MuseumDESCRIPTION:
Jane Alao, a psychosocial counselor at the Amel Centre for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Victims of Torture in Nyala, South Darfur discusses the objectives of the Centre--to provide treatment, rehabilitation, direct assistance, awareness and legal aid to victims of torture and rape. She focuses on the story of three cousins who were raped on their way to school in Nyala and the legal proceedings of their case.
TRANSCRIPT:
NARRATOR: Welcome to Voices on Genocide Prevention, a podcasting service of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Your host is Jerry Fowler, Director of the Museum’s Committee on Conscience.
JERRY FOWLER: This is Voices on Genocide Prevention. I am Jerry Fowler. My guest today is Jane Alao. She is a psychosocial counselor at the Amel Centre for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Victims of Torture in Nyala, South Darfur. The Amel Center helps victims of torture and sexual violence with specialized medical treatment and psychosocial support that enables them to rebuild their lives with dignity. Jane is in the United States to receive the Bayard Rustin Human Rights Award from the American Federation of Teachers. Jane, welcome to the program.
JANE ALAO: I thank you for the cordial welcoming and for this interview that I will be doing, and I hope that many are going to benefit from the message that I will be passing.
JERRY FOWLER: I think our audience will be very interested to hear your message. You have come pretty much straight from Darfur where you have been working with Internally Displaced People. Before we talk specifically about that work, I am a little interested in your own story. You, yourself, were displaced from your home a number of years ago in Southern Sudan. How did that happen?
JANE ALAO: I am Sudanese, from the southern part of the Sudan. I got displaced from the South in 1989, when the problem in the South intensified. We had to come to Khartoum for security, for protection, for education. During my stay in Khartoum, I finished my education in Khartoum, and in 2004, I got the chance of being employed by the Amel Center. I came to South Darfur, Nyala, and me and some colleagues; we helped in the establishment of Amel Center in Nyala. That is when I started my work in South Darfur working for the IDPs and the torture victims, and the rape cases too, in the different IDP camps and Nyala, itself, among the host community.
JERRY FOWLER: When you went to Nyala to start up the Center, this was in the latter part of 2004, and all during 2003 and then 2004, there had been this mass violence in Darfur; civilians being driven from their homes; what did you find when you arrived in Nyala?
JANE ALAO: What is known is that the conflict in Darfur, started since 2004, 2002, 2003. The conflict in Darfur became so serious by the end of 2003, and now to date. When the Amel Center was established, it was established as a result of the victims, the magnitude of the conflict itself, and the victims of torture that are really in need of medical treatment, psychosocial support, and the legal aid in the Darfur region, especially in South Darfur. As a result of that, our head of the Center thought of establishing that Center because the kind of service that Amel Center providing is somehow different from other NGOs working down in Darfur.
JERRY FOWLER: In what way is it different?
JANE ALAO: It is different in the sense that there are other NGOs that have the program of rule of law, they have the projection program; they have the medical program. It is different in the sense that we are lawyers. The three programs: the medical aid, legal treatments, psychosocial supports; these programs are free of charge. When we come to the legal aid, we locate a lawyer to a specific victim that comes to our center, and the lawyer helps in filing of the case for their victim, and going with the victim to the police station to file the case, helps the victim in forwarding the case up to the level of the Office of the Attorney General. Also, if the case reaches the point where it needs further appeal, we do that. If the case goes farther, our lawyers do that. This kind of a service is not being provided by other NGOs in Nyala specifically. There are some other NGOs that provide this kind of protection, but providing legal advice, maybe awareness raising; this all falls on the umbrella of protection, but the kind of legal service that we provide is quite different from the legal service that has been provided by other NGOs. In terms of medical treatment, we do provide medical treatment for victims of torture and sexual gender based violence. It even differs to the sense that for the medical treatment we have severe cases like people that face amputations of their legs and hands, people that have neurological problems in their head, people that need further psychiatric assistance which is not available in Nyala.
JERRY FOWLER: They need this assistance as a result of being attacked?
JANE ALAO: As a result of the attack; as a result of the conflict itself. There are some people that need major orthopedic surgery which is not available in Nyala, but now we have an orthopedic surgeon in our doctor’s network. Like I have said, the different people, especially victims of torture, you find someone that has been severely tortured, the person sometime needs some plastic surgery, and this kind of service is not available in the other NGOs, like IFC, MSF. They do provide medical treatment, but the kind of medical treatment we provide is different. If you do not have the service, the treatment right in Nyala, we refer our cases to Khartoum, we buy them the air ticket, we give them the living expenses, and if the person needs someone to accompany them to Khartoum, we buy them the ticket, and until we make sure that the person is able to come back to the society, we help with integrating the person back into society. It is a long process. We have cases since the establishment of the Amel Center, up to date, we have cases whom we have taken their testimony, and they are still coming to our Center because their treatment needs more than one year, more than two years. That is why we are saying that the kind of service, of medical treatment we do provide is different. The same goes for the psychosocial support too; that is the rehabilitation. We think that rehabilitation is very important for tortured victims because when someone is tortured, your personality is totally broken; you are totally unable to cope again in the society. You develop post-traumatic stress disorder; you get isolated; you have all those psychological problems that you do face. It is our role, the role of the Amel Center, to make sure that the victims who come to our Center, we are able to help them in rehabilitating them back into society, to their families, because the society is in need of them, and we are sure that if we do provide such kinds of service, at least this person can go and tell another person that they had the treatment. By telling the other person, it is a form of telling people that the Amel Center is there; you can go to the Amel Center and they can provide you with this kind of service.
JERRY FOWLER: In the almost two years that the Center has been in Nyala, how many cases have you dealt with?
JANE ALAO: Like I have said before, we have handled so many cases. For the medical treatment and the psychosocial support we have had more than 300 cases up to date. For the legal aid, they have more than 1,000 cases. Those are cases that are still pending; cases that the victims, the charges have been dropped, and there are still ongoing cases at the court level. There are some survivors that come to our Center for the legal advice. There are more than 1,000 cases being handled by the legal aids, and for the medical treatment, there are more than 300. We can that, maybe by the end of this year, there will be more than 2,000 cases; or we are almost getting to 2,000 cases, but these are the people that had the chance of coming across traumas, so it means that there are lots of torture cases, there are lots of victims outside of there that have never heard of Amel Center who are unable to come to Amel Center, maybe due to financial problems because they need money to transport themselves, and that is why right now we are having a site in Nyala, we are having a center in El Fasher, and then we are having monitors in Geneina, in other places in Western Darfur who can help in telling the people that there is a center called Amel Center that provides that kind of service. If they come across—if they come to El Fasher, they can come to El Fasher, that is not that foreign—they can get that necessary service. If they have money to come to South Darfur, we are there. If they have money to come to Khartoum, we are having a branch center in Khartoum too. They can go to Amel Center, and we can help them in whatever we think we can provide them the service that they want.
JERRY FOWLER: All of these cases that you have dealt with in Nyala—and I am sure you have had personal contact with many of them—are there any in particular that really stick with you?
JANE ALAO: Like I said, a torture case is not something, it is different. A victim of torture, when I am the first contact for the victim of torture, when the person comes to the Center seeking medical treatment. A torture case that had a gun shot, maybe amputation, whatever when the person comes, he comes in a very bad psychological condition. Apart from this, we have a place for torture cases, we have the rape cases, we have cases of sexual-based gender violence. This is the most challenging case that I have come across. Since I started my work in Nyala, whenever I get up in the morning, I will say that I hope that we do not have a rape case today, but it happens that there are lots of rape cases that come to our Center or go to other clinics in the different IDP camps. There are more than 30-40 rape cases that I have come across, that I have met, I have met their families, and they had counseling sessions and they are able to get back to the society, some were able to get married, some were able to accept the whole situation, but still it needs further more help. There is this case of three cousins. They were coming from the village, coming to Nyala; they are students, they are studying in Nyala. They are in the car with their brother, the car was ambushed by a group of Janjaweed, they were all in masked faces, carrying weapons. It happened that this three cousins, each one was taken to different locations in the forest, the other one was taken by one person, the two others were taken by two of the other ones by three, they were threatened by gun and they were verbally abused because of their color, because of the tribe they come from, and they were raped. As a result of their rape itself, when those people finished whatever they were doing to them, they were taken, their properties, everything. In that trucks there were older women, but the three were the only one chosen among those elderly women. It is an indication that whenever a rape case takes place in a village, usually they target small kids from the age of 8-9, 15, 20; they are the ones being chosen by the perpetrators.
JERRY FOWLER: Have you had patients that young; eight or nine years old?
JANE ALAO: Yes, we had a case of nine, a case of ten and eleven, and cases of fifteen, sixteen, and cases of twenty, twenty-one, women of sixty, sixty-five, up to seventy. We have a variety in the cases that do come to our center. These girls, when those people took their things they came to Nyala, and when they came to Nyala, they were taken to the hospital for treatment, but it happens that we have different aid, which was a real obstacle for rape cases, even for torture cases too, but for rape cases we say that it is an obstacle because a when a rape case comes within seventy-hours, the rape case has the chance of getting a rape kit treatment—that is the morning pills that prevents her from getting pregnant, for HIV, for sexually transmitted diseases, antibiotic treatments for bruises wherever. This cousin, the three cousins, they were going from the police to the hospital. Finally, I stopped working for UNAMIS—that is the United Nations Mission in the Sudan—and our lawyer, they came across the three cousins, they are brought to our center, we helped in giving them their rape kit treatment. Fortunately the perpetrator—the guy that did the action—was arrested by the brother of the three cousins, he was jailed, and our lawyer helped in filing the case. It went to the level of the Attorney General and the case was taken to court.
JERRY FOWLER: Was one person captured or were all the people that were involved?
JANE ALAO: Only that person was arrested, captured, among the group, but the three cousins were able to identify the perpetrator himself because their underwear, their clothes, their personal things were found among the belongings of the perpetrators. Usually I make sure to attend the court session. For the survivors themselves, for them, it is like a support for them. Even they ask, “Jane, can you come and attend the court session?” so I make sure that I am there. Sometimes they do not feel like answering some questions, so I do tell them that, “you have accepted, you tell the truth, if you know the person or if you do not know the person.” They were able to identify the person, but the case never went forward, even if they were able to identify the perpetrator himself. Now, the perpetrator is moving, we do not know, he is now free, moving either to Nyala or Khartoum, and for sure if he has committed such kind of a crime, for sure there are other people that he has raped. Those girls, they do come to our center to ask what is going on. We tell the case is still pending, there is nothing that we can do, it is the system, and all of this usually happens because of impunity. That is one of our objectives, of Amel Center, or SOAT, challenging impunity. Through the case of these three cousins and some other ten or maybe thirty rape cases, because of impunity, their cases are still pending. Because of inappropriate investigations by the police, cases are still pending. It is not helping; the system is really not helping the rape cases to bring further their cases. That is why you find most rape victims—which is rape now these days—if she comes within seventy-two hours, she will go for the rape kip treatment, but apart from that, even though we tell her, you can file a case, you can come to Amel Center and we can help, she will say, “No, my sister, maybe a friend, she was raped, she filed a case, what happened? Nothing happened. Those people were not arrested. Justice was not there, nothing was done. I do not feel like filing a case. It is better for me to have the treatment, and I will stay at home. At least I will not get pregnant and I will not have other complications as a result of being raped.”
JERRY FOWLER: Does the government allow you to operate freely?
JANE ALAO: Amel Center in Nyala, with the kind of work we are doing, it is very sensitive. It is like, because we file cases against some officials from the Sudanese army, or maybe Janjaweed, their allied militia, or maybe from any organized body—
JERRY FOWLER: Can I just ask; are most of the cases that you have seen involving perpetrators from the Sudanese military and the Janjaweed militia?
JANE ALAO: Yes, I can say eighty percent, or eighty-five percent of our cases have been filed against the Janjaweed militia and some against the officials, the Sudanese army. Most of them, they are the perpetrators and some of the perpetrators are well known to the survivors themselves, but some of the perpetrators are not known to them, like rapes. When they rape, they usually come in masked faces, so you cannot know who is doing this act. It becomes impossible for you to identify the person, but at least they are able—the survivors themselves—they are able to say that they were attacked by the Janjaweed, and we usually try to make the survivor herself give us the description. She will say that he was in a masked face, he was carrying a weapon and he was wearing either the Sudanese military uniform, and he was wearing boots, and giving us all the description. It helps us in identifying the person, but usually we leave the survivor to tell who the perpetrator she thinks is. Was is it an ordinary man, or maybe was it from the Sudanese army? What kind of uniform, from the Janjaweed of from a rebel group? We leave them to identify the perpetrators themselves. It is not easy work, doing such kind of work, because you file cases against the group that—like the Janjaweed or the Sudanese army—usually the harassment, the intimidation, we are always ready for that, anytime they can come and you can be arrested. Why? They will say that you—sometimes there will be no reason—sometimes they will say that because we provide treatment, maybe any service that we provide for survivors that they think is not good on their side, or maybe because they are sure that the survivor herself knew who the perpetrator was. They will try to intimidate and harass you so that you have the fear in yourself. When you have the fear, you break down and you are unable to help the person who came for your help.
JERRY FOWLER: Jane Alao is a psychosocial counselor at the Amel Center for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Victims Torture in Nyala, South Darfur. Jane, thanks for being with us today.
JANE ALAO: I thank you too, and thanks for the interview. Like I said before, I hope that the message is clear, and we are looking forward for things to get well in Darfur for the IDPs, and for everyone who has been a victim of the conflict in Darfur.
JERRY FOWLER: Thanks.
JANE ALAO: You are welcome.
NARRATOR: You have been listening to Voices on Genocide Prevention, a podcasting service of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. To learn more about the Museum’s Committee on Conscience, visit our website at www.committeeonconscience.org.
