"The timing was deliberate. It disoriented them at their most vulnerable, ensuring the torture to come would be even more agonising. The testimonies I recorded from survivors almost always contained the same phrase: The morning they came for me. One young woman, shattered by rape and violence, later told me that her life had split in two before and after the masked men came for her."
"In Iraq, those who spoke against Saddam Hussein even abroad, even casually were punished in cruel ways by a vengeful leader determined to crush any hint of dissent. In Egypt in 2016, Giulio Regeni, a 28-year-old Italian academic researching labour unions, was abducted, beaten and tortured to death, it is thought, by president Abdel Fatah al-Sisi's security services. His own mother had difficulty recognising his mutilated body."
Masked security agents abduct people before dawn to maximize disorientation and inflict severe torture, splitting lives into before-and-after moments for survivors. Dissenters face cruel punishment under vengeful regimes, including abduction and murder of researchers and activists. Targeted killings of journalists serve as warnings to other truth-seekers. Occupying or security forces detain, torture, and kill professionals based on identity rather than actions. Governments invoke security, order and deterrence to rationalize repression, while democratic institutions and agencies can adopt similar methods, institutionalizing violence and using fear as a systematic tool of control.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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