More than 730 inmates inside Hama Central Prison have staged a hunger strike on Tuesday. They are protesting inhumane conditions and demanding immediate release as well as sending a message to the international community which has done nothing to put pressure on the Assad regime to release them.
A police officer said that “around 730 prisoners have not eaten since Tuesday. The prison administration has failed to dissuade them from their decision.”
The Assad regime has detained 10,000s of Syrians since the outbreak of the revolution in March 2011, including many human rights activist and academics, including Professor Faten Rajab and Dr. Rania Abbasi along with her husband Abdul Rahman Yasin and their six children. Their fate is still unknown.
Spokesman for the Syrian Coalition Salem al-Meslet calls on the UN Security Council to put pressure on the Assad regime to implement the Un resolution 2139 urging the release of all detainees in Syria. He also calls on as the International Red Cross’s mission to organize visits to detention centers to check on the safety of detainees and report on their status.
Meslet stresses that the file of detainees in Assad’s secret prisons is a top priority for the Syrian Coalition, adding that “we constantly raise the issue of the detainees in all our meetings with Arab, international and UN officials and call upon them to exercise pressure on the Assad regime to release the detainees and alleviate their suffering. “No-one must forget the role of activists who have been detained by Assad’s security forces, and that almost every Syrian person has a brother, a friend or relative who is waiting a bleak fate in Assad’s secret prisons.” (Source: Syrian Coalition + Al Arabiya)
