Survivors' stories
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In the Cote D'Ivoire, Toure Abu was denied his place in society because the state did not recognise his tribe or his religion. In England, he is denied a normal existence because the government does not acknowledge him as a refugee, forever holding him in limbo.
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Growing up in Cameroon, MF client Jean D was always aware that his family lived under a cloud - a dark weight of memories that was for ever present, but could barely be acknowledged, let alone openly discussed. As members of the Bamileke tribe, his grandparents had been slaughtered in the early 1960's in what has been described as a genocide - one which was largely ignored by the international community at the time, and today is virtually forgotten.
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When Yuriy joined the police force, hoping to uphold every citizen's basic human rights, he had no idea of the power that would be wielded over him. Even to this day, he remains incredulous of the corruption and disdain shown to him and other Russians by those meant to protect them.
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"Christine" arrived in Britain from the Democratic Republic of Congo depressed and hopeless, and suffering nightmares about the soldiers who killed her father and dragged her off to imprisonment and torture.
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Constantly wringing his hands and flinching as though the cruel events he recalls were only yesterday, Ruslan relives a painful past in the hope that by telling his story, he can alert the world to the horrors of his homeland. Like so many other Chechen civilians brutalised by the Russian Army, Ruslan (not his real name) was just another family man living in the country's capital of Grozny when the Russians launched the first in a long line of attacks.
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Everyone who has worked with Nadine tells you of her open and sociable nature. Yet this is a young woman who was once troubled by recurring nightmares, in constant fear of retribution or attack. It is a fear based on years of experiencing abuse at the hands of unremitting torturers. For this is a woman who witnessed her father's brutal death, went into hiding with her family, was seized by soldiers and interrogated and abused.
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Faraidon is a writer, an interpreter and a qualified teacher. He also happens to be a torture survivor but that is a label he is keen to distance himself from, for while it was once an appropriate definition, it is now part of a past life that he has left behind.
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The atrocities of warfare are something that most of us thankfully only get to glimpse from afar, whether from censored images on the news or from the fictionalised accounts of Hollywood films. Mark hopes to redress that balance and counter the glory and heroism that many films depict.
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Her quiet demeanour conveys a sense of calm and resolve, but it betrays the unimaginable horrors that Najla had to endure before she could even come close to reclaiming her identity. The 31-year-old academic spent over six months in the most depraved conditions at the hands of the Libyan government. And her torment did not end with her escape.
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Compassion was a scarce commodity in the Chile of Augusto Pinochet, with abduction and torture holding sway as the regime consigned to unmarked graves anyone idealistic enough to set any store by the universal brotherhood of man. The killings went on for years, with the stories that emerged from the country's concentration camps proving that this was a regime with the same clinical eye for cruelty as the Gestapo...