The Gulf Centre for Human Rights (GCHR) is extremely concerned about threats against Syrian woman human rights defender Hiba Ezzideen Al-Hajii and her family, following her social media posts about disappeared women. Her organisation Equity and Empowerment, located in Idlib, has also been threatened and its Facebook page used as a platform to attack it.

Al-Hajji is the co-founder and CEO of Equity and Empowerment, a women-led organisation which works on gender equality, focusing on digital security, economic and political empowerment. She is also the Chairperson of the Board of Directors in Shan network for peace building.

Al-Hajji uses her Facebook page to express her opinions and advocate for women’s civil and human rights in Syria.

On 20 April 2025, Al-Hajji published a Facebook post addressing the serious issue of abducted women and forced marriage, and the absence of accountability surrounding these cases. In that post, she called for investigations and justice for women who have been forcibly disappeared. She was falsely accused of using the terms “female slaves” or “concubines”, as well as “slave markets”. These false accusations deliberately distorted her words, created to provoke outrage and justify attacks against her and her work.

Shortly after her post, a coordinated defamation campaign was launched against her by individuals affiliated with the current authorities and anonymous online actors. They took her words out of context and twisted them to suggest that she had insulted Islam and traditional values. They resurfaced an old video in which she had simply explained that women inside all-female spaces at the organisation are not required to wear a khimar (face veil), and weaponised it to inflame public sentiment.

The situation escalated quickly from harassment to incitement to violence, endangering Al-Hajji, her family and her staff. Her Facebook messaging was flooded with death threats, and online posts began inciting people to attack the Equity and Empowerment centre in Idlib, to burn it down, and to kill Al-Hajji.

In response to the defamation campaign and false claims, on 22 April 2025, the police shut down the centre, and the governor publicly announced on Facebook that he had asked the public prosecutor to open a case against Al-Hajji for “insulting the hijab” (headscarf), which she didn’t refer to at all in her video. The case was subsequently opened and she is now subject to legal proceedings.

Worse still for Al-Hajji, she says, was that she was falsely accused of being an agent of the Assad government, despite her long and well-documented history of standing against its crimes and defending the rights of the Syrian people. She said about that, “This accusation is not only insulting – it is a dangerous erasure of my activism and principles.”

This attack on Al-Hajji is part of a larger pattern to politicise human rights advocacy, including Al-Hajji’s call for justice for abducted women, and other calls for transitional justice. She also said, “When defending abducted women is treated as treason, when calls for justice are framed as attacks on religion, it becomes clear that human rights in this context are not protected values – they are tools of political convenience. They are supported when they serve power, and punished when they challenge it.”

Al-Hajji said in statements to GCHR, “I speak out for justice and the protection of human rights. Misrepresenting my words and intentions will not silence me. I will continue to defend truth, dignity, and the rights of every individual, regardless of the false narratives created to undermine this work.”

The threats and attacks are being provoked by a mob mentality designed to silence the truth and stop human rights defenders from working.

GCHR has previously reported that Al-Hajji and her organisation have been the target of death threats and attacks in the past. A vicious campaign against her began on 04 July 2023 on anonymous Facebook pages that targeted her personally with obscene language because of her call to end discrimination against women, and these defamation campaigns escalated and spread on Telegram and WhatsApp.

Recommendations

GCHR calls on the authorities, particularly the governor and public prosecutor in Idlib, to withdraw the case against Hiba Al-Hajji. Instead, the Syrian Authorities should conduct an immediate and impartial investigation into the defamation campaign and online incitement to violence, and to offer protection to woman human rights defender Hiba Al-Hajii, her family and the Equity and Empowerment centre.