So I'm Not Kept in the Shadows
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So I’m not Kept in the Shadows Oral Memory: Syrian Women Survivors of Detention Lama Kannout So I’m not kept in the Shadows – Oral Memory: Syrian Women Survivors of Detention Lama Kannout 2 So I’m not Kept in the Shadows Oral Memory: Syrian Women Survivors of Detention Lama Kannout 2019 All rights reserved The Day After organization © The Day After organization (TDA) is a Syrian organization working in support of the democratic transition in Syria, with a focus on the following points: Rule of law, transitional justice, security sector reform, design of electoral systems and election of a Constituent Assembly, constitutional design, economic reform and social policies. Cover: Sara Khayat The Day After - Istanbul, Turkey Pürtelaş Hasan Efendi Mahallesi, Cihangir Caddesi, No:3 , D:1 Estambul Tel : +90 (212) 252 3812 Email: sy.org-info@tda www.tda-sy.org 3 Ms. Lama Kannout is writer, researcher, and an independent political activist. She earned her BA in Interior Design. She works on democratic change, citizenship and gender equality. In 2017, she published A book-length research titled “In the Core or on the Margin: Syrian Women’s Political Participation,” and in 2019 a book-length research titled "Gender Sensitive Transitional Justice in Syria." Furthermore, Ms. Kannout presented several papers on various topics such as the democratic change in Syria, the principles of gender-sensitive constitution, gender-sensitive electoral system, citizenship, and many other related topics. Additionally, Ms. Kannout has co-founded and managed a number of civil society organizations concerned with democracy and human rights. 4 Contents Introduction ........................................................................................................................................ 5 Hostages ............................................................................................................................................. 8 Old Wound that was reopened ....................................................................................................... 20 So I’m not kept in the Shadows ....................................................................................................... 44 Zainab’s Trill ..................................................................................................................................... 98 Meeting in the slaughterhouse ...................................................................................................... 122 Amira .............................................................................................................................................. 146 Shams al-Dimashqiya, Damascene Sun ......................................................................................... 166 Nour ................................................................................................................................................ 182 Last woman in Qaboun: ................................................................................................................. 192 Between two Prisons ..................................................................................................................... 212 When I was exiled from my Homeland ......................................................................................... 224 QUESTIONS ..................................................................................................................................... 235 5 Introduction History based on narration and oral testimony gains importance during revolutions, armed conflicts and wars, bearing witness to history and forming a basis for documentation to confront falsifications by a tyrannical authority seeking to obscure the facts of its tyranny and multiple violations of human rights. Therefore, it is essential to be aware of the importance of spoken histories as a complementary source that identifies or corrects facts documented by traditional sources in the absence of documents for various reasons, which sometimes necessitates the reliance on testimonies and oral accounts as a main source of historical documentation, achieved with the efforts of documenters of verbal accounts and the insistence of witnesses on reporting and bringing facts into the open, shedding light on women's struggles for freedom, equality and social justice. Spoken history is no less important than written documents, as it preserves aspects of history and the stories of peoples and human societies, and helps build a wealth of knowledge and science around the unrecorded histories of environments, conflicts and human transformations, making it necessary to preserve and use spoken history when writing the history of human societies on scientific foundations. Since the Assad family came to power almost 47 years ago, researchers have had limited access to resources. Field work remains almost impossible under the Assad regime and as long as the country is at war; thus, NGOs are busy collecting videos, medical records and eyewitness reports on human rights violations, with future justice measures in mind, although personal testimonies and published accounts are difficult to find. The Day After has and is still making efforts to achieve justice for all Syrians through its work and projects, including the ‘Survivors’ project, out of the need to communicate their voices to international committees and organizations concerned with documenting, to bring criminal cases or provide them with assistance after everything they suffered during and after detention. The organization undertook the initiative to form a team to work with detention survivors, in order to enable them and activate their role, and has shared with them developments regarding the file of the detainees. The ‘Survivors’ project includes the stories of 27 women inside and outside Syria, from among which 11 were selected for this book. The objectives of the ‘Survivors’ assistance project are: - To work to empower and activate the role of survivors of detention. - To build confidence among them and combine their efforts to support their case and that of detainees in general. - To cooperate with international committees and partner organizations concerned with documentation. - To provide psychosocial support to survivors from partner bodies. - To document the stories of survivors and their testimonies within this book as historical documentation. Through its various activities, the project has: - Conducted awareness-raising sessions on human rights and international law, as well as on sexual and gender-based violence. - Conducted awareness sessions on mechanisms and international committees working on documenting violations and building cases, and Syrian bodies and teams formed by groups of victims and their families. 6 - Conducted training on the concept of transitional justice and mechanisms of accountability, advocacy and team-building, in addition to defining the concept of spoken history and its importance. The book documents the experiences of survivors who participated in workshops and trainings organized by The Day After, and these stories represent part of women's experiences with political and social violence and other forms of violence. Each of their experiences has its own specific and different effects. The book was limited to 11 stories only for several reasons; most notably the nature of psychological suffering and the distress of the survivors, as well as the difficulty of movement from their various locations, and their fear of being named in their testimonies lest any of their relatives are arrested or questioned by security forces in Syria, and their fear of risks or consequences if their names were disclosed. 7 8 Hostages1* 1 The author's interview with Nargis (a nickname) via WhatsApp, on February 10, 2019, duration of the interview: four hours. *Cover by: Diyala Zada 9 10 My name is Narjes from Zabadani in Damascus suburbs, I am thirty-nine years old, and I studied history in the faculty of Fine Arts at Damascus University. I worked as a teacher for ten years, I got suspended abusively after my detention, I have two kids, my daughter Lojain thirteen-years-old, and my son Osama eleven-years-old. I live now in Turkey with my kids and my mother. I got divorced from my husband after; my release and travel to Turkey because he kept asking me to go back to Syria for reconciliation with the regime, but I refused due to the injustice and torture I had been through in jail. I had no activity in the beginning of the revolution because I was employed, and I was committed to my family tasks towards my husband and kids. My husband and his family were with the regime, whilst my parents were with the opposition. I didn’t witness the shelling and siege that Zabadani suffered from, since my family I moved to Bloudan, between June and July 2012 and I continued working, I didn’t even communicate with my brother who was with opposition and supported the revolution because of fear for myself. Al-Mujtahid hospital: In 2014 the situation of Zabadani was extremely dire. The regime was pushing to regain control over it again, and my mother wanted to check on our house in Zabadani but she got injured when mortar shell landed on it, in May 14, 2014. In that period the regime was taking hostages from families of the wanted to force them to surrender. My sister and I were transferring my mother to be treated in on of Damascus hospitals, and while passing the checkpoint adjacent to Zabadani, some of the regime agents told