For most women, the Horror begins in the Moment of their arrest. First of all, male soldiers touch you in an inappropriate way. On arrival at the prison you will be forced to strip naked. The interference with their physical integrity often begins with an aggressive, thorough investigation by a security guard.
For thousands of female prisoners in the prisons of the regime, this is the beginning of a journey into hell – which leads very often to the fact that they are broken people, and then of their families and communities are violated. According to Alexandra Lily Kather gender-based violence is sexualised, to the most widespread crimes in the prisons of the Syrian government. At the same time they belong to where, on the least, it is reported. “We know from air attacks, we know about weapons, we know from torture and from [the’Islamic state’],” says Kather, who works for the human rights organization, ECCHR (European center for constitutional and human rights) in Berlin. “But what doesn’t get enough attention, whether in the media or by perpetrators to be brought to justice prisons and sexual violence in Government – despite its destructive power, both for victims as well as society as a Whole.”
Kather and her colleagues at the ECCHR hope that this situation will radically change. Together with the Syrian activist Joumana Seif has lodged a criminal complaint with the General Federal Prosecutor in Karlsruhe. You want to ensure that sexual and gender-is being persecuted-related violence in Syria as a crime against humanity.
the first trial against state torture runs
Germany is already a pioneer, since for the first time two former Syrian intelligence officials for war crimes in Syria, to stand trial. Possible the so-called “world power, the principle of law”, as a result, States foreign country can make nationals for international law crimes, the process, if they are committed abroad.
The ECCHR’s praises these efforts. Nevertheless, the organization had failed Germany, the arrest warrants or indictments, sexual violence as a crime against humanity. This was a serious Mistake and a serious blow for the victims. “From the Evidence we have,” says Kather, “we can see clearly that sexual violence is part of systematic and widespread attacks on the civilian population and, therefore, as crimes against humanity should be classified.”
The human rights Council of the United Nations shares this view. In 2018 the published report, the organization describes in detail abuses based on the testimonies of nearly 500 Survivors and witnesses. Among all the warring parties, were committed by Pro-government forces and militias are particularly frequent sexual attacks and rape. The UN concluded, they used sexual violence as a weapon to instill fear and to humiliate.
There is talk of sexual torture, threatened rape, or rape before the eyes of the other guards and the prisoner. Even girls at the age of nine were raped, the report says. This was not tolerated by higher authorities, but openly allowed or even been arranged. According to a Defector, a Brigadier General said to a lower-ranking officer who showed an interest in a detained woman: “Take them. Do with her what you want.” Also men and boys suffered sexual violence, but according to the report, women and girls were the acts disproportionately victims of such atrocities.
More arrest warrants required
compensation to be received, is the focal point of the Case, the ECCHR followed. It is representative of the seven Survivors, four Syrian women and three men, who now live in Europe. All of them were imprisoned as civilians in Aleppo, Hama, and Damascus in the prisons of the intelligence service of the Syrian air force. According to information from the ECCHR has identified nine offender based on the testimony of these victims, and other sources. “You survived sexual violence, or were witnesses of, among other things, rape, electric shocks to the genital area, forced nudity, and forced abortion”, it means of the organization. In the criminal complaint calls for the arrest warrant against the former head of Syrian air force intelligence, Jamil Hassan, to expand sexual and gender-based violence as a crime against humanity. The ECCHR aims to achieve, in addition, that the German judiciary is investigating the other eight Suspects and warrants shall issue.
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The activist and legal expert Joumana Seif stressed that it was important to characterize crimes as “sexualized” and, therefore, other forms of brutality delineate, especially in Syria. “Most of the Survivors are women. If you are released, you will be discriminated against, in spite of the terrible experiences. You have to pay for it twice,” says Seif. You are in need of special health services, psychological support, protection and recognition. Instead, they were condemned “to have shame on the family”, and would be excluded, says Alexandra Lily Kather. “That is destabilizing the family, and if destabilized family to family, destabilized the end of the core of the society.”
men that are in prison, victims of sexual violence, have often the feeling that their masculinity was damaged, and they feared to lose the respect of their group, Kather. Justice for victims of sexual and gender-based violence is seen as the key to future reconciliation efforts – especially when you consider that in the UN report from the “almost complete Lack of accountability” for such acts is the speech. Legal expert Kather focused on the present. “This is a Regime that uses the body of the people, for its political goals – the suppression and terrorizing -,” she says. “We demand accountability from the German attorney General.”
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*The post “justice for Syrian victims of sexual violence in Germany have been violated?” is published by Deutsche Welle. Contact with the executives here.
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