Ahmed al-Sharaa, Syria’s new leader, signed a constitutional declaration regulating its five-year transitional period and laying out rights for women and freedom of expression. Sharaa, taking the lead of the region after Bashar al-Assad’s dictatorship, called the beginning of his government a “new history” for Syria.
Sharaa’s declaration comes just a week after a massive ‘massacre’ in Syria’s Mediterranean in which at least 1,500 civilians were killed by the security forces. Most among the killed were Alawite minority to which the Assad family belongs.
The interim president of Syria said on Thursday (March 13) that he hoped the declaration would mark the beginning of “a new history for Syria, where we replace oppression with justice … and suffering with mercy”.
The declaration has mentioned the five years of transitional period in which a “transitional justice commission” would be formed to “determine the means for accountability, establish the facts, and provide justice to victims and survivors” of the former government’s misdeeds.
The document further said that “the glorification of the former Assad regime and its symbols” is barred in the Syria from now on along with “denying, praising, justifying or downplaying its crimes”.