Survivors of torture recall trauma of harrowing abuse
Rape, electrocution and other violent forms of abuse continue to haunt thousands of survivors, as the world marked International Day in Support of Victims of Torture yesterday.
Doctors Without Borders (MSF) has treated more than 3,000 survivors since January last year, a spokesperson told The National.
Detainees from Syrian regime prisons say they experienced torment and abuse – banned under international law – on a daily basis.
United Nations war crime investigators discovered in March that Syrian government forces and allied militias have raped and sexually assaulted women, girls and men in their campaign to punish opposition groups.
MSF has treated up to 1,000 patients this spring, many of them migrants and asylum seekers from Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan.
The victims suffer shame, depression, incontinence, impotence and miscarriages, as well as rejection by their families.
Layla said she suffered abuse from the age of 14. She said she “should have been broken like every little girl suffering from violence”, but she is resilient.
She was detained, along with her husband, during her pregnancy.
“They brought my husband and started raping him in front of me,” she said in a testimony provided to The National by MSF. “Then they raped me in front of him. It was a turning point in our lives.”
The acts are war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Layla gave birth in prison, lost her husband and found out that her other children were abused in custody.
“I could hear the screams of my little boy as they were raping him, but I couldn’t find my girls. They had tied their mouths so they couldn’t scream.”
The UN’s independent investigators have compiled confidential lists of suspects since 2011. They did not name the perpetrators but said they had recorded a number of rape cases by high-level officers.
Layla managed to escape from the prison, only to fall into the hands of smugglers, who instead of assisting her then sexually abused her and “poured a white chemical [over her] … that was extremely painful”, she said.
Layla is now being treated in a MSF centre for torture victims.
“Some of our patients have been detained in state prisons, and sexually abused.
“Some have been left hanging for days in small, confined spaces. Some have been electrocuted on all parts of their body,” said MSF.
Torture was more than a physical health issue, the agency said.
“Torture should be regarded as a sociological and anthropological issue that has consequences on physical health. It creates visible and invisible wounds,” said Gianfranco De Maio, MSF medical referent for victims of torture programmes.
Abdul Rahman, a law student at Aleppo University, fled Syria after being detained and tortured, first by the regime and later by ISIS. “We were about 60 people in a two-by-two-metre room,” he said.
“They would hang us with one arm and one leg, and prop us up with another object. Then they would put chlorine on our legs and pierce them with needles.”
Torture victims can experience a disconnection from their body, emotions and identity, MSF said.
For Mr Rahman, finding help has given him the opportunity to start over again and to “feel like a human”.
But, he says, his dreams have been shattered.
“I am in a European country, I thought, which means I should have rights; we were told that Europe is the land of rights. But I haven’t seen any of that,” he said.
“We’re only papers here; when my papers are ready, I can move, but until then, they don’t care at all.”
Torture victims can experience disconnection from their physical body, emotions and identity