As part of Northwestern’s annual conference on human rights, Saturday afternoon’s torture survivor panel brought members of campus and the community together to hear three heartbreaking stories firsthand about the trauma, suffering and long road to recovery as a result of torture. While speakers and members of the audience struggled in momentarily reliving the survivors’ tearful memories, their words also stood as testimony to the resilience of the human spirit – and the possibility for hope and change, the road toward solving the domestic and global issues of torture.
The two-hour panel titled “Telling the Truth: Survivors Speak Out” featured presentations by:
- Kisuule Magala Katende, a journalist and radio talk show host from Uganda who was imprisoned seven times over nine years for interviewing individuals who represented views in opposition to governmental political opinion;
- Matilde de la Sierra, a physician from Guatemala who worked in a rural highland village with indigenous Mayans and was kidnapped and tortured by soldiers;
- and Anthony Ibeagha, a Nigerian university professor who was tortured for encouraging free thought and subversive ideals among his students.
Kisuule Magala Katende: Torture and the Aftermath
Katende’s message focused on a personal narrative of his experience being tortured and the lasting effects it has produced on him. He first spoke about being beaten in his home, then about the attackers who harmed his wife before taking him to the jail where he was tortured. They stripped him down, and then manipulated the temperature so that the jail alternated between being burning hot and feeling like a freezer.
“Being in that room, it was hard for me, but remember I left my wife bleeding in our house. In that room they also put on too much light. It affected my eyes. Everywhere you looked there were reflections in the mirror of yourself, naked in a small room, freezing…It was horrible.”
Even though Katende’s torture happened years ago, he still remembers the incident with vivid detail. He described the feeling of being hardened that followed his traumatic experience.
“You feel like, I’ve seen the worst; I can’t expect to see any worse,” said Katende.
Flashbacks are common, he said, and have even made him so afraid of water that he has trouble being in a shower from time to time.
“When I’m in a room with mirrors and lights, you just feel it in your body, you just shudder because you remember that time when you were incarcerated in that room, alone,” said Katende.
Matilde de la Sierra: Can we forgive torturers?
De la Sierra opened her speech with a quiet thanks to the university and to the organizers of the conference. Her presentation, One Survivor’s Struggle with Living, Forgiving and Healing, centered around the idea of forgiveness, and whether or not it is possible for torture survivors.
De la Sierra first outlined four consequences she has suffered as a result of being tortured: exile, loss of identity, loss of dignity and desolation.
“Since being tortured, sometimes I think I walk without destinations, as a dead woman walking, as a mutilated entity. I try to smile and laugh, but deep down there is a sadness that won’t go away,” she said.
With thoughtful and teary pauses throughout her speech, she too said that hearing news of current torture brings back her pain.
“I will live my torture again and again in nightmares, in my flashbacks. I cannot forget those terrible days. I cannot believe that human beings can do such atrocities to another human person.”
De la Sierra probed the idea of forgiveness and the difficulties a victim of torture deals with trying to come to terms with a sense of absolution toward his or her torturer.
“Is forgiveness really so important, so necessary? Is it even possible? For me, forgiveness has more to do with that deep desire for inner peace,” said de la Sierra. “We survivors of torture try to pretend. I pretend that all is well now, that the past is past. But it is really isn’t past. It is with me each day.”
Anthony Ibeagha: What can we do?
Ibeagha, the third speaker, focused more heavily on a political message about torture and its global repercussions. He offered the audience a charismatic, proactive view on the possibilities for change that might protect future generations from such atrocities. Progress, he said, must be two-sided in order for it to be successful.
“The politics of this country is representative of every person in this country. So if we have a leader who believes in torture, we believe in torture. Not because we individually believe in torture but because we represent as a people a value. We empower the leader to lead us and represent us. But you have the power in you to change the leader, and stand for who you are,” he said.
While Ibeagha made clear that he does not support President Bush or his approval of torture methods, he also emphasized the power of the people to bring about a change in leadership to reduce its use. Improvement, he said, starts with talking – like his decision to share his story – and with individuals thinking about who they want to be on an individual, human level.
“Find out who you are. Just being who you are, the real person, that person who stands for humanity, that person who stands for what is right – it’s a billion steps toward progress, toward healing the world. It’s not necessarily what you can do; it’s who you are,” said Ibeagha.