A group of civil society organizations in Syria condemned a decision by Syria’s new government to cancel a planned workshop on transitional justice that was to be held in Damascus on Thursday, putting into question the new leadership’s pledge not to continue the decades of repression the Syrian people suffered under the Assad regime.

The workshop, “Implementing Justice in Syria and the Role of International Bodies and Institutions,” was organized by four Syrian civil society organizations: the Syrian Center for Legal Studies and Research, founded in Damascus in 2004 to defend victims of violations and detainees of opinion and conscience in Syria; the Syrian Archive, a local NGO documenting human rights violations in Syria; Al-Share Media organization, founded in 2010; and the Caesar Files for Justice, a nonprofit organization established in 2013 to defend victims of rights violations.

The workshop was to be held on Thursday at the Sheraton hotel in the Syrian capital but was canceled in what the organizations called a “sudden decision” made “without official explanations.”

What happened