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CRYSTAL TRULOVE: Lessons from a torture victim's visit
by Crystal Trulove
Forum | 12/6/05
Posted online at 10:35 PM EST on 12/5/05
/ Last updated at 7:03 AM EST on 12/5/05
You're 16 years old, and life in high school is going pretty well. You've got lots of friends, you've got high ideals like everyone else and you are class delegate to the student government. But one night, police bust into your home and demand that your father hand you over. They tell your father that either he turns you in, or you will be killed. In a panic, your father contacts a lawyer who assures him that you are a minor and if you cooperate, you will be returned after questioning because you're only a child. Fearing for your life, he chooses the lesser of two evils, and before you know it you're at the police station.
Only you aren't returned. You and others like you-teenage girls-are handcuffed and shackled with your hands tied to your feet and left on the floor for two weeks. Why did this happen? You are told you are a subversive-as the Student Union delegate, you dared to voice your high ideals. For over two years, you are one of los desaparecidos (the disappeared); you are kept prisoner without knowing where you are or what the charges are; you're held without a trial, without contact to a single person who knows you and could tell your family where you are or that you are still alive. For over two years, you are threatened with rape, sexually abused, beaten, starved, forced to drink from toilets and electrocuted.
On Wednesday, Nov. 30, Patricia Indiana Isasa talked at Brandeis about being an Argentinian political prisoner from 1976 to 1978. She and the other girls grew up in prison. As their bodies matured, they kept track of one another's height against a door frame. She is one of the lucky ones, because she lived. Though she must remember the horror every day, she tells others what happened in her quest for justice: This is lucky. She lived, but 30,000 others did not.
Where is the justice for this horror? Barely anywhere, it seems. In a documentary Isasa helped produce, which was shown at the event, the very people who participated in her imprisonment and torture were interviewed, and they denied it ever happened! After participating in her torture, three men went on to become a politician, a federal judge and a mayor! What kind of world are we living in when this can be true?
Only you aren't returned. You and others like you-teenage girls-are handcuffed and shackled with your hands tied to your feet and left on the floor for two weeks. Why did this happen? You are told you are a subversive-as the Student Union delegate, you dared to voice your high ideals. For over two years, you are one of los desaparecidos (the disappeared); you are kept prisoner without knowing where you are or what the charges are; you're held without a trial, without contact to a single person who knows you and could tell your family where you are or that you are still alive. For over two years, you are threatened with rape, sexually abused, beaten, starved, forced to drink from toilets and electrocuted.
On Wednesday, Nov. 30, Patricia Indiana Isasa talked at Brandeis about being an Argentinian political prisoner from 1976 to 1978. She and the other girls grew up in prison. As their bodies matured, they kept track of one another's height against a door frame. She is one of the lucky ones, because she lived. Though she must remember the horror every day, she tells others what happened in her quest for justice: This is lucky. She lived, but 30,000 others did not.
Where is the justice for this horror? Barely anywhere, it seems. In a documentary Isasa helped produce, which was shown at the event, the very people who participated in her imprisonment and torture were interviewed, and they denied it ever happened! After participating in her torture, three men went on to become a politician, a federal judge and a mayor! What kind of world are we living in when this can be true?
