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The KRC held, yesterday 27.04.2001, a press meeting - in the press syndicate headquarters - during which KRC make public the establishment of the social medical and psychological support workshop for the liberated detainees. The meeting gathered a number of liberated ex-detainees yet many responsible in various sectors among whom were present: Mr. Ibrahim El Hajj manager of the prevention department in the Ministry of health in his capacity as representative of the general health Minister, Mrs. Nada Fayad chair of the Psychology department relevant to the first branch faculty of Literature and humanitarian sciences in the Lebanese University, Mr. Muhamed Safa general secretary of the follow up committee for the support of the cause of the detainees in the Israeli prisons, as well as numerous representatives of social, and humanitarian organizations, medical bodies and women associations.

Mrs. Nada El-Jbeily pronounced in the name of KRC a speech, which focused on the necessity to conduct studies pertaining to the liberated detainees health and psychological state, yet to publish the same. Consequently she stressed on the urge to establish medical, psychological, and physiological centers, as well as vocational and cultural centers. In this frame, the allocution invited to organize cultural psychological sessions in collaboration with the humanitarian and social institutions. Mrs. Jbeily added that KRC called for the government to enhance its incumbent endeavors to find adequate job placements for the liberated detainees and to promote the social allocation assessed to them, yet KRC incited The United Nation organization and the donating countries to contribute in their embrace project.

Literally, Dr. Gassan Jaafar made an discourse on behalf of the Doctors assembly in which he certified the birth of the “most global support embrace and care workshop for the liberated ex-detainees ever”, concretized by the voluntary enrollment of almost 200 doctors in various specializations adherent to the multiple branches of the assembly in numerous Lebanese regions. This said, he revealed that the liberated detainees and their families could benefit from free of charge medical examinations in the volunteers clinics, and clarified that this care is provided solely for the liberated detainee, his wife/her spouse and children.

Than, Mr. Habib Abed El Hamid whom was an ex detainee said that the government embrace for the detainee and his/her family should form a national and humanitarian duty. He exposed, in this context, some aspects of the liberated detainee agony and criticized the ignoble public concern towards them.

The meeting, afterwards listened to the intervention speech of Dr. Mona Fayad titled: “The urgency to confront the consequences of occupation and detention” which lightened up the detention side effects implicating instability and fissure in between the one family members especially in the case of a married detainee. She indicated, in this frame, that detention causes a violent and compelling reorganization in the heard of the family therefore, emphasized on the engendered agitations of such act.

Finally, Dr Ibrahim El Hajj representative of the Minister of health, declared an oration in which he remarked that, the social support workshop should, most notably, work on the development of the citizens and the medical sectors’ employees attention towards the patient suffering from psychological disorders, yet on the metamorphose of the treatment principles because the healing of these pathological disorders has become possible and does not require anymore to relegate these patient for long periods or to put him/her in what is commonly known as specialized sanitariums.

The meeting reached an unexpected end concretized by the wish of some doctors to offer their voluntary services in the center.

The major objective that lays under the foundation of Al-Khiam Rehabilitation centers’ follow-up committee for the support of the detainees was for it to be a social humanitarian association aiming to embrace all the liberated detainees whom survived the gruesome detention in Israeli concentration camps most notably:

1- To conduct surveys and file up consolidations pertaining to the health and the psychiatric status of the ex-detainees, that have survived the painful experience, lived in the Israeli torture concentration camps.

2- To establish psychiatric, physiological, and medical centers as well as vocational and cultural centers.

3- To organize conferences and symposiums related to the ex-detainees rehabilitation subject. To assess psychological cultural sessions, and to prepare various activities for the survivors from the horrendous torture and to reinsert them in the society. To strive in order to provide these liberated detainees suitable job placements, and establish vocational and technical sessions in the collaboration with various humanitarian and social institutions and organizations.

It is worth to mention that the core of our project was to sustain the detainees with the requisite social, humanitarian, psychiatric, and legal support. Therefore once launched, a tremendous number of bodies and institutions contributed, each in their private means, to relive hope in the hearts of the liberated detainees, to follow their heath and psychiatric state and above all to embrace yet reinsert them socially.

In effect these social contributions shall not substitute the incumbent government obligations towards these liberated persons, particularly suffering from a deteriorating social, financial and psychological existence and from the absence of the true embracement of their surrounding society.

In fact the scene of their sit-in in front of the Parliament and the governmental palace is much more afflicting on the psychological level than the torment torture they have endured in the Israeli concentration camps.

Actually on the humanitarian level, the torture victims and their families should receive, an adapted social, medical and psychological protection. In Lebanon, these detainees, who have offered a national service, defending their homeland, have become the authentic image of the liberation and dignity, consequently their embracement shall constitute no humanitarian duty solely, but an incumbent national one to the government and the public institutions.

Should any reluctance in their embrace and grace as national heroes occur, the country dignity shall be reduced, and the Lebanese young people immigration enhanced. Consequently the spirit of resistance will decrease and the impulsion to defend the country against the occupant will be hindered, in case Lebanon faces in the future a new Israeli occupation, because the last destiny of the detainees and the resistant will be on the public institutions pavement.

In this frame, the Italian Embassy, with our collaboration, has organized a trip to some liberated detainees, to Italy in September 2000. There they received a warm welcome, owing to which they have, for once, felt the humanitarian dignity and the world estimation, they have missed in a country to which they have dedicated deliberately their lives and future.

As a matter of fact, not solely salaries, indemnities, and job placements shall concretize the liberated detainees embrace, despite the major importance of the same. It is above all the enhancement of the humanitarian dignity, and the profusion of the global social care for them as citizens and their reinsertion in the society.

Khiam Rehabilitation center urges the government to assume its obligations towards the liberated detainees, which are to provide them job placements and promote the assessed social allocations for the same. It also enhances the constitutional authority to provide the detainee with a detainee card that confers him/her special privileges near all the special and public institutions.

Therefore, summoned up by the fact that the reconstruction should be carried out above all on humans, we incite the United Nations and the donating countries to contribute in the support of this social, medical, psychological and educational project, to the better the lives of these liberated detainees.

In this context, we reiterate, our call to all the social associations and the private and public sectors, to participate in the national social global support workshop for the survivors from the Israeli concentration camps.

The KRC praise all the civil private contributions urging for their globalization and development. Literally, KRC cherished the valuable contribution of the Doctors assembly in Lebanon concretized by the voluntary enrollment of almost 200 of them in the Khiam center in order to provide for free medical and psychological treatment for the liberated detainees.

In this frame, we thank the efforts Dr. Mona Fayad invests to supervise the questionnaire prepared by Khiam center on the social and psychological states of the liberated detainees, and for her valuable thesis pertaining to the ex-detainees status and their rehabilitation process.

Literally, we cease this meeting opportunity to call for the all the Lebanese University faculties and for all other Universities to enroll as volunteer in order to accomplish this questionnaire considered as the core task of this center, besides the multiple activities we are preparing especially for the commemoration of the International day of the torture opposition on the 26^th of June.

We hope to receive a fair collaboration from you all to achieve this web page. Your contribution shall be concretized by edited articles and offered translation services on the site.

We welcome all the contributors, and let us all enroll in the social, medical, psychological, legal, and educational support of the liberated detainees.