27 June 2008
Torture Victims Demonstrate the Resiliency of the Human Spirit
U.N. Day to support torture victims observed in U.S. Capitol
Washington -- Pretty and petite, Daniele Manikeu doesn’t look like a victim of torture.
But when she came to the United States in 2004 after fleeing Cameroon, torture had left her severely underweight and depressed. She couldn’t sleep, and she felt she couldn’t trust anyone.
Manikeu, however, was lucky to find the Advocates for Survivors of Torture and Trauma (ASTT), an independent, nonprofit organization that helps torture victims like herself. Based in Baltimore, ASTT gave her a place to stay, medical aid and psychological counseling.
Today, Manikeu is in her third year at the University of Maryland working for her degree in computer engineering.
Manikeu told her story to a group of U.S. Congress members and interested Americans at a press conference held in the U.S. Capitol Building. The June 26 event commemorated the 60th anniversary of the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. This annual day of remembrance was established to call international attention to the need to help victims of what the United Nations has labeled “the most profound of human rights abuses.”
UNITED STATES A HAVEN FOR TORTURE VICTIMS
There are more than 400,000 torture survivors who have found refuge in the United States; some 40,000 live in the Baltimore-Washington area.
“The United States has always been a haven for torture survivors,” according to Karen Hanscom, ASTT’s executive director. She urged the U.S. Congress to provide more funding for the rehabilitation of torture survivors and regretted that staffing and funding limitations prevented her organization from taking in more than the 200 people it helps each year. The House Appropriations Committee will meet to discuss the budget for fiscal year 2009, but currently the federal budget to help torture victims is at $9.8 million per year, she said.
ASTT relies on funding from U.S. federal and state sources as well as donations from the general public. In addition, some funding comes from the U.N. Voluntary Fund for Torture Survivors.
Founded in 1994, ASTT has helped hundreds of torture survivors begin new lives in the United States. The people this nongovernmental organization has aided have come from more than 29 different countries. Some 93 percent, however, have come from Africa, especially Cameroon and Ethiopia.
Torture victims, Hanscom said, are people from all walks of life. Many were and are advocates for human rights. Sometimes, she said, they are just ordinary people who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
ASTT is one of only 140 treatment centers worldwide that are accredited by the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims. ASTT is also a member of the U.S. National Consortium of Torture Treatment Programs (NCTTP), and one of the 23 accredited torture victim treatment centers in the United States.
Hanscom acknowledged that despite international condemnation, “there is a great deal of torture still occurring today.” Yet, with the proper guidance and treatment, survivors can recover to live normal lives. As Manikeu described it: “With therapy, I became a human being again.”
U.S. CONGRESSIONAL COMMITMENT
Hanscom was joined at the press conference at the U.S. Capitol by Steny Hoyer, majority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, and fellow Maryland Democratic Representatives Elijah Cummings, Chris Van Hollen, John Sarbanes and Donna Edwards. Senator Benjamin Cardin (Democrat of Maryland) also spoke.
Hoyer has a long history of championing human rights and was the chair and ranking Democrat on the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (the Helsinki Commission). “The abuse of human beings,” he told the gathering at the Capitol, “is not an internal affair; it is an affair of all humanity.”
