Syrian govt troops brought young FSA soldier’s
fiancée, sisters, mother & female neighbors to Syrian prison in
which he was being held. One by one, he said, they were raped in front
of him. The 18-year-old had been an FSA soldier
for less than a month when he was picked up. The other men detained
with him were all raped, he told the doctor. When Kanawati asked if he,
too, was raped, he went silent. #Syria
1 of 3 sisters describe how
grp of Assad forces came to their house in Homs,tied up their
father&brother& raped the 3 women in front of them. The woman
cried as she went on to describe how after raping them the soldiers
opened their legs &burned their vaginas with cigarettes. They
allegedly told the women during this: “You want freedom? This is your
freedom.” The psychiatrist asked one of the three sisters, who was
holding a baby, “Is that baby from the rape?” The woman changed the
subject. “The girls would generally be shot when everyone had finished,”
the soldier said. “They wanted it to be known in neighborhoods that
girls had been raped, but didn’t want girls to survive & be able to
identify them later”. She has interviewed dozens of refugees who may
have been raped or otherwise sexually tortured, mostly in Homs. She
described how women have repeatedly told her that their neighbors were
raped, usually by more than one man #Syria
each time extraordinary
detail the women give & trauma they exhibit tells her that story
isn’t about a “neighbor” but the woman herself. They stripped my girls
frm their clothes, raped them then killed them w/ knives shouting”You
want freedom?This is the best brand of freedom”
