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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Damascus-affiliated security forces have detained 20 civil and political activists from southern Syria's Druze-majority Suwayda province following their participation in a forum organized by an alliance of political groups, a war monitor reported on Sunday.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based war monitor, said that 'the detainees were taken to a security branch, and their fate remains unknown' after attending the Tamasok (Solidarity) forum in Damascus, while en-route to the northern Raqqa province to 'participate in another event.'
Tamasok, also known as the Syrian Equal Citizenship Alliance, was launched in mid-March during a press conference in Damascus. The alliance includes various civil and political entities, among them the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), the political wing of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
'The goal [of the alliance] is to organize society in all political and social aspects and to promote a culture of peace among all Syrian communities,' Afram Ishak, the SDC's deputy co-chair, stated at the time.
The Observatory also reported that Syrian state security forces arbitrarily arrested 'four young men' in the Alawite-majority coastal Latakia province on March 14. '[They] took them to an unknown destination, with no information regarding their fate or the charges pressed against them,' the monitor said.
Damascus has come under heightened domestic and international scrutiny following the government's violent crackdown on an insurgency by Bashar al-Assad loyalists along Syria's west coast in early March. The crackdown left at least 1,700 people dead—mostly civilians—according to the Observatory.
In mid-March, Syria's interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa signed a 53-article constitutional declaration that centers on Islamic jurisprudence, grants unchecked powers to the president, mandates that the president must be Muslim, and outlines a five-year transitional period. It also retains Syria's official name as the Syrian "Arab" Republic.
Sharaa appointed a 23-member transitional cabinet on March 29—without a prime minister—that includes four ministers from Syria's minority communities. The move came more than three months after his Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) forces marched on Damascus and toppled Assad's regime.
Moreover, political parties representing Syria's minority communities were excluded from the appointment process.
The Kurdish-led administration in northeast Syria (Rojava) denounced the newly formed government a day after its announcement, calling it 'exclusionary' and 'failing' to reflect Syria's diversity while emphasizing that it would not recognize or abide by its decisions.
Druze and Christian communities have also expressed deep mistrust toward Damascus and rejected the interim constitution.
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