Posts tagged torture
CNN Video: Shelling Haunts Syrian Family
See how our teams are providing crucial care to refugees from Syria through the story of one family struggling to survive after a shell slammed into their home.
Wounded Syrians Arrive in Jordan
A specialized Doctors Without Borders surgical team performs operations in a hospital in nearby Amman. Dr. Mohamed, a member of the team, came to Ramtha to determine whether any of the new arrivals were in need of orthopedic surgery. “The wounded people we see here have already received urgent care in Syria,” he says. “They usually have old wounds that date back several weeks or months.”
The refugee camps in Ramtha are more like transit camps, and Syrians generally do not stay very long. Dr. Mohamed visits Ramtha every few days. He gives his telephone number to the wounded patients he sees so that they can contact him when they reach Amman and arrange to be seen.
The wounded all have stories to tell. Twenty-five-year-old X*. lifts his polo shirt to show angry purple-red marks on his back. His arms were also lacerated when he was hit with rubber cables after being arrested while participating in a demonstration in Deraa. He says he was tortured in prison, where he remained for 17 days before he was transferred to Damascus. He was freed en route during an attack by the Free Syrian Army and immediately set out for Jordan.
*Names withheld to protect patient identity.
Libya: MSF Suspends Work in Misrata Detention Centers
Doctors Without Borders staff treating patients in Misrata detention centers suspended medical activities when it became clear that the patients were being tortured.
WARNING: These testimonies contain graphic descriptions of violence.
MSF is not authorized to operate inside Syria at present and thus is unable to fully verify the information collected here. However, given the recurring nature, consistency, and severity of the acts described in these testimonies, MSF has decided to make them public. For security reasons, names and locations have been withheld.
“I was given drugs and antibiotics, but they could not carry out the surgical operation because the injury was severe.”
Man, age unknown
Date of injuries: March 2011
Click here to view more testimonials of the victims in Syria.
WARNING: These testimonies contain graphic descriptions of violence.
MSF is not authorized to operate inside Syria at present and thus is unable to fully verify the information collected here. However, given the recurring nature, consistency, and severity of the acts described in these testimonies, MSF has decided to make them public. For security reasons, names and locations have been withheld.
“When I fell on the ground, two men who unfortunately were from the Syrian army came to me and started to beat me on my head and my injured leg.”
–Man, 28 years old, laborer
Date of injury: May 2011
Click here to view more testimonials of the victims in Syria.
MSF’s Dr. Greg Elder appeared on CNN to talk about the Syrian regime’s campaign of unrelenting repression against people wounded in demonstrations and the medical workers trying to treat them.
While MSF cannot work directly in Syria, it has collected testimonies from wounded patients treated outside the country and from doctors inside Syria. The testimonies, collected from several people from various parts of the country, point to a crackdown on the provision of urgent medical care for people wounded in the ongoing violence in Syria.
“In Syria today, wounded patients and doctors are pursued, and risk torture and arrest at the hands of the security services,” said Marie-Pierre Allié, MSF president. “Medicine is being used as a weapon of persecution.”
“Doctors Without Borders suspended its work in the Libyan city of Misrata last week because prison officials repeatedly brought torture victims in for treatment – only to return them to interrogation after they received medical care. SPIEGEL spoke with the group’s general director, Christopher Stokes, about the situation in Libya.”
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“SPIEGEL: Your organization has suspended operations in Misrata. Why?
Stokes: Because some officials have sought to exploit and obstruct our medical work. Our mission was to treat war-wounded detainees. Since then, doctors from Doctors Without Borders were increasingly confronted with patients who suffered injuries caused by torture during interrogation sessions. In total, we treated 115 people who had torture-related wounds, Libyans and foreigners from African countries whom they accuse of having been mercenaries for Gadhafi’s regime.
SPIEGEL: How were the prisoners tortured?
Stokes: We have encountered bone fractures as a result of torture and we received patients who had been electrically shocked.”
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Read the whole interview with SPIEGEL here.
Read the MSF Press Release here.
Photo: Benoit Finck © MSF
Photo: An MSF physiotherapist works in one of Misrata’s detention centers, where MSF is suspending operations. Libya 2011 © MSF
MSF teams began working in Misrata’s detention centers in August, 2011, to treat war-wounded detainees. Since then, MSF doctors had been increasingly confronted with patients who suffered injuries caused by torture during interrogation sessions. The interrogations were held outside the detention centers. In total, MSF treated 115 people who had torture-related wounds.
The organization reported all the cases to the relevant authorities in Misrata. Since January, several of the patients returned to interrogation centers were again tortured. MSF medical teams were also asked to treat patients inside the interrogation centers, which the organization categorically refused.
The most alarming case occurred on January 3, when MSF doctors treated a group of 14 detainees who returned to a detention facility from an interrogation center. Despite previous MSF demands for the immediate end of torture, 9 of the 14 detainees had suffered numerous injuries and displayed obvious signs of torture.
The MSF team informed the National Army Security Service—the agency responsible for interrogations—that a number of patients needed to be transferred to hospitals for urgent and specialized care. All but one of the detainees were again deprived of essential medical care and were subjected to renewed interrogations and torture outside the detention centers.
Patients were brought to us in the middle of interrogation for medical care, in order to make them fit for further interrogation. This is unacceptable. Our role is to provide medical care to war casualties and sick detainees, not to repeatedly treat the same patients between torture sessions.