(Zaman Al Wasl)- Activists and former detainees have called on the Syrian regime to release the prisoners to protect them against the killer coronavirus pandemic.
Although the regime says it has yet to document any infections, Syria is seen at high risk from the virus.
“We have vulnerable populations in camps, refugees, slum areas at the outskirts of large urban centers,” the World Health Organization’s Syria representative, Nima Saeed Abid, told Reuters.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights recorded that at least 1.2 million Syrian citizens were subjected to arrest and torture, but approximately 147,000 people are still under arbitrary detention or enforced disappearance and torture.
Most of opposition detainees are held in the notorious Sednaya Military Prison in miserable conditions.
Nearly 305,000 people have now been confirmed with the coronavirus globally, and while at least 95,000 people have recovered from COVID-19, more than 13,000 have died, according to data from Johns Hopkins University in the US.
The Syrian regime has banned entry for foreigners arriving from many countries hit by the coronavirus as part of widening measures to combat the epidemic.
Coronavirus infections have also yet to be recorded in the large parts of Syria outside regime control - the east, northeast and northwest.
The rebel-held northwest was already facing a major humanitarian crisis with nearly one million people displaced by fighting in the past few months as the Russain-backed government mounted an offensive.
The entry ban announced overnight by Damascus followed the closure of schools, parks, restaurants and various public institutions. A health hotline is being launched, Health Minister Nizar Yazigi said.
The nine-year-old war has claimed the lives of 390,000 people and forced 13 million people from their homes, half of whom have left their shattered homeland.
Zaman A Wasl
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