(Zaman Al Wasl)- “Syria's Women in Assad Prisons” is a series of testimonies of Syrian women who have been held in detention since the outbreak of the Syrian revolution in 2011.
Zaman al-Wasl decided to reveal this file of series to its readers and the world about the most horrific repressive practices.
Zaman al-Wasl used articles, written testimonies, news and follow-ups, and diversion and document to cover some aspects of this humanitarian pain.
The film “Whining” , it included some testimonies of Syrian women. Those detainee women were forgotten between the humid walls of the prisons and they were choking to death by the cold iron that prevents air from the dark prison.
‘WHINING, the first part of this series, is a story of a nightmare has been squeezing of minds and shocking the souls of Syrian people. Gruesome atrocities in security chambers nad prisons cells have no ending as the Bashar al-Assad’s regime stays in power.
In this new series, there are other testimonies and additional tales of sorrows of absent old women and housewives, mothers and children, who been marginalized behind the sun's borders because of Syria’s dictatorial regime.
The arrest by the Assad regime is systematic, especially with women where the arrest have become a lethal weapon and despicable. It’s a double-edged knife or more. It depends on intimidating the female detainee, breaking her psychologically, humiliating her family and taking revenge from the opposition milieu.. And most importantly, depriving the detainee of her future.
In the first episode, we will hear the testimony of activist Shams al-Dimashkia (Mona Baraka), a media activist and works in medical relief, who was arrested south of Damascus with her sister in-law.
She been arrested in the prison section 215, where the psychological pressure.
Mona said that she released with an exchange deal, and then she left the country.
Arrest campaigns were random.. mass punishment and intimidation.. most of female detainees had no active role in the demonstrations.. but they had been arrested because they were residents of a certain area, or from a revolutionary city.. Some were arbitrarily detained by the regime to pressure their families. After the military escalation, women were arrested to be a part of prisoner exchange and swap deals.
The arbitrary arrest began before the revolution erupted in 2011.. Arrest is a fundamental practice by the Assad regime, It’s the core of the regime nature.
All know that Syria has 13 Intelligence departments, each one has numerous prisons. Some are known and some are still secret, some are identified by a number and some have no number. All have been operating since the Assad family took power in 1970.
The society perspective over the female detainee is engulfed with indictment and suspicion due to regime leaks about atrocities committed against them by the prison officers and flagellant.
The woman prisoner pays double price for a crime she never committed.
If we assume that demanding your right to live in dignity is a crime.
There is no accurate numerical data for women prisoners or a number of those died under torture.
The Arab Organization for Human Rights says the number of female detainees in the regime prisons is more than 175,000. Other stats made by advocate groups reveal lower or higher number.. But injustice is still injustice.. whatever the number.
The first shout for freedom has broken the fear of Syrians, it was the voice of all. Men, women.. young men and girls.
Syrian women were there at the first peaceful demonstrations and were among the first arrested.
In March 2011, the Syrian people took to the streets to say their word, after an age-long congestion, decades of oppression and tyranny.. They called for freedom, demanding their natural right to live an honorable life where social justice and liberty..
Everybody participated in the revolution; bullets of regime forces indiscriminately shot in the face of all. Martyrs were men, women and children.
Arrest campaigns tracked all civilians, no norm or moral standard took into consideration.
In 1980s, a large-scale arrest campaign launched by the Syrian regime, some cases had been documented for women apprehended over links with the Muslim Brotherhood, or the Communist Action Party, or even without a charge.
Adra Central Prison, which founded to be a civilian prison, was not much different from security services prisons.. ‘Adra’ and other prisons.. are cellars for detention where no judicial power, laws or legal regulations are being implemented.
The only benefit of Adra prison is the regime recognition of all people held in the detention.. While the detainees in other prisons have been abandoned and forgotten, without names or recognition, without any guarantees or rights, including. The right to life.
Who dies in security branches is deprived from his right in proper burial.. and in a tombstone mentions his name.
To reach Adra prison is a step towards freedom since its an admission that the female detainee is alive.. but that does not mean that she is approaching freedom .. because who put her in 'Adra' are able to forcibly disappear her again in new prison.
Sure, not all female detainees had been endured to physical assault, but all of them were subjected to psychological abuse. The deep impact damage is indelible. It can stay forever. The hardest experience of the detention is when you realize that, getting out of prison not always means you have obtained your freedom.
Most of the security prisons have underground cells. No windows, thick and clammy walls, bricks mashed with blood, clay saturated with tears, spirits choked with dust where nobody hears.
Blood has a smell, but has no voice, tears have a taste but have no voice. Souls have own whine but have no voice but only whining is a voice but has no sound.
Prisons of the Assad regime are still full, women prisoners are still there. alone with their grief amid the silence of the world.
Zaman Al Wasl
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