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Syrian refugee recounts ordeal of torture

Date
30.04.2018

Author
Julia Hahn (Gaziantep)

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DW News
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Related Subjects
Women's rights , International Women's Day , Syria

Keywords
Syria ,
women ,
Bashar Assad ,
abuse ,
torture ,
prison

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Thousands of Syrian women are believed to be incarcerated in the Assad regime's prisons. Little is known about their fate, but those who manage to escape tell tales of horror. DW's Julia Hahn reports.
Muna Muhammad remembers every tiny detail. The stench in the cells, the pain, her torturers. "He pulled a black plastic bag over my head and then he hung me from the ceiling, head down," the 30-year-old says. The memory still haunts her. The guard said he was going to leave her hanging from the ceiling until all her "evil thoughts land in this bag," she remembers.
Muna was a music teacher before she was arrested in 2012 for participating in protests against President Bashar Assad in Deir ez-Zor. She was released, then rearrested and taken to the infamous Military Intelligence Branch 215 facility in Damascus — inmates call it "hell branch" because torture is a daily occurrence.
One day, her torturer showed up with a stun gun. "He said, 'Muna, where is your heart?'" she recalls. "I pointed at my heart, and that's where he zapped me."
For months, Muna was locked up in solitary confinement or packed together with other inmates. "One day they interrogated a 16-year-old," she says. "I heard her scream. It was so loud. I thought they must be killing her."
Many women were sexually abused, Muna says, adding that she also faced the threat of rape if she didn't confess.
Muna Muhammad fled to Turkey in 2016
Hygiene conditions at the prison were a disaster, says Muna, explaining that the inmates were not always allowed access to toilets or showers. There were children, too. "I remember a woman and her daughter," Muna says. "Her cell was very small and dark, the girl cried all the time, and again and again, she tried to peer underneath the door, hoping for a bit of daylight."
Muna was eventually granted amnesty and released. In 2016, she managed to flee to Turkey, where she still lives today — in Gaziantep, a city that has become a haven for half a million Syrians.
No one knows exactly how many women are imprisoned in Syria. "More than 7,000," estimates Fadel Abdul Ghani, head of the Syrian Network for Human Rights, a monitoring group that documents human rights violations in the Syrian war .
Ghani's statistics on armed groups show that most of them also involve cases of violence against women — and the Syrian government heads that list. Women are deliberately targeted, he says, because they always played an important role in the opposition against Assad. The regime sees torture and sexual abuse of women as a war strategy, Ghani argues. "Break the women, and you break the family — and with it opposition in society. That's the goal."
Human rights activist Fadel Abdul Ghani says the Assad regime uses the torture of women as a war strategy
In 2017, Amnesty International reported that more than 17,000 people have died since 2011 as a result of torture, abuse and disastrous conditions in prisons run by the Syrian intelligence services and the Syrian government. Up to 13,000 people were executed at the infamous Saydnaya Military Prison north of Damascus, according to the human rights organization, which says the "systematic, widespread attack by the government on civilians" amounts to "crimes against humanity."
The Syrian president rejected the report, which is based on statements made by former prisoners, as "fake news."
Muna wants the world to know what is going on in Syrian prisons. Humiliation was part of the torture, too, she says, recalling an incident where a guard asked a man about his profession. The man said he was a doctor, and the guard ordered him to hop on one leg and say, "I am a rabbit." "At first the doctor spoke very quietly, so they beat him, and then all of us heard him yell: 'I am a rabbit, I am a rabbit.'"
Electroshock torture is a regular occurrence in Syrian regime prisons
Muna has written down her story, and she collects other victims' accounts, too. She has started a support group for Syrian women, she calls it "project recovery."
"Some women refuse to talk about what happened to them in prison, and others break down and can't stop crying when they talk about it," Muna says. "I try to show them they are strong, that the terrible things that happened to them aren't their fault."
Muna's new life is in Turkey. But she hopes that one day, she can help bring her torturers in Syria to justice.
Syria has been engulfed in a devastating civil war since 2011 after Syrian President Bashar Assad lost control over large parts of the country to multiple revolutionary groups. The conflict has since drawn in foreign powers and brought misery and death to Syrians.
Syria's army, officially known as the Syrian Arab Army (SAA), is loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and is fighting to restore the president's rule over the entire country. The SAA has been fighting alongside a number of pro-Assad militias such as the National Defense Force and has cooperated with military advisors from Russia and Iran, which back Assad.
Turkey, which is also part of the US-led coalition against IS, has actively supported rebels opposed to Assad. It has a tense relationship with its American allies over US cooperation with Kurdish fighters, who Ankara says are linked to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) fighting in Turkey. Turkey has launched multiple military offensives targeting Kurdish militias.
The Kremlin has proven to be a powerful friend to Assad. Russian air power and ground troops officially joined the fight in September 2015 after years of supplying the Syrian army. Moscow has come under fire from the international community for the high number of civilian casualties during its airstrikes. However, Russia's intervention turned the tide in war in favor of Assad.
A US-led coalition of more than 50 countries, including Germany, began targeting IS and other terrorist targets with airstrikes in late 2014. The anti-IS coalition has dealt major setbacks to the militant group. The US has more than a thousand special forces in the country backing the Syrian Democratic Forces.
The Free Syrian Army grew out of protests against the Assad regime that eventually turned violent. Along with other non-jihadist rebel groups, it seeks the ouster of President Assad and democratic elections. After suffering a number of defeats, many of its members defected to hardline militant groups. It garnered some support from the US and Turkey, but its strength has been greatly diminished.
Fighting between Syrian Kurds and Islamists has become its own conflict. The US-led coalition against the "Islamic State" has backed the Syrian Democratic Forces, an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias. The Kurdish YPG militia is the main component of the SDF. The Kurds have had a tacit understanding with Assad.
"Islamic State" (IS) took advantage of regional chaos to capture vast swathes of territory in Iraq and Syria in 2014. Seeking to establish its own "caliphate," IS has become infamous for its fundamentalist brand of Islam and its mass atrocities. IS is on the brink of defeat after the US and Russia led separate military campaigns against the militant group.
IS is not the only terrorist group that has ravaged Syria. A number of jihadist militant groups are fighting in the conflict, warring against various rebel factions and the Assad regime. One of the main jihadist factions is Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham, which controls most of Idlib province and has ties with al-Qaeda.
Iran has supported Syria, its only Arab ally, for decades. Eager to maintain its ally, Tehran has provided Damascus with strategic assistance, military training and ground troops when the conflict emerged in 2011. The Iran-backed Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah also supports the Assad regime, fighting alongside Iranian forces and paramilitary groups in the country.
Author: Elizabeth Schumacher, Alexander Pearson

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