‘I was raped by Assad’s thugs

It belonged to his grandmother. Something solid. Something to hold in his hands, run his fingers through, and follow the path of memory. A beautiful little thing, decorated with delicate pictures.

René opens the music box, and a mournful song begins to play, the same song that was heard long ago in his living room in Damascus.

“This is all I have left at home,” he says.

Everything about this young man exudes gentleness. René Shevan is short, thin and soft-spoken.

All week his thoughts have been going back and forth. Joy pa the fall of Bashar al-Assad. Grief at the memories that triggered his months in Syrian prisons.

“There was a woman. I still have a picture of her in my head. She was standing in the corner, and she was pleading… it was obvious that she had been raped.

“There was a boy. He was 15 or 16 years old. They were raping him, and he was calling his mother. He was saying, ‘Mother… my mother… Mother.’

He was himself raped and raped.

When I first met René, he had just fled Syria. This happened 12 years ago. She sat across from me, shaking with tears, nervous about showing her face on camera.

The secret police arrested him because he attended pro-democracy demonstrations. They also knew he was gay.

Three of them raped René. He begged for mercy, but they laughed.

“No one heard me. I was alone,” he recalled in 2012.

He told him that this is what he got for wanting freedom. A police officer abused him every day. For six months he was tortured like this.

After pictures appeared on television this week of prisoners walking freely in Damascus, René was drawn back to his pictures.

“I’m not in prison now, I’m here. But I saw myself in the photos and pictures of the Syrian people. I was very happy for them, but I saw myself… I saw the old version of me there.

She cries and we stop talking. A few minutes, he says.

I look at the wall of his living room.

There is a picture of his destroyed house in Syria, one of René running in a race in Utrecht. Then a picture of a Jesuit priest, Father Frans Van Der Lugt, 75, psychotherapist and ecumenical activist in Syria, until he was killed in 2014.

It was Father Van Der Lugt who told René – suffering in a very careful environment – that he was a simple man, that Jesus loved him whatever he loved.

René takes a glass of water, then asks to continue our conversation.

Why has she agreed to show her face on camera now, I wondered?

“Because the Republic of fear is over. Because I am not afraid of them. Because Assad is a refugee from Moscow. Because all the terrorists in Syria fled. Because Syria returned to all Syrians,” he answers. .

“I hope we will be able to live freely, equally. I am proud to be Syrian, Dutch, LGBT.”

That doesn’t mean he feels confident living in Syria as a gay man right now.

Under the Assad regime, homosexuality was illegal.

The new rulers of the country have religions that do not agree with their religion and are the ones who commit violence and abuse of homosexuals.

“There are many LGBT Syrians who fought in the war,” says René.

“They were part of the terrorists, and they lost their lives.” [The Syrian regime] they killed them because they were LGBT, and because they were part of the revolution. ”

René tells me that it is the “truth” of hope for change. They are also concerned that all religions and ethnic groups – including the Kurds – are being protected.

René is one of the nearly 6 million Syrians who have fled the country and found refuge in neighboring countries such as Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey – the majority – or in Europe.

Several European countries have already suspended asylum applications for Syrians, following the ouster of the Assad regime. Human rights organizations around the world have criticized the move as untimely.

There are about one million Syrians in Germany. Among them, a disabled Kurdish girl whom I first met in August 2015, when she joined a large group of people who arrived on the Greek island of Lesbos.

He passed through Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Austria on his way north.

To reach Europe from northern Syria, Nujeen crossed mountains, rivers and seas – his sister, Nisreen, pushing a wheelchair.

“I want to be an astronaut, and maybe meet an alien. And I want to meet the Queen,” he said.

I lay beside him in the dirt road, where thousands of refugees lay exhausted from the heat of the day. His smile and optimism were contagious.

This was a girl who taught herself English by watching American TV shows. Nujeen grew up in Aleppo and, when the war escalated, moved to his hometown of Kobane, a Kurdish stronghold that was later attacked by the Islamic State (IS) group.

I meet him now in Neumarkt Square in Cologne, surrounded by Christmas markets where locals eat sausages and drink vinegar, and the Syrian drama is visible in the distance.

But not about Nujeen.

All week he has been watching television, long after the whole family has gone to bed. It doesn’t matter that he has an exam for his business administration course. He will make it.

Never again, Nujeen understands, will there be a moment like the fall of Assad, a moment of one such hope.

“Nothing lasts forever. Darkness is followed by dawn,” he says.

“I knew that I would never go back to a Syria that had Assad as president, and that we would never have the chance to be a good nation with that man. We knew that we would not find peace unless he left. Now that I have finished this chapter, I think the real problem begins.”

Like René, he wants a world that accepts diversity and cares for people with disabilities.

“I don’t want to go back to a place where there are no climbs and stairs to the fourth floor.”

As a Kurd, he knows very well how his people are struggling in the area.

Now, as Kurdish forces are forced out of oil cities in the north, Nujeen sees the dangers of a new Turkish-backed government.

“We know these people who have taken over now. We know the countries and powers that are supporting them, and they are not really fans of the Kurds. They don’t really like us. That is our biggest problem right now.”

There are also fears of a possible re-formation of IS if the new Syrian leaders are unable to establish themselves in the country.

There are regular calls to families still living in Kurdish areas.

“They are anxious and worried about the future just like the rest of us,” says Nujeen.

“We don’t stop calling, and we always worry if they don’t pick up after the first ring. There’s a lot of uncertainty about what’s going to happen”.

Uncertainty is exacerbated by changes in European security policy.

However, this is a young woman whose life experiences – being severely disabled from birth, witnessing the horrors of war, traveling across the Middle East and Europe to safety – have created hope.

In the ten years I’ve known him, it’s unknown. The fall of Assad has strengthened his faith in Syria and its people.

“There are a lot of people who are waiting to see Syria fall into the abyss,” he says.

“We are not a people who hate or envy or want to eliminate each other. We are a people who were raised to fear each other. But our stable position is that we love and accept who we are.”

“We can and will be a better nation – a world of love, acceptance and peace, not chaos, fear and destruction.”

There are many hearts in Syria and beyond who would hope that they are telling the truth.