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| PEN American Center Statement on "The Plight of Iraqi Refugees" |
PEN presented the following statement and testimonies to the Senate Committee at the Judiciary hearing on “The Plight of Iraqi Refugees.”
January 16, 2007 2:00 PM
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to present the voices and the stories of some of those who are the subject of today’s hearing.
The following three testimonies are from Iraqi translators and writers who have been targeted for death either for serving as interpreters for Coalition Forces or for denouncing terrorism or encouraging democracy in their writings. All three are now living underground in Syria. Together, their testimonies represent one of the tragic truths of Iraq today: that the Iraqis who invested the most in their country’s future after the United States–led intervention are now among the least likely to have a future in their home country.
PEN has been working to find safe havens for Iraqi colleagues like these since September 2005, when a group of translators and writers in the Mosul area sent a desperate appeal to our offices in Norway and London. Two members of that group, both interpreters for U.S. forces, have since been killed by insurgents. Every one of the others has either survived a deadly attack himself or had a relative kidnapped or murdered in his place. There is simply no overstating the dangers they and their families have faced, or the magnitude of the sacrifices they and their families have made, for their efforts to build civil society in Iraq.
Thanks to the Norwegian government and our colleagues at Norwegian PEN, five of those on whose behalf we have been working have either received or will soon be granted asylum in Norway. They are the fortunate few. Every day we learn of more Iraqis with stories like these who are living in hiding in Iraq or struggling to survive in neighboring countries. Our own experience has unfortunately demonstrated that some of those still in Iraq are living on borrowed time. Meanwhile those who have fled Iraq are finding little relief in neighboring countries, where they have no means to sustain themselves and yet where, so far, there is no clear, effective process for securing a permanent place of refuge.
PEN is grateful to this committee for your efforts to bring the unfolding regional Iraqi refugee crisis to light. We appeal to you to press urgently for a United States–led resettlement program, one that recognizes the sacrifices so many Iraqis have made in support of the goals of the United States–led mission in Iraq.
Ron Chernow
President
Larry Siems
Director, Freedom to Write and International Programs
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Testimony #1
My name is ___________. I am an Iraqi citizen, born and raised in Iraq. I graduated from the English department of Mosul University’s College of Arts a year ago. I’m 22 years old.
I grew up in a kind, loving family. My family provided me with all the support they could give me my whole life. When I was a kid, I saw the world as a good place. Because of the kindness and care I got from my family, I couldn’t imagine there was another side to things; the idea that our entire lives were controlled by someone else was terrifying to me. But as I began to understand more about the world around me, I realized that I did live in a place controlled by one man, a dictator who did not care about my life, or even about the whole country maybe. That was one of the most painful things for me, and I almost lost hope. I had my own thoughts and beliefs and points of view, but I could not express myself or live the way I wanted. Life in Iraq was a one-way street leading to nothing. The future was blurry to me. It was not a matter of financial issues. I felt like my soul had been stolen from me, and there was nothing I could do about it.
Robbed of hope, I realized that I had to live my life such as it was. Even though I was dying spiritually, I could stay alive physically. I did not give up completely, but tried to live to some minimum extent.
The turning point in my life, and in the lives of all Iraqis, came in March 2003, when the U.S.-led forces arrived in Iraq. The miracle happened, and I thought my dream had finally come true. My main hope was to have a suitable environment to practice my freedom, and I thought the U.S. invasion would provide us with this. I was ready to do whatever it took to establish and protect the New Free Iraq. That is what was on my mind when I applied to work as an interpreter. I was so excited when I started to work because, from my point of view, I was doing the right thing and finally doing something I’ve always wanted to do. I felt I was expressing myself through my job and living my freedom.
It was good at the beginning, and it was safe, too. But the days went by and things began to change. The base where I used to work started to be attacked by mortars and rockets. People who were working with the U.S. army started to get shot at or killed. Before long, the base was being attacked daily and it became very dangerous, especially for the interpreters working inside the base, because we did not have armor or head protection like the soldiers. Even so, I did not want to give up and quit. I believed that freedom is not free, that it has a price, and I decided to accept the challenge. At the time, I was still attending college, and every day I would go to college and then to work. I refused to hide; I did not want to give up my studies or my work because I believed in both, and I thought by doing these things I was defending my freedom.
I was working alongside my brother-in-law. He had graduated from the College of Arts Translation Department in 1994, and he, too, was living the “Iraqi American” dream. Like me, he believed that when the old regime was removed there was hope again, and he and I started working at the base at the same time, at the very beginning of 2004. But by the summer, things started to get more violent and wild. He and I started to receive threatening calls and letters because of our involvement with the U.S. army. It became extremely dangerous, not only for us, but for our families. I was chased by insurgents. My brother-in-law’s brother was shot and wounded by insurgents who believed they were shooting him. We asked for help and some kind of protection from the U.S. army, we explained what was going on, but unfortunately we were not offered any kind of help. We were abandoned and left alone to face the predators.
We couldn’t risk the lives of our families, so we decided to quit. I thought that, by quitting, I would find safety and could live normally again. But I was wrong, again. The threatening and the chasing continued, and my life was still in danger. I hid most of the time, but I still had to go to college because that was the only thing left for me. I was risking my life every day I went to college; I was exposed, but I had no choice. After graduation, though, I couldn’t even leave my hiding place to go for a walk. My brother-in-law was in hiding, too. Then one day last June, around two years after we quit, he had to go out on some urgent errands for his family. He was stopped by insurgents and shot in the head and chest. He paid with his life for making what he thought was the right choice.
After that, I had to flee to Syria. It was the only place I could go. Now I’m in Syria, alone, with little safety, no future, and no hope, again. In Syria, I have nothing at all. I can’t get a job. I can’t afford even my basic needs. It is very dangerous for me, even here, because of the growing, popular anti-American sentiment. I have to make sure no one knows that I used to work as an interpreter with the U.S. army.
I live a daily nightmare. I lost a close relative. I lost my future. I lost hope. I lost everything, except that sense of fear. In Iraq, I lived in fear and terror; every day brought a great possibility of death. Every day in the shadows of the New Free Iraq was hell itself, a life sentence.
I lived in Iraq before 2003. Back then I had no hope, but my body was alive. After 2003, after all the great hopes and dreams, after all the false promises, after making what I thought were the right choices for myself and my country, here I am again, back even behind the starting point, in a situation even worse than the days of the old regime, with a new issue, a new fear: losing my life.
January 8, 2007
Syria
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Testimony #2
My name is ____________. I was born in 1969 and lived in a city about 60 miles from Baghdad. I am a poet; I write what is known in Iraq as Popular Poetry.
In 1997 one of my poems landed me in prison under Saddam Hussein. The poem was called “The Water Birds Have Run Out of Water”; it was about how Saddam had been drying up the marshes in Southern Iraq near where my father was born. I was imprisoned for three months in Hillah prison. The first two months I was in solitary confinement; no one spoke to me at all; the only sounds I heard were at night, when I would sometimes hear shouting or screaming. After I was released, my poems were no longer accepted for publication, and the stigma of imprisonment made people look at me with suspicion.
When the United States entered Iraq, I felt a new age of freedom and free expression had begun, and that I would speak without fear, have my poetry published, and start a new life. Several of my poems were published in newspapers in Basra and Karbala, where there is a strong tradition of popular poetry. In some of these poems, I challenged the terrorists and denounced what they were doing in my country. I was confident that American forces would protect me if I faced danger for criticizing their enemies, who are my enemies, too. During this time I also worked as a truck driver, delivering building materials for Bechtel to local engineers at building sites in Karbala.
In 2004, I published a poem criticizing a specific terrorist group, and after that I was targeted for assassination. In January 2005, my name appeared on the list of “Most Wanted Traitors” at the mosques. On April 22, 2005, I was driving from Baghdad to my home city. The person riding with me, someone I knew well, had tipped off terrorists, and they chased us in a car and shot me. I was shot in the leg below the knee, and the bullet shattered the bone. I was found by American National Guards, who evacuated me and left me at the front gate of a local hospital.
They came after me again just after I left the hospital. A car was blocking the end of the street, and when my car came within 100 meters of this car they started firing at me. I managed to get out of the car and dive onto a trash heap. The police came quickly, and the sirens scared the attackers away. I went into hiding in the north, in Mosul. But by this time the circle of victims had expanded. The terrorists were not satisfied just killing or targeting those they called “co-conspirators” or “agents,” but were going after family members as well. The consequences have been terrible for my family. My sister was divorced by her husband under pressure from the Imam of the mosque after she refused to provide him with information about where I was hiding. Then, in late 2005, two of my brothers were savagely murdered and their bodies were discovered in a dump near Baghdad.
I remained in my country as long as I could, living alone in a small apartment in the north and trying on my own to heal my leg. Eventually, terrorists spotted me there, too, and I fled to Syria. That is where I am now, with a leg that has never healed correctly, still fearing for my life, and with no hope of returning to Iraq.
January 10, 2007
Syria
* * *
Testimony #3
My name is ___________. I am an Iraqi citizen, born in 1965. My wife and four small children and I lived in Mosul. But because of my work as an essayist, journalist, and critic, we are no longer able to live in my country.
I wasn’t originally a writer. I was a graduate of a technical institute, but I started to write as a hobby during the Iran-Iraq war and published my first essay at that time. Because it was wartime and during Saddam’s time writers were oppressed, I couldn’t write about politics or criticize the government. I wrote on cultural subjects, on folklore, Assyrian history, and Iraqi poetry. I had to be careful: the Baathists were very sensitive to any word or idea that fell beyond their one-party perspective. Like all freedom-loving writers and poets, I dreamed of a new world where we could feel, see, and write freely.
After the American forces came and liberated Iraq, I published an essay comparing dictatorship under Saddam’s reign and the democracy we all believed would settle in Iraq. We felt secure: Americans had brought us confidence and we wrote relaxedly, free of fear. In the beginning, I continued to write essays on heritage and cultural subjects; I didn’t go deeper. But then terrorist groups began to penetrate our country and make appearances, starting their activities. The American liberation had created a power vacuum, and in that vacuum our dreams became a nightmare. People began to see democracy as a synonym for chaos, repression, and arbitrary death. I started to write my criticisms against the criminals who, under the mask of religion, had begun killing innocent people, exploding schools, and assassinating academics, translators, and journalists.
In July 2004, I published an essay entitled “Stop the Silence, You Free Men.” In it I spoke about these terrorist groups and about the killings taking place then in Beled. A few days later, I received the first of two telephone calls threatening me with death, and written threats against me were posted on nearby houses and in mosques. Then, on November 21, 2004, they attacked me. I was in my car, heading toward my house. I was targeted by a barrage of machine gun fire. I was in a crowded street when this happened, and somehow managed to escape.
I stopped writing. I was forced to take my children out of school and took my family and left my house. After we left, someone stuck a threat on the door of the house; my neighbor telephoned me to tell me about it. This was for propaganda. I’d already been threatened; they put that there to intimidate the neighbors.
For the next two years, I moved my family from house to house. We even went to Kurdistan, to try to live there, but we couldn’t. You have to have a residency letter, and somebody there has to guarantee you, with a kind of recommendation letter. And you cannot explain to anyone why you are in Kurdistan: there are security people who may identify you to those who are hunting you. And most important, it is extremely expensive. We simply could not afford it. We were forced to move back into the heart of the danger, in Mosul.
By this time, things had deteriorated so badly that I couldn’t even go out to buy bread safely. Anyone who left the house could not be sure he was coming back; you would say goodbye to your children as if it would be the last time. I moved away to lessen the danger for them, first to Kurdistan again and then to Syria. But leaving your family behind this way only doubles your dilemma: if they remain behind, you’re leaving them to live under fire; if they join you, they’ll be living in poverty. And with our extended families, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, nieces, nephews, their spouses, their children: whom to take with you, and whom to leave?
A few weeks ago, my wife and four children managed to join me here in Syria. Last week, terrorists targeted and destroyed our house in Mosul in a grenade attack. My mother and one of my brothers were seriously injured. I am desperate to return to Iraq to be with them. But if I do, the terrorists will be waiting, and I cannot leave my wife and children without a husband and father.
Targeted, intentional killing by the insurgents of people like me who supported freedom has been rampant in Iraq since the end of 2004. Writers are among the most targeted because we express ourselves and write and publish in support of positive change, democratic ideals, and human rights in Iraq. Our choice is either to escape and become homeless or remain in Iraq and die silently, be buried silently, and have our children orphaned silently.
January 10, 2007
Syria
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