Do No Harm: A Torture Victim Remembers
by Naji Ali
This article previously appeared in The Electronic Intifada.
"I wonder if the
physicians will one day confess their crimes."
I wasn't really surprised by the watchdog group Physicians
for Human Rights-Israel's (PHR-I) latest intervention to Israel's health
ministry, in which they accused Israeli doctors of complicity in the torture of
Palestinian detainees in Israeli interrogation centers. Indeed, it sounded all
too familiar to what I experienced during 550 days of incarceration in a South
African prison from 1990 through 1992.
PHR-I reached its conclusion based on the testimony of two Palestinian
prisoners who were tortured during interrogation and developed trauma-related
symptoms including hearing loss, panic attacks and incontinence. The doctors
who treat Palestinian detainees conduct medical checkups on the prisoners
during and after interrogation but they fail to report the findings and
symptoms, which make them an actor in the torturing of detainees, PHR-I said.
The report about those tortured Palestinian detainees leads me to recall my own
experience. I returned to South Africa following the release of Nelson Mandela
after he served 27 years in apartheid prison. I chose to go back to the
birthplace of my activist father, the land that I grew up in for the first
eight years of my life, and the place where my older brother was shot and
killed right in front of me when I was just five years old.
Four days after I arrived in the country, the police picked me up off a dusty
road in the township known as Soweto (South West Township) for violating a
curfew. The ensuing one-and-a-half years of detention drove me to the brink of
insanity. I was subjected to prolonged and at times violent interrogations.
Some merely involved endless hours of questions and answers, and nearly all
consisted of some form of torture, extreme heat and cold, having to stand or
squat in a certain position for hours on end naked, sleep deprivation (their
personal favorite to use on me), and being punched in my face and body.
"One-and-a-half years of
detention drove me to the brink of insanity."
I don't remember too many instances in great detail - mostly I've blocked them
out of my mind - but I can recall one that reminds me of the testimony of the
two Palestinian detainees that testified to PHR-I.
One particular incident probably happened after I had been in custody for well
over six months. I had gone through a number of interrogations, but had told my
jailers nothing, simply because I had nothing to tell. My inquisitor looked on
at me with a stone-face and said, "Look kaffir [nigger], make it
easy on yourself and just confess that you've got dealings with those
communists in the ANC youth league." I looked on, non plussed. I
didn't have dealings with the African National Congress youth league because I
wasn't a member; I belonged to AZAPO, the Azanian People's Organization, a
Black Consciousness group, and proudly told my jailer so.
I can't recall the first blow, or the second, but over time I remember that my
left eye was beginning to close and that it felt as if my right eye was about
to fall out of the socket. At the moment when I thought it was all over, my
inquisitor stopped. As I lay on the ground gasping for air, pools of blood were
forming near my mouth and eyes as I lay face down. Then I blacked out.
I awoke in my cell but couldn't see very well as my eyes were swollen shut. But
I could feel soft hands tending to me, then a voice that I hadn't heard before
spoke to me. "Lay still I need to check your bandages," a man said,
speaking with a thick Afrikaans accent. "Who are you?" I asked.
"I'm one of the doctors here at the prison. Just lay still, you're going
to be alright." Desperate to tell him what had happened to me I tried to
give an account of all that had gone on in the torture session. Expecting him
to respond, all I heard was silence.
"Pools of blood were forming near my mouth and eyes as
I lay face down."
Surely, I thought to myself, this was because he was trying to process how such
a thing could happen. Indeed he would be outraged that the security police
would behave in such a manner to either the innocent or guilty. But the silence
continued. I heard nothing from him. Finally, I spoke up: "Please, you
have to help me, you have to file a report. Let someone know what they are
doing to us in here!"
"I can't do anything for you," he said matter-of-factly. And with
that he gathered his medical bag and left my cell.
I never did see him again.
During the Truth
and Reconciliation Hearings that were chaired by Nobel Peace Prize Laureate
Archbishop Desmond Tutu, those who took part in the crimes of apartheid were
asked to confess what they had done. Several doctors came forward and testified
that they had been present at numerous torture sessions of Black South African
political detainees who died in detention and had falsified records to cover up
these murders, as well as countless torture sessions during which suspects
hadn't died - like me. Some recounted how they had failed to uphold the
Hippocratic oath of doing no harm to others.
I wonder to this day if the doctor that treated me in my cell confessed before
the truth commission in South Africa. Likewise, I will wonder if the physicians
that PHR-I accused of complicity in torturing Palestinian prisoners will one
day confess their crimes.
Naji Ali is the producer and host of Crossing
The Line: Life in Occupied Palestine. He is the son of a Black South
African resistance fighter. Ali spent 550 days in detention in South Africa and
was subjected to repeated torture by the security police. He also lived and
worked in Palestine in the Old City of Hebron from 2002-2004. HE can be
contacted at Naji Ali A T riseup D O T net.
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