I.
Introduction
The
repercussions of the "earthquake" that hit Lebanon following the
assassination of President Rafik Hariri three years ago were intensified,
as if it is intended for this country not to emerge from the cycle of
insecurity and the political and demotic divisions crumbling what is left
of the homeland and the civil society (the Arab-Beirut University
incidents, the civil disobedience, the emergence of snipers and the
killing of the two Ziads, and and..). The year 2007 was not better than
the previous two years; assassinations, bombings, destabilization of civil
peace, diffusion of the poisonous fumes of sectarianism until Lebanon is
no longer the country of civilization and the beacon of freedom. As if
this fragile country was only missing the internal clashes and the endless
serial killings reaping political figures and innocent civilians spreading
grief on all its territories (Lebanese Army Martyrs) and opening the door
to a new displacement of the Palestinian refugees from their homes after
the war Nahr el-Bared Camp in the summer of 2007, as well as committing
serious and abundant violations for the arrested in the Lebanese prisons
and places of detention.
1.
The Missing and the Lebanese detainees
The
year 2007 formed a replica of the tens of years where the successive
governments had not effectuate any serious investigation to know the fate
of 17,000 missing Lebanese who disappeared during the civil war; whereas
the Syrian-Lebanese Committee, which was formed in June 2005 to uncover
the fate of Lebanese detainees in Syrian prisons who are estimated to be
about 640, did not give -to date- results or indicators to solve the
suffering of dozens of families that refuse to end their Open Sit-in since
April 11, 2005 in front of the ESCWA headquarters in Beirut
before discovering the fate of their sons.
The six Lebanese detainees are still in the Israeli prisons awaiting the
completion of the exchange operation between Hezbollah and Israel to be
released and on top of them, the Dean of the Lebanese Detainees Samir
Al-Kantar who completes his 30 years of detention in April 22 of this
year, where the Israeli criminal judiciary continue the trial of four
detainees belonging to Hizbollah in front of the Central Court in
contravention of the Fourth Geneva Convention, which stipulates that they
should be treated as prisoners of war because they were arrested from the
Lebanese territories during the July 2006 aggression.
Although the verdict duration of the captive Nasim Nisr had ended on
February 2 of this year, but the Prisons Department had extended the
duration for a further two-month exposed also for extension because the
Interior Ministry refuses to release him because he is a danger to Israel
and threaten to prevent his release or put him under house arrest in
Jerusalem if released and deprive him from returning to his homeland as he
wishes.
In
addition to the six detainees, there are dozens missing and the bodies of
martyrs, where Israel refuses to recognize their presence and handle them
over to the humanitarian organizations.
2.
Cluster Bombs
More
than 4 million cluster bombs were left by Israel during the July 2006
aggression in the Southern areas, the permanent danger and constant
aggression, which threatens the people and their livelihoods. With Israel
insisting on not handing maps of places stormed with cluster bombs,
official statistics indicate that the injured have reached more than 260,
including 88 percent of sheepherders, workers and adult male farmers
where
the last -but not the least- of them was the shepherd Abdullah Mohammed
Foua'ani (40 years), 7 killed 71 people (under 18) injured where the last
child was Ali Kadouh (6 years). Knowing that 40% of them are incapable
from exploding because they have expired. And what increases its danger,
the rain that carries it from a specific place to another, from a fenced
place to another was believed to be clean in an area of 32 million square
meters, increased during a year and a half of the year to 38.3 million
square meters, and this number is expected to increase and there remains
an area of 8 million square meters to be cleaned.
3.
Continuance
of assassinations
On
February 13, 2007 a bomb exploded in a public bus in Ain Alak area in the
northern Metn resulted in civilian casualties. Then, the ambulant
successive explosions followed leaving losses in lives and properties of
innocent citizens; on June 13, 2007 MP Walid Eido was assassinated in
Beirut, he was killed in the blast with his son, his bodyguards and 6
civilians who were passing by the place. A few days later, another car
bomb targeted, for the first time on June 24, a lorry belonging to the
Spanish Battalion operating in the UNIFIL forces in the Khiam valley in
the South led to the killing of 6 Spanish soldiers.
Serial killings continued in Lebanon reaping innocent civilians in the
way, without being interrupted by actual investigation or serious reveal
for any clues of the crimes and their perpetrators.
On September 19, 2007 MP Antoine Ghanem was assassinated in Sin-il-Fil
area meters away from a post of the Internal Security Forces, his
bodyguard was killed and four other citizens.
On December 12, 2007 the director of operations in the Lebanese army,
Brigadier Francois Hajj and his bodyguard were killed.
On January 25, 2007 Captain Wissam Eid, the responsible of the section of
information of the Internal Security Forces was killed with his bodyguard
and seven other citizens in Hazmieh area.
The four officers are still arrested in the case of the assassination of
the martyr Rafik Hariri, without a trial or conviction especially that the
officials of the Commission of Investigation repeatedly announced that
they do not accuse them of the crime of the assassination of Hariri. And
the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in the High Commission for Human
Rights in Geneva declared that their confinement is arbitrary and
incompatible with the provisions in Articles 9 and 14 of the International
Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, to which Lebanon is a party.
4.
The
Allot of Sectarianism and Detachment
The
political crisis and the division between the political parties reflected
a violent clash in the streets. On January 23.2007, the student Adnan
Shums was killed and tens were wounded in confrontations between students
allegiant to the opposition group and others to the government upon a
political caucus and the collision was tragically developed to
confrontations controlled by anonymous snipers shot at the protestors in
the streets in front of the security forces that neither investigated in
the incident nor prosecuted the doers. A year later, and on January
27.2008, the apparitions of the likelihood of a renewed civil war emerged
after the confrontations that took place between some of the protesters,
to the abruption of electricity, and the Lebanese army in Mar Mikhael area
after the breaking out of some youths protesting by burning of rubber
tires and trying to cut the road. The youths were startled with gunshots
from all over by the Lebanese army and an anonymous source, where eight
victims were killed, among them two rescuers from a Civil Defense Team and
from the Popular Aid for Relief and Development.
5.
The
Conditions of the Prisons
Legitimate
doubts are still hovering around the way the Military Intelligence unit at
the Ministry of Defense, the Intelligence Branch of the Internal Security
Forces and the Combat of Drug Smuggling Branch deal with the detainees and
prisoners especially that the voices of those who are subjected to torture
and beating still emanate from some outposts and on top of them is the
Post of Hobeish which is designated to those accused of drug abuse and
trafficking and debauchery, without forgetting to refer to the
adjudication, issued in March 2007, convicting a police who tortured an
Egyptian worker in confinement.
The
recent period has witnessed a remarkable increase in the number of
deceased prisoners which heavily rings the tocsin on the conditions of the
crowded prisons in Lebanon, of which the incident of 10 prisoners escaping
from Zahle prison (February 24, 2008) forms a flagrant scandal about them.
Knowing that members of the Parliamentary Commission on Human Rights has
described the prison during its visit a year ago that "it is a prison
for those sent to death, one of the worst prisons where it is unfit to be
a ranch for the animals; it requires a radical solution." But a
solution hasn't yet emerged despite the flatulence of the Internal
Security Forces to respect the rights of prisoners.
As
for the deceased prisoners, and their number is 20 in the year 2007 which
is a scary number and a blot of shame for Lebanon, the prisoner Naji Ahmed
Khadr who died inside the prison in Tripoli (on December 11, 2006) is not
the first, and the prisoner Wissam Sandakli (33 years) who died (on March
8, 2008) won't be the last. Wissam died in the hospital of which he was
transferred to from Roumieh Prison after he had a heart attack and a brain
clot. Other five arrested as well as other Lebanese and non-Lebanese
prisoners died in Roumieh Prison and other places of detention where the
Internal Security Forces never undergo a serious overt investigation about
these incidents, they simply -each time- justified the death cases to
health problems that the prisoners suffered from.
As for Al-Qubba prison in Tripoli, a survivor of
torture who had spent 13 years in the Syrian prisons, and for selfhood
reasons, was arrested in this prison for a period of 15 days, he told us:
"the humiliation that I felt in the small humid cell, in my country,
where 48 prisoners are squeezed, is a humiliation that I never felt during
the 13 years of arbitrary detention in the Syrian prisons!" He also
told us how some prisoners scream and suffer due to their physical pain.
In
the radical events of Mar Mikhael (on January 27, 2008) the Lebanese army
arrested some young protesters and violently took them to the army
lorries, kicking, insulting and beating them with rifle butts as it was
reflected directly on the TV screens, and then they lead them to the
Directorate of Intelligence. It appeared later on that the military police
had detained for about a week five minors -with adults- in one of the
places of detention and questioned them without the presence of a Social
Representative as required by the Law of Protecting Lebanese Juveniles and
released them on February 2, 2008 with charge bonds.
6.
Nahr
Al-Bared Battle
Nahr
el-Bared battle that took place between the Lebanese army and the
extremist Fatah-Islam organization in the summer of 2007 led to the
destruction of the Palestinian camp, where members of the organization
were localized, and to the fall of about 40 civilians and the displacement
of the camp's population which is around 30,000 citizens and the
destruction of their homes, properties and their fled to the nearby
Beddawi camp and other camps.
The
tragedy of the women and the children of extremist Fatah-Islam
organization (19 women and 37 children) ended on February 20, 2008 with
the deportation of the last family which was under house arrest in a
mosque in Sidon since last September, knowing that their deportation
violates the international conventions that necessitate their stay in
Lebanon to the risk of prosecution in Syria and Jordan to where they left
and which are pursuing their husbands and fathers who some were killed and
others being prosecuted.
As
for the practice of the Directorate of Intelligence and Security Forces
with the arrested members of the extremist Fatah-Islam organization (more
than 220 members), this is something that is worth dissertation
because
extremism does not justify violence, torture and ill treatment in return;
for that one of the prisoners died in Roumieh Prison without specifying
the cause of the death. And on August 31, 2007, Al-Arabiya TV Channel
presented a tape showing one of the leaders of the organization, called
Abu-Hurayra, injured and in the grip of the security forces that were
trying to questioning him although he was bleeding until he passed away;
which contradicts the official version stating that he was immediately
killed during the shooting and shooting back between him and the security
forces.
The
Lebanese army has the right to maintain the security of the Lebanese and
Palestinian citizens, the protection of civil peace and arresting
violators of national security, and rebuffing to terrorist groups, but all
this does not justify torture and the inhumane treatment of detainees.
7.
The
situation of workers and refugees
While
the reality of the Palestinian refugees is still the same concerning their
civil rights as of discrimination, suffering and injustice, the crisis of
Iraqi refugees, assumed to be around 50,000 in Lebanon, exacerbated this
year. Lebanon is not providing them any services or protection, but also
the government refused to project the legal status of the UNHCR's
recognition of the newcomers of them; many of them newcomers are exposed
to arrest, fines and detention for an indefinite period and forcing them
to repatriate to Iraq, before the Directorate of Public Security released
some of them in the context of settling the situation of foreign nationals
in Lebanon.
With
several countries have made progress toward respecting the rights of
foreign housemaids, Lebanon is still abridged and delinquent in this
regard where incidents of suicide and escape from duty are persistently
repeated because of the unfair prejudice laws concerning the monthly
salary, the health insurance and the violence against them without
governmental restraint and supervision. The recorded incidents of suicide
in Lebanon are more than 200 housemaids during the past four years without
serious investigation in their deaths.
With
several countries have made progress toward respecting the rights of
foreign housemaids, but Lebanon is still abridged and delinquent in this
regard where incidents of suicide and escape from duty are persistently
repeated because of the unfair prejudice laws concerning the monthly
salary, the health insurance and the violence against them without
governmental restraint and supervision. The recorded incidents of suicide
in Lebanon are more than 200 housemaids during the past four years without
serious investigation in their deaths.
8.
Increased
violence and suicide
The past year has witnessed an alarming rise in the rate of murders,
kidnappings and incidents of suicide, which are being repeated in one
week. For that, in less than two weeks in the current month of March 6
declared incidents of suicide were recorded.
9.
Discrimination
against Women
Despite
its effectiveness in all areas of society, Lebanese woman is still
suffering from discrimination in the Laws of Personal Status and
Nationality, and criminal laws related to domestic violence. Lebanese law
does not permit the Lebanese woman to grant the Lebanese nationality to
her husband or her children despite the intensive campaigns led by the
women's associations during the past year.
II. Khiam Center's Work Programme
Under
these difficult political, security, economic and social conditions, Khiam
Center continued its activities; there was the launching of the project,
within the framework of the European Initiative for Democracy and Human
Rights, funded by the European Union: "Medical, 
Social &
Psychological Assistance for Victims of Torture" in March of the
year 2007 where it was a qualitative leap in the work of the Center, a
coronation of the rehabilitation process carried out over several years
for the survivors of torture, who were subjected to torture, and their
families as well as the families of the current detainees, abducted and
missing persons. More importantly, July 2006 aggression returned to the
minds of the prisoners and their families the painful experiences that
they underwent, in addition to the psychological, health and humanitarian
suffering that the war left behind for various groups of the Lebanese
community, especially children, after the center had begun, with the
beginning of the aggression, a media, psychological, social and health
supportive extensive campaign for the displaced persons and returnees
alike. The new project has enabled the staff of the Center to expand the
area of work, develop advancements and increase the number of
beneficiaries. In addition to its interest in the cause of human rights
and democracy in Lebanon and the world, the center has consistently
focused on monitoring the violations that was documented, and called to
raise the voice high to prevent these violations
and urged all the
humanitarian agencies & organizations in concern, to work on raising
these issues objectively and without hiding behind political and sectarian
considerations.
10. Center's offerings and activities
-
The center founded its
new location based in Beirut, composed of two floors and the working team:
the executive, the administrative, and the medical in addition to the
clinic.
- The joining of new
volunteers to work in the center (the number of volunteers reached in the
end of 2007: 60 volunteers).
- Offering health assistance through 2007 to 584 survivors of torture
(from the Israeli and Syrian prisons) and their families, according to the
following schedule:
|
The health and
psychological support included guidance, inspection, medicines, free lab
tests and contributions to the payment of the differences of the
hospitals; this support was all over the Lebanese territories. On the
social level, the Center has provided assistance of stationery and school
registration fees for 90 families and social assistance for 50 families.
- Organizing educational,
recreational and artistic activities for the children of victims of
torture in Bab Al-Tabbeneh area and Minya in Tripoli (230 children and 186
survivors of torture) and in the south (the participation of 155
children).
- Organizing training
courses in cooperation with the Arab Institute for Human Rights:
-
First session: Mechanisms and Techniques against Torture (25 participants from the Center and 5 trainers) held at the headquarters of the Arab NGO Network for Development in Beirut on May 26 and 27.
-
Second session: Advocacy Campaigns against Torture (30 participants: lawyers, professors, students, human rights activists, released prisoners torture survivors and volunteers). It was held in the Social and Cultural Center in Deir Kanoun An-Nahr on July 28 and 29.
-
Third session: Competencies and Skills Trainers Against Torture (4 trainers and 23 participants: lawyers, doctors and social workers), it was held on December1 and 2 at the headquarters of the Arab NGO Network for Development in Beirut
-
Fourth session: Economic Empowerment of Survivors of Torture (25 participants and two trainers), it was held in March of 2008 at the Khiam Center's branch in the south (House of the Lebanese Detainee).
-
Marking June 26; the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture: 
-
Launching the three projects on the rehabilitation of victims of torture and monitoring at the headquarters of the European Union Delegation in Beirut.
-
Organizing a workshop about the Lebanese Laws Provisions and their Conformity with UN Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (16 participants: lawyers, representatives of non-governmental organizations, human rights activists and survivors of torture), it was held in Beirut on June 25.
-
Carrying out a TV spot under the title "Together against torture" telecasted by many TV channels.