The Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) has obtained hundreds of death records issued by the Syrian regime government, showing that the regime recorded hundreds of people who have been forcibly disappeared as “dead.” These people include prominent activists in the popular movement against the regime.
At the beginning of 2022, death records began to reach SNHR for cases that had not been previously disclosed and for which the families had not been notified. Moreover, their families could not obtain those records through the civil registry departments. Those affected include very prominent activists in the popular movement against the Syrian regime, including women and children. SNHR has developed considerable experience checking and assessing the reliability of documents, having worked for several years in reviewing hundreds of new death records.
“We previously considered that the Syrian regime may have registered hundreds of forcible disappearance victims as dead within the civil registry departments and that this practice may have started earlier than in 2018,” said SNHR director Fadel Abdel Ghani. “The Syrian regime revealed this practice at the beginning of 2018, but we did not have enough evidence at that time. Today, what we had previously expected was confirmed when we obtained hundreds of previously undisclosed death records. The families of the deceased did not know that the victim had been registered as dead in the civil registry departments. This is because Syrian regime forces had arrested these people and then forcibly disappeared them. For this reason, nothing was known about their fate. And we fear that murder will be the fate of the remaining tens of thousands of people whom the Syrian regime has forcibly disappeared.”
547 new death records since the start of 2022
SNHR maintains hundreds of death records. From 2018 until the end of 2021, the total number of records amounted to about 1062 records. From the beginning of 2022 until now, SNHR has obtained 547 new death records. These records were neither published by the civil registry departments nor were the victims’ families informed of their deaths. For these reasons, SNHR accuses the Syrian regime of killing 547 Syrian citizens who were forcibly disappeared in its prisons.
The number of forcibly disappeared in the Syrian regime’s detention centers, who were registered as deceased in the civil registry departments, reached 1609 people, including 24 children and 21 women. There were 16 cases of medical practitioners being registered as dead in civil registry departments from the beginning of 2018 until November 2022. In these cases, the cause of death was not mentioned. Moreover, the regime did not hand over the victims’ bodies to their families or even merely inform the families of where their relatives were buried. Indeed, the victim’s death was not announced when it happened. Among those affected are four cases identified through leaked images from military hospitals affiliated with the Syrian regime.
This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
