ERBIL, Kurdistan Region –The Syrian regime admitted to the death of 836 forcibly-disappeared Syrians under its authority with thousands more killed under torture, according to a report released by the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) on Monday.

The SNHR has been “recording arrest cases, resultant enforced-disappearance cases, and released cases since 2011.”

“According to the accumulated database, 127,593 Syrian citizens are still detained by the Syrian regime, including 81,652 citizens who have become forcibly-disappeared between March 2011 and August 2018,” according to SNHR data.

Around 14,000 detainees died under torture during this period.

The report noted that the regime deliberately omitted the fate of tens of thousands of those arrested since the civil war began in 2011 to punish family members for the uprising against the government.

In May of this year, the Syrian government began revealing the fate of the 836 forcibly-disappeared citizens, even tampering with their official civil records declaring them dead.

No cause of death or details on when it occurred was revealed in the report and bodies were not returned to families.

Questions remain as to why the Syrian government chose to release the figures at this time.

“It is difficult to tell for sure what the Syrian regime’s goal is, but I think there are two possible answers – the first is that the Russians were the ones who told the Syrian regime to do that in order to end this issue that has become a hurdle in the way of wrapping up the Syrian catastrophe,” said Fadel Abdul Ghany, chairman of SNHR.

“The second one is that the Syrian regime wants to show that he [Bashar al-Assad] has achieved victory on the ground, and all that is left to do is to end the detainees issue so residents and society can go back under its submission accepting the fact that this is their only choice.”

The Syrian conflict broke out in 2011. The UN estimates 400,000 people have died and half of all Syrians have been displaced at one time or another through the conflict. A UN-backed process in Vienna and the Astana talks have failed to bring an end to the bloodshed.

“As defenders of human rights, we have to question the purpose of the Security Council, the OHCHR, and the international law in light of all of this,” Ghany said.

Rudaw