Syria Today | Lifting the Stigma

Lifting the Stigma

By Abdulhamid al-Qabbani & Julia Wickham
Photos Adel Samara

“Society is a big prison,” Yehya said. Clean-cut with a straight gaze and a warm smile, it is hard to imagine that this 43-year-old accountant and father of four has spent time behind bars. Yet in 2006 he was sent to the prison in Idlib charged with – although not convicted of – forgery.

At the time, he was a government employee in an accounting department at a public school. “At the beginning I kept my shoes on the whole time, convinced I was going to be released any minute,” he said. Yehya’s stay, spent among petty thieves and hardened criminals, lasted 20 months. Eighteen months after his release there has still been no verdict.

Although now technically ‘free’, the possibility of a sentence hanging over him and the plain fact that he has been ‘inside’ has made it difficult for him to regain a normal life. “People look at you without sympathy,” he said. “They think that because you have been in prison you must be a bad person.”

Improving conditions in prison

Unable to find work since his release, Yehya continues to work as a volunteer for the Idlib Prisoners Welfare Association, a charitable organisation founded in 2005. The association’s main focus is to improve conditions inside prisons.

“We enrol prisoners in schools and universities,” Nahed Mu’alim, the association’s president, said. “We have prisoners who started middle school in prison and are now university students.”

Mu’alim has gained a reputation for her pioneering work in the area’s small 650-strong prison. “When you understand the particular kind of suffering that prisoners and their families go through, you can’t help wanting to help,” she said.

Mu’alim attributes the association’s success to the dedication of its staff and the support (though not financial) of the various government ministries – Health, Interior, and Labour and Social Affairs. “We could not do what we do without the support of the government,” she said.

A survey carried out by the association found the top priorities for prisoners are legal assistance, financial and family support, employment opportunities and improving the physical conditions inside the prison.

“Prisoners didn’t believe they had the right to make any requests,” Yehya, who conducted the survey in his role as liaison officer between the prisoners, the association and the prison authorities, said. “But they saw that the association could provide help with at least some of what they asked for. Things like a fridge and a washing machine can make a huge difference to prisoners’ daily lives.”

With no financial support from the government, the association relies on voluntary donations, voluntary workers and generates income from employment schemes inside the prison, ranging from garbage collection and cooking to running mini-markets and making beaded jewellery for sale outside the prison. The money earned in prison goes to the families, in addition to the modest financial assistance the association gives to selected wives whose husbands have applied to the scheme.

“Even though it’s not much, I don’t know how I would manage if I wasn’t getting the SYP 1,500 [a month] from the association,” Nour, 24, who was four months pregnant when her husband went to prison for robbery, said. His work inside adds a further SYP 1,500-2,000 (USD 32-42) per month to the family income. The association also helps with school uniforms, stationery, food and household items.

Assistance needed after release

The most recently founded of Syria’s 12 prisoners’ associations, Idlib has benefited not just from the vision and charisma of Mu’alim, but also from the experience of the 11 other associations around the country. The common theme that runs through all of them is a compassion rooted in practical concern.

“Society does not have the right to punish people twice,” Abdel Majid Hamo, the president of the Union of Prisoners’ Associations, said. A chartered accountant from Aleppo, he has dedicated more than half his life to helping prisoners and their families.

“People don’t realise that whole families can be torn apart when a parent goes to prison,” he said. “In Aleppo, we ran a rehabilitation scheme for about 75 children of prisoners who had ended up on the streets or in trouble of some kind. It was a great success and we would like to be able to do more of this.”

However, resources are limited and the rehabilitation available in prison – education, training and work opportunities – comes to an abrupt end once the prisoner is released.

“Finding a job is the most difficult obstacle,” Hamo said. “Ex-prisoners are barred from any public sector job, but even in the private sector they are treated with fear and suspicion.”

Those who work closely with prisoners agree that some kind of reprieve is needed to allow ex-prisoners to find employment more easily. Former prisoners are barred from public jobs and records of personal information required by potential employers contain a former prisoner’s crime and sentence for a period of five years. Former prisoners and prison association representatives hold that this is tantamount to a whole new sentence.

Self-employment is, for many prisoners, the best way to generate an income. “We would like to see the introduction of interest-free loans and training centres for ex-prisoners to set themselves up in self-employment,” Nizar Terjman, secretary of Damascus’s Prisoners’ Association, said.

Terjman’s main preoccupation at the moment is health. “We need the support of the Ministry of Health to ensure that preventative testing for infectious diseases is carried out properly in the prisons,” he said.

Back in his village 5km from Idlib, Yehya struggles to cope with his new life. More painful than the friends and neighbours who avoid him is the fact that he cannot provide for his family. “My children’s questions are the hardest,” he said. “Even the way they look at me sometimes is strange now.”

The work he does for the prisoners’ association has been a key factor in salvaging some of his pride and providing him with a sense of purpose. “In prison, you can rehabilitate yourself if you put your mind to it. But when you come out, you need society to help and understand you.”