Archive for category Middle East North Africa
The wrong track
Posted by IRCT in Middle East North Africa on 19/04/2012
Instead of flagging human rights abuses in Bahrain, F1 is choosing to ignore the grim reality
At left, protesters in Bahrain are calling for democratic reform and an end to human rights violations, photo by Al Jazeera English. At right, F1 chief Bernie Ecclestone denies there are any 'problems' in the country, photo by Silverstone Circuits Limited. Both obtained through Flickr via Creative Commons license.
“On the track, Bahrain is going to be all about tyre wear”, it states on the Formula 1 website, reporting on their big race event in Bahrain, which begins tomorrow 20 April.
Off the track, however, is another story. Human rights violations, torture, indefinite detentions, judicial harassment, and a uniformly violent crackdown on democratic protesters throughout the last year. Demonstrations early last spring and the brutal state response caused F1 to cancel last year’s race. This year, however, they say the race will continue, despite a wave of outcry from human rights defenders.
The demonstrators are aptly using the Formula 1 grand prix to highlight these crimes committed by the overly image-conscious Bahraini regime and royal family. For example, last year they hired a U.S.-based public relations firm for $40,000 a month, plus expenses to quell their increasingly tainted international reputation. Just take a look at Twitter, where a huge conglomerate of human rights defenders and reform activists have taken advantage of the well-connected island nation to spread information, videos, pictures and news stories to highlight these human rights atrocities to the world. Zainab al-Khawaja and Maryam al-Khawaja, human rights activists and daughters of hunger striker Abdulhadi al-Khawaja, and Nabeel Rajab, head of the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, are among most followed Bahrainis on Twitter. In more recent months, the #Bahrain feeds have become more muddled in a social media battle as pro-regime and royal family supporters have stormed in, attempting to overwhelm the opposition with their own technology and tools.
And then there’s Formula 1, the singular event that unequivocally puts Bahrain on the map, and furthermore has previously showcased the capital Manama and the island nation as a “developed” “Western” ally in the Middle East (don’t forget, Bahrain has received both military, financial and symbolic support from the U.S. – which has a key naval base on the island - and European nations in the past). F1 two years ago brought in more than 100,000 visitors and an estimated half-billion dollars in revenue. Pushing the event forth and bringing back Formula 1, is simply a tactic for the Bahraini government to rebrand itself on the world stage, pretend that their so-called reforms have worked, and sweep away the human rights violations, crimes of torture, and the ongoing protests for a true democracy underneath the screeching rubber tyres.
And the Formula 1 organisation, F1 chief Bernie Ecclestone, and the teams participating in the Bahrain grand prix have much to answer for; their decision to move forth and participate in this shameful event not only aids the regime’s purpose for image-making, but thus allows these crimes to continue unabated and without redress for the victims. Instead, these are there excuses:
Bernie Ecclestone, chief executive, Formula One
“I’m happy our position is quite clear. We don’t get involved in politics in a country. There’s nothing happening. I know people here, it’s all very peaceful.”
Ross Brawn, principal, Mercedes team
“We have to take the advice of people who have all the information. We have reassurances from the FIA that we can have a safe race.”
Sebastian Vettel, driver, Red Bull
“I think it is safe enough to go and we should go there and race and not worry about something that is not our own business.”
Jenson Button, driver, McLaren
“I look to the governing body to decide whether we go to Bahrain or not. I don’t know all the facts; hopefully they can make the right call.”
There are simply no neutral parties when it comes to human rights violations and torture. By making these claims – Bahrain is peaceful, drivers should not get involved in political affairs, that nothing is happening – is, at best, highly naïve and is, more likely, that those in a position to take a stand instead are burying their heads in the sand. F1 leaders, teams and drivers, in a highly visible position in this debate, should rather use that platform to call out the Bahraini government for their crimes. International sporting events and their participants have a unique position to push forth change, and those in the Bahrain F1 event should use it. We can hope that, for example, the BBC, which is “contractually obligated” to broadcast the event, will not sideline the protests and demonstrations. Instead, we hope they use the F1 broadcast to show the awful truths Bahrain is keeping away from the track.
Women at the frontline in the fight against torture
Posted by IRCT in Latin America & the Caribbean, Middle East North Africa, Rehabilitation, Voices, Women/Girls/Gender on 08/03/2012
Today, on International Women’s Day (8 March), we wish to join the worldwide movement to honour women as human rights defenders. Women from all over the world, including at our 140+ member centres in over 70 countries, work at the frontline in the fight against torture. These women lobby national governments, head human rights inter-governmental bodies, work in rehabilitating torture survivors, and are often survivors of torture themselves.
At World Without Torture, we would like to honour these women by providing a platform for their stories today. Please share these stories to honour not only their work, but the hundreds of thousand of women human rights defenders worldwide.
What do we do with what others have done to us?
Brazilian psychologist and human rights activist Vera Vital Brasil knows from experience what she is talking about when she tells about her years of work with torture victims.
As a student at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in the late ’60s, Vera participated actively in the student movement, a major focus of resistance to Brazil’s military dictatorship. Because of her activism, in 1969, she was arrested and tortured on the premises of the notorious DOI-CODI, the Destacamento de Operações de Informações – Centro de Operações de Defesa Interna in Rio de Janeiro. After three months in prison, Vera left Rio for exile in Chile. Her exile lasted six years and upon her return to Brazil, she was determined to try to turn the wrongs that others done to her into something good.
“What do we do with what others have done to us? Internalize this tormenting experience or fight to stop this happening again? I chose the latter,” she says about her involvement with victims of torture through clinical work.
In 1982, Vera joined other former political prisoners living in Rio de Janeiro against the appointment of people responsible for torture during the dictatorship. This initiative eventually led a group of former political prisoners, torture survivors and relatives of dead and missing people to found the Grupo Tortura Nunca Mais (GTNM/RJ, which in English stands for Never More Torture Group) in 1985, which, in 1991, started providing medical and psychological treatment and physical rehabilitation to victims of torture.
Throughout these years, her personal experience and dedication to other victims have convinced her that the trauma caused by torture can never be completely overcome but must be addressed through clinical treatment and proper redress.
“The damage caused by torture is accentuated if it is ignored, if there is no justice, or no redress. The fact that the state, which should guarantee and protect human life, is the agent of violence has a devastating effect on people’s psychological well-being. Our clinical practice is insufficient to cure this damage. But we can try to get people who have gone through this harrowing experience to feel better and give another meaning to this suffering, shifting it from a personal and private level to the collective and historical level, “she says.
Read Vera Brasil’s full story here.
Giving a voice to the victims
“You try to channel revenge through peaceful channels, you know, campaigning, publishing, providing legal consultation, providing legal aid, taking the person to court, accompanying the person throughout this process,” says Dr. Aida Seif El Dawla.
Dr. Seif El Dawla, founding member, psychiatrist, and human rights defender at Egyptian centre El Nadeem, was awarded the 2011 Alkarama Award for Human Rights Defenders.
For nearly two decades at the El-Nadeem Centre for the Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence, she has worked with countless victims of torture. When the Egyptian clinic began in 1993, Seif El Dawla and the other founders wanted to provide psychological services to the survivors of torture and their families. They sought other like-minded organisations – medically-based NGOs that served the psycho-social needs of victims of violence – to model their new clinic. Soon they realised that focusing simply on the psychological rehabilitation neglected the social and political aspects that allowed the crimes to continue – the victims’ access to justice and seeking the prevention of torture.
“Many of the people who come don’t really want to have a psychological assessment,” she says. “I realised that those people aren’t really patients in the classic sense of patients. They have responded very normally to an extremely abnormal situation.”
El-Nadim not only had to treat the psychological consequences of torture, but provide their clients with access to medical doctors to treat the physical wounds. In addition, many survivors came to the clinic with a need to channel their anger, humiliation, and helplessness into bringing their perpetrators to justice, bringing the crimes to light.
When the image of Khaled Said’s face appeared in the newspapers, bruised and beaten, Seif El Dawla had seen it all before. Said’s image ignited change. The people of Egypt have become fed up with a broken system and a police force that tortures, carries out arbitrary arrests, and falsifies forensic reports, she says.
“Already before the 25th of January people had enough of this kind of violence. They had enough. And it’s not a coincidence that the first targets of the people when they revolted were the police stations, all over, because there isn’t a governor, there isn’t a city, where there isn’t a family who has lost somebody to a police station or who has a relative who was abused or humiliated in a police station. So, it was already boiling. Now, people are not willing to take it anymore.”
Read Dr. Seif El Dawla’s full story here. And, see the short film on the Khaled Said case, which features her in an interview.
A voice for the torture victims in Ecuador
During her medicine studies in the late eighties, Yadira Narvaez was unexpectedly transferred from a neurological clinic, where she worked as an intern, to the medical department of a male prison.
The unwanted transfer was a punishment for her habit of wearing trousers. “My superior said that if what I wanted was to look like a male, I should be as close as possible to men”, she remembers. The experience became one of the most transformative events in Forensic Doctor Yadira Narvaez’s life. “It was a striking experience: there I learned the difference between being alive and dead”.
While working at the medical department of that prison, where approximately 1,500 men served their sentences, she discovered the real meaning of the word torture. “By then, I really didn’t know what torture meant and what it could do to people”. Dr Narvaez‘s placement at the prison ended after 18 months but has led to decades of dedication to the treatment and protection of torture survivors and prisoners.
Two years after the end of the “punishment”, Dr Narvaez decided to go back to work in the same prison, this time, of her own free will. She went on to also work in the treatment of female detainees at another penal institution. Being a witness of the suffering caused by a lack of respect for human rights made Dr Narvaez realise that she needed to do something to try to protect prisoners and to assist torture survivors.
To address the problem on a national level, Dr Narvaez helped found the Foundation for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence (in short PRIVA) in 1997. In addition to denouncing torture in Ecuador, PRIVA focuses on the prevention and eradication of torture and the care of torture victims and their families.
“Like Martin Luther King, I also have a dream: that one day in my country all individuals who, for any reason come into contact with the penal system have their rights respected, have the right to be heard and the right to justice,” says the 52-year old doctor. “And torture victims need access to rehabilitation services to recover at least part of the health lost due to arbitrary practices by state agents. In addition, torture survivors need to be assured that these violations will not continue so that they can go on to live without fear”.
Read Dr. Narvaez’s full story here.
After the cloud of tear gas
Posted by IRCT in Middle East North Africa, News & Clippings on 14/02/2012
Focus on Bahrain needed to prevent more human rights violations
Today, as the protesters have made their way from the suburbs of Manama, Bahrain, undoubtedly heading to Pearl roundabout, the security forces quickly made it known – through their sheer presence, the eventual dispersal of tear gas – that they would try to stem the tide of demonstrators at the infamous site. And in the days leading up, the government has continued crackdown and suppression efforts, denying foreigners and foreign press access to Bahrain and hiring public relations firms.
Today marks a year since protesters gathered at Pearl roundabout in Manama, demonstrating against the undemocratic monarchy of Bahrain and calling for reform. Yet, unlike other Arab Spring movements, Bahrain’s demonstrators have often been ‘shouting in the dark’, to employ the title of an Al Jazeera English documentary that chronicled the protests and the resulting crackdown.
Instead of democratic reforms, Bahrainis have faced severe repression, torture, and arbitrary detention. Just last week, Bahrain and Danish citizen and human rights defender Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja wrote a letter to the Danish Foreign Ministry from prison calling for them to push for his release:
Abdulhadi Al-Khawaja’s letter to the Danish Minister of Foreign Affairs from prison, 8 Feb 2012http://www.scribd.com/embeds/81440913/content?start_page=1&view_mode=list
In it, he points to an official 500-page government inquiry in Bahrain that documented cases of torture. In addition, there was the highly publicized cases of over a dozen doctors, surgeons, and nurses at a Manama hospital who were sentenced to several years in prison after being tortured to confess. Their alleged ‘crime’: Doing their job as doctors and treating the wounded and dying protesters coming from Pearl roundabout after security forces cracked down.
All these cases, and yet it seems the torture continues in Bahrain. Within the last year, demonstrators have continued to take to the streets; and many are apprehended, detained, and torture by security forces. We hope on this anniversary that the international world focuses on Bahrain.
“What Bahrainis need is international pressure, international attention to stop the torture, stop the human rights violations; then, we can fight for democracy ourselves,” said Maryam Al-Khawaja, daugher of Abdulhadi and current foreign affairs officer from the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights, during a panel discussion last year.
Calling on Egypt to do more
Posted by IRCT in Middle East North Africa on 08/02/2012
Injured demonstrators are taken to field hospitals in Tahrir Square, which have currently sustained targeted attacks against patients and doctors. Photo by Jano Charbel, available by Creative Commons License.
Following a series of recent violent crackdowns against demonstrators in Egypt (most strikingly following deaths at a football match in Port Said), we have a released a statement on our website calling for Egypt to immediately stop inflicting violence and torture and to implement a thorough investigation into the perpetrators:
The IRCT today calls for the Egyptian General Attorney to implement a prompt and thorough investigation into dozens of cases of torture and ill-treatment in Egypt that have occurred since the November 2011 crackdown on demonstrators.
We join a coalition of lawyers and human rights defenders, including IRCT Egyptian member El Nadeem Centre for Management and Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence, in seeking an end to the recent violence and torture and a comprehensive inquiry into these violations. In addition, we echo the demand for accountability of security forces in connection to the massacre of football fans in Port Said last Wednesday.
Furthermore, the IRCT also condemns the targeted attacks – including arbitrary arrests, beatings, and shootings – on field hospitals constructed in Tahrir Square. The field hospitals, which were constructed to treat those wounded in the protests, have sustained several attacks on both doctors and patients.
Read our full statement here. And read more about our member centre El Nadeem, who is leading the call.
Combatting torture in trying contexts
Posted by IRCT in Middle East North Africa, Sharing Knowledge - Project Work on 18/01/2012
In Palestine and Israel despite tough conditions, skilled and hardworking organisations are working to combat torture
By Lars Døssing Rosenmeier
Just before the end of 2011, I visited the IRCT member centre the Treatment and Rehabilitation Center for Victims of Torture (TRC) in Ramallah, Palestine. The visit was technically a “monitoring and coordination mission” under the European Commission-supported NSA project. TRC is a partner to this project that has now progressed into the third and final year.
What we call the ‘NSA’ is a project to improve the skills of 11 rehabilitation centres through exchange of knowledge between them and other IRCT member centres. If one centre excels, for example, in psycho-social rehabilitation or UN advocacy, they can share their knowledge and skills through seminars or other trainings.
As I had heard from other Secretariat staff before going to TRC (and can now personally confirm), TRC has a great management team leading a group of well trained psychotherapists. Therefore, TRC has not only taken part in NSA project activities aimed at building their own staff capacity, but has also been able to act as peer supervisors and trainers visiting other centres to share their experiences, knowledge and best practices on treatment and rehabilitation of torture survivors. The main objective of my visit was to discuss the project activities of the last two years and plan for the current.
When we visit our members, we also always try to visit current and potential donors as well as other international or local partners to strengthen existing relationships and build new ones. As the NSA project, of which I am the deputy manager, is mainly supported by the European Commission, it was only natural that I had a longer meeting at The Office of the European Union Representative to the West Bank and Gaza Strip to discuss both the work of TRC and the progress of the NSA project. I also met briefly with representatives of OHCHR and of the Dutch Foreign Ministry and the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation as I was lucky enough to attend and even deliver a short speech at TRC’s celebration of the UN Human Rights Day. During this event, Palestinian Authority Minister of Justice Dr. Ali Khashan promised to facilitate better cooperation with local human rights organisations both in general and on specific cases. This was in dialogue with Samih Muhsen, of the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights, who in his speech had stated that Palestinian security personnel widely (to some extent even systematically) practice torture with impunity.
Most TRC clients are victims of torture or inhumane, cruel or degrading treatment at the hands of the Israeli occupation and the Israeli security forces, who are responsible for an overwhelming amount of severe human rights violations. Another important partner of the IRCT in the area is the Israeli NGO the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI). The IRCT and PCATI work together on cases of torture with IRCT providing (psycho) forensic expertise and documentation, and PCATI’s legal team pursuing cases of torture in the Israeli judicial system to bring perpetrators to justice and advocate for victims.
While meeting with PCATI in Jerusalem, I was fortunate enough to also join the legal team for a case in the Israeli Supreme Court. This case was also included in our FEAT project as part of the IRCT-PCATI collaboration on cases described above.
I sat in the benches as the legal team argued in front of the Supreme Court that a criminal investigation should be opened into the torture case, and that the State Attorney had failed to live up to his responsibility of properly looking into opening an investigation. Disappointingly for us and likely devastating for the victim, the court did not intervene. Instead the State Attorney Office’s decision to refer the assessment of whether or not to open an investigation to the Israel Security Agency (also known as the Shin Bet) internal investigator, rather than to look into the issue itself, was upheld. As a result, the case may only see a closed internal inquiry rather than an actual impartial investigation, which Israel is obliged to ensure under international law and which it has failed to ensure in this and every one of the over 700 other complaints of torture submitted in the last decade.
It is obvious that PCATI is doing very important and very difficult work as they must overcome obstacles placed in front of them by a politically biased judicial system, as is also the experience in many other countries where our centres or collaborating legal organisations pursue cases.
There are some common difficulties that face human rights work in Palestine and around the world that can be mitigated more easily. This includes a profound obstacle currently faced by not only TRC but also many other of our member centres in Europe, North America and around the world: a lack of funding for the provision of their rehabilitation services. It is painful to see that a well functioning centre such as TRC has in the last six months been hit hard by a batch of bad luck, with several key donors cutting down funding at the same time. The IRCT and its member centres are of course extremely grateful for any funding we receive, but we must also stress that the fight against torture and the rehabilitation of torture victims is too important to become a victim of budget cuts. The consequences for TRC as an organization is serious cuts in staffing for at least a large part of 2012, meaning that far less clients can benefit from their crucial services in this period.
I am confident that TRC will in the long term again function at full capacity, but in the meantime the untreated suffering is immense and it is worrying to see the funding difficulties facing well run rehabilitation centres of torture, as human rights work dealing with torture is especially difficult to fundraise for.
Lars assists the membership team and serves as deputy manager of the NSA project. The NSA project is supported by the European Commission.
In Bahrain, Protests and Police Action
Posted by IRCT in Middle East North Africa on 21/12/2011
Nicholas Kristof, a columnist at the New York Times, reports in this video from Bahrain, where he speaks with human rights defenders Nabeel Rajab, Zainab al-Khawaja, and a state spokesman from the royal family.
Read our previous post on Bahrain here, featuring a discussion with Zainab’s sister, Maryam and Nabeel in Copenhagen.
World Without Torture: A film by the IRCT
Posted by IRCT in Middle East North Africa, Voices on 06/12/2011
The film is also available with Arabic, French, and Spanish subtitles.
As we approach International Human Rights Day – 10th December – we are very pleased to announce the release of World Without Torture: A film by the IRCT that highlights the importance of documenting torture, as well as providing rehabilitation for torture survivors and working to ensure that torture doesn’t take place to begin with.
The film features the case of Khaled Said. His death at the hands of state police – and the attempt to cover it up through the official autopsy report – sparked massive protests in Egyptin the run-up to the revolution that led to the toppling of Hosni Mubarak’s oppressive regime.
Documenting torture, as in the case of Said and numerous others, is among the key priorities of the IRCT. It can have far reaching results and helps us move towards our ultimate goal: a World Without Torture.
Watch our 15 minute film to see interviews with key activists, human rights defenders, and those on the forefront of anti-torture work and rehabilitation. And celebrate Human Rights Day by sharing this video with friends and family – through e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, and other social media tools.
Congratulations to Dr. Aida Seif El Dawla
Posted by IRCT in Middle East North Africa on 06/12/2011
Dr. Aida Seif El Dawla, founding member, psychiatrist, and human rights defender at Egyptian member centre El Nadeem, has been awarded the 2011 Alkarama Award for Human Rights Defenders.
The IRCT wishes to warmly congratulate Dr. Seif El Dawla for her much-deserved recognition from the international human rights community for her long and fervent work on behalf of the victims of torture and other human rights abuses.
“This prize is not the first or the last that the collective of El Nadeem receives,” said IRCT’s Middle East and North Africa regional coordinator Giorgio Caracciolo. “And yet a thousand prizes would not be enough to reward a life dedicated to human rights and people’s well-being after torture.”
For more than 30 years, Dr. Seif El Dawla has worked toward combating torture and investigating human rights abuses in Egypt, where she co-founded IRCT member El Nadeem Centre for Psychological Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence and Torture, the Egyptian Association Against Torture, and the New Women Research Center. She was previously recognized in 2003 by Human Rights Watch for their highest honour for global human rights defenders.
Please read the full statement from the IRCT here.
Also, our Middle East North Africa regional coordinator Giorgio Caracciolo, who is quoted in this story, offered up a much more lengthy quote that we would like to post in its entirety:
It is four years now that I have worked closely with Aida and the other incredible women that, for almost 20 years, have led El Nadeem Centre and the struggle against torture in Egypt. Working with Aida, Suzanne, Magda, Basma and the others (and the guys too!) has meant a lot to me not only on the professional level but also on the personal one. This prize is not the first or the last that the collective of El Nadeem receives, and yet a thousand prizes would not be enough to reward a life dedicated to human rights and people’s well-being after torture. But if a thousand prizes would not lift the burden left by the stories received from the hundreds and hundreds torture victims supported in the last decades; if a thousand prizes will not give them satisfaction for the work that they have done until torture is brought to a halt in Egypt – every prize has its own infinite importance as this is one of the few ways for us – as an international community – to acknowledge the immense value of the work done by El Nadeem in Egypt.
I have had the privilege to support them closely in the recent past, and I wish them all the strength to continue leading their work towards a Egypt without torture.
Bahrain human rights defenders shine light on state torture
Posted by IRCT in Middle East North Africa on 01/11/2011
By Tessa
At a protest against Bahraini state TV following the crackdown at Pearl Roundabout, several demonstrators wore hats or shirts that declared 'Read to die for Bahrain'. Photo credit to Al Jazeera English via Flickr, used through Creative Commons license.
It’s hard to get through this story of torture. It was personal. It was her family.
As Maryam al-Khawaja tells it, she moves briskly through the details. She has told it many times, and perhaps dwelling too much on the words brings too great a cost.
“This is one story among many,” she says. “There have been many people tortured far worse than my father, treated far worse than my father.”
Maryam joined Nabeel Rajab at the Danish Institute for International Studies last month for an open conference on the human rights situation in Bahrain, the island nation that lays next to Qatar and Saudi Arabia in the Persian Gulf.
Nabeel has long been an activist for human rights in the region and currently heads the Bahrain Centre for Human Rights (also @BahrainRights), an organisation with no home, he explains. For several years, they have been banned and their accounts frozen by the state. Regardless, they continue their work. Maryam serves as the organisation’s head of foreign relations, travelling predominantly throughout Europe and the United States to speak about her family’s country and the situation there. She has not returned to Bahrain since April when her father was arrested.
The arrest happened at their home in front of all their family. Her father and three brothers-in-law were arrested at the same time. The police stormed into their home, pulled her father down the stairs, and began to beat him into unconsciousness. He was taken away and not heard from again for more than a week. He was charged and sentenced to life in prison in June.
Now, Maryam and Nabeel travel the world to raise awareness of the human rights crimes occurring in their country.
“In Bahrain, they need enough international pressure to stop the human rights violations,” Maryam says. Then, the people of Bahrain themselves can advocate for a democracy.
Her major focus has also been to remind the international community of the necessity of accountability – that once the violence stops, the perpetrators of torture, violence, and war crimes need to be brought to justice.
“No one remembers the permanent damage that these assaults have had on the tortured and their families,” she says.
But for Maryam and Nabeel, also himself a victim of torture, they can remember it well.
Follow Maryam and Nabeel on Twitter (@MARYAMALKHAWAJA and @NABEELRAJAB) and Facebook (Maryam and Nabeel) for constant updates on the human rights situation in Bahrain.
For more information, please watch this one-hour documentary broadcast on Al Jazeera English earlier this year on the democratic uprisings and brutal government crackdown.
Tessa is a communications assistant, focusing on social media, story editing, and women and girls projects.
Release Rafah Nached
Posted by IRCT in Middle East North Africa on 28/10/2011
Syrian police arrested and detained 66-year-old psychoanalyst Rafah Nached. Below is our statement:
The IRCT calls for the immediate release of Syrian psychoanalyst Rafah Nached, who was arrested last month at Damascus Airport and has since been held in solitary confinement.
We are highly concerned about this arbitrary arrest, and more urgently, her condition in detention in Syria. Nached, a well-known psychoanalyst who treats victims of trauma, is in her 60s and has a heart condition that requires constant monitoring and medications. Reports have indicated that her condition has worsened significantly while in detention.
Yesterday, the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling for Nached’s immediate release. As her health and well-being are surely at risk from solitary confinement and detention in her condition, we call for the immediate implementation of this act.
Read our whole statement here.
