Female survivors of Assad’s prisons suffer even after release

ISTANBUL (AA) – Shamed and abandoned, women held in the Assad regime’s prisons in Syria face social rejection after they are released.

Thousands of Syrian women and children have been subjected to torture and detention by the Assad regime since 2011, when the civil war began in the country.

Syrian ex-prisoners Lama Larin Jesry, chairman of NISVA, an association for solidarity with Syrian women, and Ala al-Dari, who changed her name for security reasons, shared their stories with Anadolu Agency.

Jesry was imprisoned for over 100 days by the Syrian regime.

“I was detained for a week during demonstrations in Aleppo in 2012. In 2014, I had one last class left to graduate when I was arrested at the university campus. I was imprisoned for 100 days. They were hard times. They inflicted all kinds of torture on me,” she said.

Jesry said that she was deprived of even the most basic rights such as eating in prison.

The Syrian ex-prisoner was forced to admit crimes she did not commit under torture.

“When I was released, I went to my family in Aleppo. My family was so happy that I was saved, but I was shocked to see that the society stigmatizes detained women with the ‘seal of shame.’ Eastern societies stigmatize women who are imprisoned with the seal of shame. Realizing this, it caused me a lot of pain in my inner world,” Jesry said.

Al-Dari was detained by the Assad regime forces two months after the civil war began, and she was tortured for a year in four different prisons.

Al-Dari said she could not stand the torture and had a heart attack, and was imprisoned again after her treatment.

Although the physical violence ended for former women prisoners, psychological violence still continues, she said.

Al-Dari also said that the women could not express the torture and sexual abuse they suffered not to be neglected by their husbands, families and society, and that they could not file a criminal complaint with international courts.