'The Syrian régime has imprisoned thousands of women and children, who are subjected to systematic torture and assault. Some of the women who survived these inhumane Syrian prisons were hosted in Turkey’s Istanbul as part of an event organized by 10 nongovernmental organizations, including the Humanitarian Relief Foundation (IHH).
Two of these women who use the pseudonyms Zehra and Juri recounted the details of the horrors they faced.
Zehra said she was attacked by regime troops while she was taking necessities to a family in need. “I spent one year in prison. I was subjected to every kind of cruelty and torture. They electrocuted me after tying my hands behind my back. They took pleasure in rape and violence. It got so bad I wanted to die,” she added.
“When I got out of the prison, my troubles didn’t end. I was ashamed because of what happened to me. It is especially difficult for Syrian women. They threatened our lives so that we would stay away [from our families and friends]. The hardest part was being rejected by our families and loved ones,” Zehra said.
“I was arrested in Lattakia and taken to an air force intelligence questioning center. The two months I spent there were the longest two months of my life. I was subjected to the worst abuse and torture. It was a real hell. I love photography and have been taking photos for 17 years. Like everyone else, I too had a normal life. Then all of this happened. I managed to come here, but many of my family members are still in Syria. I can only talk to them on the phone and am constantly worried about them,” Juri said.'
'As the Syrian régime arrests hundreds of young men in the eastern and southern suburbs of Damascus despite a reconciliation deal reached in April, another dirty game the intelligence services has been working on related to the values of the conservative society in the Ghouta district - arresting, torturing and raping women of Ghouta with the aim of humiliating them and their families. Osama al-Omari, a Ghouta-based activist, confirmed that members of the Fourth Armored Division, led by Bashar al-Assad’s brother Maher, had arrested four women from the town of Arbin in October.
As usual, women were taken to an unknown destination, where they remained in detention until this month. They were released without being able to confirm what they were subjected to during the period of detention, because it is like a red line for the residents to talk about so they think they should be completely silent about it.
This silence could not endure the terrible pain of one of the women who had nervous breakdown due to bad memories and what she suffered in régime’s detention, which prompted her relatives to offer a consultation with a psychologist, but they realized that the details of the treatment sessions are terrifying.
The doctor who treated the woman confirmed that this breakdown resulted from the continuous psychological trauma caused by multiple rape as well as severe beatings and threatening to kill her entire family if she dared to disclose anything concerning the circumstances of her detention.
The horror of the victim’s words tells only part of the whole scene.
The regime is fully aware of its power, which forces silence on the victims of its violations as in the case of the four women, and if one of them had not suffered a nervous breakdown, her story would have been buried, and her killer "secret" would have accompanied her to her final resting place.
This is a part of the regime and its executioner’s confidence when they commit sexual crimes against women.
The regime continues to press the "stigma" severely, by arresting women, fabricating charges against them and not distinguishing between whether they remain in their areas or have come back with some returnees from the north.'
