Can you imagine flexing your right to protest government policies, only to be swept away to a detention center, where government officials brutally abuse you physically and psychologically?

This has become an ugly reality for many citizens of Syria.

The Syrian Government’s mistreatment of their own citizens was brought into the spotlight on this summer when Human Rights Groups accused Syria of using torture methods on their own citizens.

Hundreds of former detainees have offered horrifying accounts of the abuse inflicted upon them while being held in detention centers.

One man recalls being held in a cell no bigger than 50 square meters alongside 120 other captives, with only one toilet for all to share.  While these people waited for questioning, they could hear the screams of their fellow civilians as they went through a torture process that included:

• Taking off the prisoner’s shirt and accusing the prisoner with false claims

• Tying the prisoner’s hands and feet with metal bonding and blindfolding their eyes

• Laying the prisoner on the ground and kicking them until they are severely wounded

• Threatening the prisoner with electrical shock

• Threatening the prisoner’s family

• Beating the prisoner until they admit to false accusations

The former detainees that have made it out of detention centers have sought refuge in nearby Turkey, along with 35,000 other Syrian civilians who fled the country in fear for their lives.

Many of the refugees who received torture believe that they will never be able to return to their homeland.  They have been referred to as the “living dead” because they believe that upon returning to Syria, they would be immediately arrested and put to death by members of their own government.