The true legacy of torture - stories of three survivors

23rd June 2008

Torturers would rather the voices of their victims remained unheard. Used as a weapon of oppression, fear and repressive control, torture claims the lives of thousands of people across the globe.

Recounting the personal testimonies of those who manage to survive is a vital step in countering the damage inflicted by torturing regimes that would prefer to remain unaccountable.

Here, to mark UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, on June 26 2008, we urge you to read the stories of three MF clients who escaped the brutality of their persecutors.

Each torture survivor's experience is unique, yet each represents the true legacy of torture today.

  

Living in exile and longing for home

[asset|aid=238|format=mp3player|formatter=asset_bonus|title=Survivor interview|width=290|height=24|align=none]
Listen to Abdolah tell his story

Being granted refugee status is by no means the end of a torture survivor's struggle. As people exiled from the homelands by circumstance rather than choice, victims of persecition who were also forced to witness the suffering of those closest to them can feel a constant sense of isolation.

In striving to formulate a new identity in the UK, Abdolah is constantly reminded of what he lost when he escaped the Iranian province of Ahwaz: "I am living in the UK, but in my heart and in my mind I live in my country."

Abdolah, now aged 24, had to leave Ahwaz midway through his university education over three years ago. Growing up, he was always aware of the ethnic Ahwazi Arabs' struggle against social and economic marginalisation.

He watched as families were expelled from their farmland and as the authorities destroyed their homes when they refused to leave. Poverty was commonplace, with those who could afford an education often forced to study in Farsi, not Arabic, a language they did not understand and which then hindered their efforts to find work.

In 2005, Abdolah participated in a series of mass protests known to the Ahwazi Arabs as the 'Ahwazi intifada', sparked by revelations that the Iranian regime was planning a land confiscation programme in which Arabs would be forcibly displaced from Ahwaz to other regions of Iran.

Violent clashes between protestors and the security forces and a series of subsequent bomb blasts led to hundreds being killed, with scores more injured and detained.

Abdolah was one of several to be accused of plotting against the government. He was detained by security forces for four weeks, during which time he was confined to a solitary cell, where he would hear the sounds of other prisoners being tortured; a memory that haunts him still. The only time he saw outside of his four walls was when the guards would drag him to another room to be tortured.

He was released when the authorities admitted there was no evidence with which to prosecute him. Abdolah later discovered that the family home had been raided during his detention and that his uncle had been killed running from security agents.

After Abdolah fled Ahwaz, his family continued to be hounded by the authorities. Since being in the UK, he has also since learned a number of his friends have been detained, tortured and executed.

"Every time I hear about the suffering of the Ahwazi people I feel sad and depressed because I cannot help them. I have tried to kill myself because of the anxiety. I cannot even see my family because they are prevented from leaving Ahwaz and while I can speak with them sometimes, it is dangerous for them to have contact with me."

Abdolah still participates in protests outside the British and Iranian embassies in his ongoing bid to highlight the plight of the Ahwazi people, but he feels frustrated by the wall of silence that means events in his country go relatively unnoticed.

"Every ethnic group in the world wants freedom and justice for their people, freedom from cruelty. I had hoped to work, to serve my people and my country, but there are a lot of obstacles in the way."

  

Tortured at home, not believed in the UK

Claiming the protection which should be afforded to refugees fleeing torture and persecution is a journey often fraught with difficulty. The UK asylum process has been condemned as inhumane, oppressive and unfit for purpose by the Independent Asylum Commission, midway through the UK's largest independent survey of the practices and procedures employed by Government agencies. More often than not, the lives of torture survivors, already marred by unimaginable horror, are reduced to statistics of refused asylum claims.

'Sudarini' has been battling Home Office rejections for more than two years. During that time, she has retold and relived the circumstances that wrenched her from her family in war-torn Sri Lanka. Despite incontestable documentation from the MF of the injuries she sustained under torture, and against a backdrop of widespread NGO and media reports of the 30-year conflict that continues to grip her country, she is still fighting to be believed.

As Tamils growing up in Trincomalee, an area under Sri Lankan Army control, several members of Sudarini's community had supported the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in their quest for an independent state. Sudarini had no direct connections with the LTTE but became a target for the Sri Lankan Army when it was discovered that her husband had been storing arms for the group.

Shortly after, her husband was murdered, his badly tortured body discovered at the roadside. Suspecting that the police were responsible for his death, Sudarani remained distrustful when officers would call at her home in the middle of the night, demanding information about the family's involvement with the LTTE.

Despite her protestations, Sudarani was arrested and taken to the notorious Plantain Point army camp, where she was repeatedly asked to identify young men from a line-up of LTTE suspects. "I was told that if I could identify someone they would release me. They would beat me when I didn't identify anyone. I could not stand the torture anymore so I told them what they wanted to hear when I recognised one of the boys."

Yet the torture only increased in severity. Returned to her dark cell, Sudarini would be left alone until a group of female officers would take her into another room of male guards to be raped, every night for over a month. One night, Sudarini recalls the ordeal being videotaped, evidence that was later used to threaten her with public humiliation were she to dare tell anyone what had happened.

After her release, Sudarani was constantly hounded by the police. Wracked with shame and forced to suffer in silence, she attempted suicide which prompted her family to arrange her escape from Sri Lanka to the UK.

Here, her solicitors, backed by the MF's legal team and Sudarani's caseworker-counsellor, have repeatedly contested the Home Office's refutation of her claim. She has been subjected in the UK to what her solicitor described as the most shocking disregard for basic humanity. The hostile questioning of immigration judges has reduced her to contemplate suicide. And after two years contending with the courts while simultaneously struggling to come to terms with her own experiences and loss, she is still fighting.

"I have wanted to kill myself so many times but I tell myself to carry on for my family and hope that I will see them again. I have told my experiences to the court, this is my truth, I hope they accept it. If they do not permit me to stay I would rather die than go back again."

  

"No fixed home": the ever present threat of return to torture

Almost five years after her escape from torture and arbitrary detention in Ethiopia, T still lives with unremitting uncertainty about her future, which hangs in the balance of an undetermined asylum claim that could dictate whether she will be forced to endure torture again.

Trapped by ongoing insecurity, the fear of removal to Ethiopia where she is certain further abuse awaits, dominates her thoughts and hinders her ability to establish a normal life in the UK: "I feel like I'm living like a bird with no fixed home. My heart is banging all the time and I'm always shaking not knowing what's going to happen next."

Despite Government promises to not detain torture survivors, T has been forced into immigration removal centres on three occasions. She spent almost a year in total in detention before a medico-legal report from the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture (MF) helped to secure her release.

"I cannot compare my detention in Africa to the detention I've suffered here, but in my mind it was the same thing, I was locked up."

T was detained and tortured by Ethiopian forces for three months in 2003 for publishing cartoons and singing protest songs that condemned Government policies.

Kept in a cell with over 15 other women, she was frequently beaten with truncheons and had cigarettes extinguished on her body. Her leg calliper, without which she cannot walk, was seized by guards who took pleasure in dragging her around the cells and pushing her over when she stood up on her own.

One such attack forced her to fall hard on her knee and required stitches in hospital, from where she was able to escape her captors and flee to the UK.

While detained in the UK, T faced five removal attempts and was taken to Heathrow Airport three times. Despite her petite stature of only 45 kilograms and a leg disabled from suffering polio as a child, on one occasion six guards were sent to escort her.

Explaining what was happening, one guard told T that she was about to be returned into the hands of the Ethiopian government - the same authorities that were complicit in her torture. Terrified, T began to scream.

"The guards dragged me into a room and handcuffed me. They knew I had a problem with my leg and that I wear a calliper to help me walk, but still they dragged me. The handcuffs were so tight that for the next week I could not move my arms above my head."

Currently awaiting a judicial review of her asylum claim, T finds support in her Ethiopian asylum-seeking friends.

"All of my friends in London suffer under the constant double threat of detention and deportation. How long will we have to keep living in fear? No one knows. In my room, I always have to know where every little thing is, just in case they come to get me again.

"I don't know what tomorrow will be like, that is life for me."