Alawites, tomorrow Druze, yesterday Sunnis—but the machinery of repression remains disturbingly intact. What changes is not the system, but the label on the jailer’s uniform.

When Assad’s prisons emptied, Syrians believed freedom had arrived. Within weeks, opposition factions turned on former soldiers, civilians with alleged regime ties, and entire communities suspected of disloyalty. By spring, mass arrests targeted Alawites following unrest in the coastal regions. By summer, the dragnet extended to Druze communities in the south. Christians were extorted for information or cash. Shia detainees were accused of links to Iran or Hezbollah. None were granted due process. Many vanished into the same black sites that once symbolized Assad’s cruelty.

The new government justifies these actions as necessary for transitional justice and national security. The Syrian Ministry of Information told Reuters that those detained are “involved in past crimes or pose ongoing threats.” But without transparent legal procedures, independent oversight, or accountability for abuses committed by the new authorities themselves, such justifications ring hollow. Worse, they echo the same rhetoric used by every authoritarian regime to legitimize repression: “We’re cleaning house.”

This cycle reveals a deeper truth about how human rights are wielded in global and domestic politics: not as a moral imperative, but as a weapon of convenience. During Assad’s rule, Western powers and opposition groups amplified human rights violations to delegitimize his government. Now, under al-Sharaa, silence has largely replaced condemnation—because the new regime is politically aligned with those who once championed rights. Human rights, in this calculus, become partisan tools rather than universal principles.

Civil society must awaken to this reality. Basing hopes for justice on a change in leadership is not just naive—it is dangerous. History shows that new rulers often replicate the structures of control they inherited or overthrew, especially when legitimacy is fragile and security narratives dominate. Syria is not unique: from Iraq to Libya, from Egypt to Myanmar, transitions of power have frequently ushered in new waves of repression under different banners.

Human rights advocates—and the communities they aim to protect—must therefore shift focus. Instead of staking their hopes on who holds power, they should anchor their demands in the behavior of power itself. Abuse is abuse, regardless of the flag it flies under. The goal should not be to replace one jailer with another, but to dismantle the architecture of arbitrary detention, torture, and impunity—wherever and whenever it appears.

That means holding all governments to the same standard, not just ideological adversaries. It means supporting local human rights monitors, survivor networks, and legal aid groups that operate independently of political factions. And it means rejecting the comforting lie that liberation arrives with a new president’s inauguration.

In Syria today, the cells are full again. The victims have new names, new sects, new stories—but the silence from those who once shouted for justice is deafening. Civil society must not repeat the mistake of believing that the end of one tyranny is the beginning of freedom. True justice does not begin with a change of government—it begins with an unyielding commitment to human dignity, regardless of who sits in the palace.

   

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