This torture cannot continue

Detained, tortured and forced to flee for his life: A Syrian human rights defender recounts his experience, and calls for action from the international community to end the violence and ill-treatment against the Syrian people.

By Giorgio

Protesters in England point to an overwhelming silence of the international community on the violence and torture in Syria. Photo by Tim . Simpson from Flickr under Creative Commons

Torture and violence in Syria is reaching unprecedented and gruesome levels. Since the beginning of the popular uprising in March more than 200 people held in custody have lost their lives from torture and severe ill-treatment.

Abdul Karim Rehawi, the head of the Syrian Human Rights League, has survived President Assad’s repression. I spoke with him about his experiences in Syria and his demands for immediate support of the international community to stop the massacre and to claim justice and freedom for all Syrian citizens. We met outside Syria as he was forced to flee with his family due to direct death threats to himself and his immediate relatives.

Mr. Rehawi has campaigned for human rights and supported victims of torture in Syria since the establishment of President Assad’s regime. But during the last decades, he said he has never witnessed such widespread use of torture as he has seen since the beginning of the uprising in March.

In May Mr. Rehawi was arrested and brutally tortured by the men of the Assad’s regime. He was brought to an unknown place of detention in Damascus, blindfolded and handcuffed by iron wire; afterwards he was electrocuted and severely beaten on his hands. He was then hanged by his hands for 10 to 11 hours and beaten and kicked all over his body, during which he lost consciousness three times.

His tortures accused him of talking to the international media about “Syrian affairs”.

After being hanged, he was brought to the floor, where new beatings began and his body dragged, as a floor-wipe, all around the torture chamber. Then his torturers forced their shoes into his mouth, and he lost consciousness again.

During this period no questions were raised to Mr. Rehawi; his torture was only aimed at providing a form of punishment and intimidation.

After less than 48 hours, Mr. Rehawi was brought to a different place of detention in Damascus where more beating began, but this time he was questioned over his human rights work. Eventually he was brought to a detention centre.

Mr. Rehawi’s accounts of the treatment reserved to prisoners are no less violent than the torture he suffered. It is estimated that since March the total number of detainees has gone up from 4,000 to an astonishing 70,000; places of detention are now exploding with people.

Mr. Rehawi was confined in a room of about 22 square metres where, at some point, another 42 detainees were kept with him; the room had little light and no direct access to fresh air. In these conditions, the guards imposed harsh treatments on the detainees, who were forced to stand and face the wall during sudden inspections that were repeated several times during the day and night. Detainees were forced to access the toilettes only if stripped of their clothes and by crawling on the floor; on their way they were beaten. Some prisoners decided to stop or reduce their eating and drinking to avoid the need for toilettes.

Mr. Rehawi shared other stories of protesters being killed after brutal tortures. The corpse of one protester was returned to his family with a stick inserted from his anus and forced out of his body from the shoulder. Another corpse was returned to his family with parts of his body sawed together, as after a surgical intervention, which raised additional fears of organs extracted for trade. One protester was killed by crucifixion.

These are horrific tales. Torture and other horrific stories of ill-treatment continue unabated under the Assad regime, and the international community must take action now.

The international community of states and civil society must denounce the repression led by President Assad. Permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, China and Russia, need to revise taken action. The League of Arab States must underline that the current regime has forfeited its legitimacy and suspend Syria’s membership.

Giorgio supports the IRCT’s programmes in the Middle East North Africa and Asia, including working with the region’s member centres and other institutions to promote a culture for prohibition of torture.

Moving the rehabilitation debate along

By Leanne 

I have been doing human rights work for over two decades now and have been engaged in many debates at various UN forums. Along with this turf comes a pretty hefty amount of cynicism. However, this past week left plenty of room for optimism.

On Tuesday, we co-hosted a UN event on the right to rehabilitation – that torture survivors and their families have, among their fundamental human rights, a right to holistic rehabilitative services, including, but not limited to, medical and psycho-social services and access to justice mechanisms.

The line up at the IRCT and Danish government-sponsored event was impressive. Key actors such as Special Rapporteurs, Committee against Torture and Subcommittee for Prevention of Torture leadership, and a representative of torture survivors – a survivor himself – setting out what they thought about this right. The right to rehabilitation has never been debated in any meaningful way in this sort of forum before. So – with some caution – I think that this week marked a turning point in getting the message out about the need for States and civil society to get busy and to define what the right to rehabilitation means so that torture survivors will get the rehabilitation they need and are due.

There was a sense of a willingness to get to work on the issue of the rehabilitation of torture survivors and maybe even a sense of urgency given the vast unmet need of victims and their families who get no assistance at all having survived torture.

We should be proud of the great strides made in the past couple of decades in defining torture, how to prevent it, and how to hold those who torture to account. But, comparatively little emphasis has been placed by those in the human rights sector to the issue of rehabilitation, and it is now time for robust debate and action.

There are a number of reasons for the lack of action on defining the right to rehabilitation but it is clear that it needs to be defined in a way that States can meaningfully be held accountable to and that takes into account the interdisciplinary nature of rehabilitation. And, torture survivors must be meaningfully engaged in determining what is needed for survivors to rehabilitate.

There will be great resistance to this necessary step forward in a context where States are powerfully motivated to deny that they torture. But, torture survivors voices are emerging along with the voices of those who have quietly sought to assist them through rehabilitation centres around the globe. There is a growing movement that is gathering its evidence and building its ability to make clear claims about what is needed to assist those victims of torture to rehabilitate as part of what is a just outcome to a most serious human rights violation.

Leanne came to the IRCT in July 2011 as Head of Policy and Fundraising

For more information, please see the IRCT’s submission (PDF) to the UN Committee against Torture on survivor’s Right to Rehabilitation.

Rehabilitation of torture survivors: IRCT hosts panel discussion at UN

We are really excited to announce this info:

The rehabilitation of torture survivors and the necessity of rehabilitation in the fight against torture will be the subject of a panel discussion event at the United Nations headquarters in New York, hosted by the IRCT and Permanent Mission of Denmark to the United Nations .

The panel, featuring the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, experts in the field of rehabilitation, and a survivor of torture, will discuss how rehabilitation of torture survivors through holistic treatment is necessary for the prevention of torture.

“The positive impact of rehabilitation efforts is often far-reaching,” said IRCT Secretary-General Brita Sydhoff, who will also speak on the panel. “It goes beyond the impact on the individual to affect communities and society at large and plays a key role in promoting democracy, co-existence, and respect for human rights.”

Read the full story here.

If you are in New York, and have a pass to the UN, you are more than welcome to join. If you don’t have a pass, you can contact us and we can get you on our guest list if given enough time.

Event details:

“Rehabilitation of torture survivors: How holistic treatment can heal the wounds and facilitate justice and prevention”
New York City, USA, UN Headquarters
Tuesday, 18 October 2011, 1:15-2:45 p.m., Conference Room 4 (NLB)

If you aren’t in New York, then follow us on Twitter for our Live Tweet of the event. Leanne, our head of Policy and Fundraising, is there and ready to tweet. And remember, it will be from 1:15-2:45 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, U.S. – New York time is six hours ahead of us in Copenhagen.