Families of those still detained or disappeared in Syria held photos of their loved ones today as part of Syrian artist Khaled Dawwa’s performance protest outside the UN Headquarters in Geneva. He broke up his three-metre tall sculpture of a dictator ‘the King of Holes’ piece by piece as family members surrounded the decaying figure.
Members of the public watched as families of those held in Assad’s prisons wrote messages to their loved ones onto the sculpture. The performance protest marks International Day of the Disappeared and reminds the world that nearly 157,000 people have been arbitrarily detained or forcibly disappeared in Syria.
The art performance was centred around the destruction of the statue, which Dawwa said, shows the fragility of the Assad regime and all systems built on injustices, violence, and oppression. It should serve as a reminder that the prosecution of the regime and the release of all disappeared people must be the foundation of any political peace process in Syria, he said.
Members of the the Truth and Justice Charter, a coalition of survivors and families of detainees, joined Dawwa in his call to the UN to do more to save Syria’s disappeared. The International Institution for Missing Persons in Syria (IIMP) was set up by the UN one year ago when a majority of UN member states voted to help families find answers about their loved ones. However, today, they demanded that the institute urgently start work with full independence and be granted immediate access to all detention facilities in Syria.
Mariam Hallak, co-founder of the Caesar Families Association said:
“I am here to raise my voice loudly and demand an end to enforced disappearance in Syria so that my children and grandchildren do not live through what I and so many people in Syria have lived through. Enforced disappearance is the most powerful weapon that the Syrian regime and others are using to silence the revolution and any movement seeking freedom and dignity.
Today shows that our voice will remain loud, until the release of the last detainee and forcibly disappeared person.”
Artist Khaled Dawwa said: “Like many Syrians, I have firsthand experience of the Assad regime’s brutality. This work portrays the true face of the dictator — a decaying, isolated figure, fragile and weak. Very unlike the monuments and statues that occupy public squares in Syria of a dominant dictator.
“There is hardly any home in Syria in which one of its members has not experienced detention. The suffering of families and people who remain in detention is an inhumane situation that cannot be ignored.
“This work went through different stages, starting from its display in Paris and reaching Normandy, but the idea was always to dismantle it in the end. However, it remains difficult for me to end the life of a work that has lived for more than three years, displayed in public places, where people have interacted with it in different ways. Destroying this work is possible for me now because of the significance this holds for the families of detainees here today.”
The Syria Campaign is calling on people to write to their UN representative to urge them to expedite the search for people who are arbitrarily detained and forcibly disappeared in Syria.
ENDS