Almost 128,000 Syrians still captives in Assad regime prisons

Almost 14,000 people have died in Syrian regime prisons since March 2011, when the civil war first erupted, while about 128,000 others still remain in detention, the U.K.-based Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) said in a report released on Monday.

According to the report, a total of 127,916 people are currently in detention, or have been forcibly disappeared, over the same period.

The report also asserts that the PKK and its Syrian affiliate the People's Protection Units (YPG) terrorist organization has carried out "arbitrary arrests and forced disappearances in areas of Syria under its control."

It also notes that at least 2,705 people have been arbitrarily arrested or forcibly disappeared by the so-called "Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)," which is dominated by the YPG.

The SNHR further stated that militant organizations, including the Daesh terrorist group, have detained at least 9,867 people over the same period.

According to the report, regime forces have followed a policy of besieging opposition-held areas, preventing access to food and medicine, resulting in the death of 921 civilians, including 187 women and 398 children, since March 2011.

The Daesh terrorist group, the report points out, has adopted similar policies in the city of Deir el-Zour and at the Yarmouk refugee camp south of Damascus.

The report goes on to claim that 216 chemical-weapon attacks have been carried out by the regime since December 2012, causing the deaths of at least 1,461 people.

According to the SNHR, Syria suffered massive waves of displacement, especially in 2017 and 2018, as a result of military operations carried out by the warring camps or as a result of deals and truces imposed on besieged areas, arrangements, the nongovernmental organization (NGO) says, which violate international humanitarian law.

The opposition sources states Bashar Assad's regime has thrown at least 500,000 people behind

bars since the conflict began in 2011.

Last month, a former inmate who was held in Syrian regime prisons recounted the abuses she and her cellmates suffered while in detention. Speaking to Anadolu Agency (AA), Rana, a Syrian refugee from the western Syrian province of Homs, said she was detained in 2015 by the Syrian regime for allegedly "supporting terrorism and illegally crossing the border."

"My husband and son both died in prison," she said. "I was beaten because I refused to confess to supporting the Syrian [anti-regime] opposition," she added. Following such reports from former prisoners, the international community recently started to break its silence over regime's brutality. The Conscience Movement, an NGO, called on the global community last month to take urgent action to secure the release of women and children languishing in Syrian prisons during an international conference in Istanbul.