As the Syrian revolution turned into a brutal civil war with its people and prisoners becoming pawns in a cruel game with no recognition of human rights, UMAM D&R and the Association of Former Lebanese Political Detainees in Syria (LPDS) felt that further advocacy was needed to prevent an already marginalized group from being utterly forgotten. Indeed, the surviving Lebanese citizens languishing in Syrians cells were already living with the trauma of one civil war and its legacy. Another civil war would only further push them from memory and all but extinguish the flame of hope—hope for both the prisoners and their friends and families. Thus, in December 2013, a previous UMAM D&R photo exhibition was transformed with new data into "Damascus Road: The Plight of Political Detainees in Syria Through Their Portraits" and held in Beirut and Tripoli.

While nothing can be done to negate the fact that hundreds, possibly thousands of Lebanese citizens suffered untold horrors as political prisoners in Syria, many are still presumed to be prisoners there and so activism continues to have an imperative role to play. As part of the Shared Suffering: Exploring the Abyss of Syrian Prisons initiative, photos were collected of Lebanese whose presence in Syrian prisons was based on incontrovertible evidence and included both Lebanese who are likely still incarcerated and those fortunate enough to get released. It is often said that a picture is worth a thousand words, so perhaps the display of so many simple yet poignant portraits would exhort the Lebanese government to take action towards the release of its vanished citizens, or at the very least secure a status update for loved ones back home.

For those that returned, they were asked to provide one sentence about their experience, difficult as it might be to summarize such a traumatic, extreme period in a singular sentence. And for those who never came back, their families were asked to come up with a sentence. The responses varied greatly, reaching great emotional depths and invoking a sense of the magnitutde of the experience. As one returned prisoner said, "We came back from hell..."

This exhibition was made possible thanks to funding from the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (ifa).

As the Syrian revolution turned into a brutal civil war with its people and prisoners becoming pawns in a cruel game with no recognition of human rights, UMAM D&R and the Association of Former Lebanese Political Detainees in Syria (LPDS) felt that further advocacy was needed to prevent an already marginalized group from being utterly forgotten. Indeed, the surviving Lebanese citizens languishing in Syrians cells were already living with the trauma of one civil war and its legacy. Another civil war would only further push them from memory and all but extinguish the flame of hope—hope for both the prisoners and their friends and families. Thus, in December 2013, a previous UMAM D&R photo exhibition was transformed with new data into "Damascus Road: The Plight of Political Detainees in Syria Through Their Portraits" and held in Beirut and Tripoli.

While nothing can be done to negate the fact that hundreds, possibly thousands of Lebanese citizens suffered untold horrors as political prisoners in Syria, many are still presumed to be prisoners there and so activism continues to have an imperative role to play. As part of the Shared Suffering: Exploring the Abyss of Syrian Prisons initiative, photos were collected of Lebanese whose presence in Syrian prisons was based on incontrovertible evidence and included both Lebanese who are likely still incarcerated and those fortunate enough to get released. It is often said that a picture is worth a thousand words, so perhaps the display of so many simple yet poignant portraits would exhort the Lebanese government to take action towards the release of its vanished citizens, or at the very least secure a status update for loved ones back home.

For those that returned, they were asked to provide one sentence about their experience, difficult as it might be to summarize such a traumatic, extreme period in a singular sentence. And for those who never came back, their families were asked to come up with a sentence. The responses varied greatly, reaching great emotional depths and invoking a sense of the magnitutde of the experience. As one returned prisoner said, "We came back from hell..."

This exhibition was made possible thanks to funding from the Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen (ifa).