Human Rights Watch has urged UK foreign secretary David Miliband to use his visit to Syria as a means of raising human rights concerns within the country. In particular, it suggested that Miliband urge the government to release activists arrested for pro-democratic movement as well as release information regarding a violent suppression of a riot at Sednaya prison in July of this year.

Miliband, the first high-level British official to visit the country since Tony Blair held talks with President Bashar al-Asad in 2001, in a speech on 13 November praised Syria for its continued openness in the region and said that he is pressing Syria for more aid in the areas of counterterrorism and peace efforts in the Middle East.

“Syria may be changing its approach to the region, but it still has not changed the way it treats its people,” said Tom Porteous, London director of Human Rights Watch. “Miliband should insist that it improve its human rights record as a condition of warmer relations with the UK and European Union.”

Miliband’s visit to Syria comes at a time of increased repression in the country. On October 29, a Damascus criminal court sentenced a dozen leading democracy advocates to 30 months in prison on charges of “weakening national sentiment” and “spreading false or exaggerated news that would affect the morale of the country.” The authorities had detained the activists, including a former member of parliament, Riad Seif, after they participated in a meeting in December 2007 of the National Council of the Damascus Declaration for Democratic Change, an umbrella group of opposition and pro-democracy groups.

Though Miliband has stated the UK’s interest in promoting human rights and urging for civilian-based democratic human rights reform in repressive states, Human Rights Watch notes that his 13 November speech did not address human rights reform in Syria as one of his objectives for discussion. “The foreign secretary should be true to his words and get behind the ‘civilian surge’ in Syria,” Porteous said.

Human Rights Watch states that, “Syria’s security services continue a system of forced disappearances – detaining people arbitrarily and frequently refusing to disclose their whereabouts for weeks. The Syrian authorities still restrict freedom of expression, and there is no independent press. The government has extended to online outlets restrictions it has traditionally applied to print and televised media, detaining and trying a number of journalists and activists for posting information online.”