“I used to be raped by Assad’s thugs

It belonged to his grandmother. One thing strong. One thing to carry in your fingers, run your fingers over and hint the trail of reminiscence. A bit factor of magnificence, encrusted with a fragile mosaic.

René opens the music field and tinkling music begins to play, the identical tune as soon as heard in his front room in Damascus.

“It’s all I’ve left of residence,” he stated.

The whole lot about this younger man suggests gentleness. René Shevan is small, slender and speaks softly.

All week, his feelings diverse. Pleasure to fall of Bashar al-Assad. Heartache over the reminiscences it triggered of his months in Syrian prisons.

“There was a lady. I nonetheless have her picture right here in my head. She was standing within the nook and she or he was begging… it is clear they raped her.

“There was a boy. He was 15 or 16 years previous. They have been raping him and he was calling his mom. He was saying, ‘Mother… my mother… Mother.'”

There was his personal rape and sexual abuse.

Once I first met René, he had simply fled Syria. It was 12 years in the past. He sat throughout from me, shaking and in tears, fearful of displaying his face on digital camera.

The key police had arrested him as a result of he had gone to a pro-democracy demonstration. In addition they knew he was homosexual.

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

“Nobody heard me. I used to be alone,” he recalled in 2012.

They informed him that was what he was getting for demanding freedom. One other police officer mistreated him day by day. For six months he suffered this abuse.

When photographs of prisoners on the free in Damascus appeared on tv this week, René was introduced again to his personal photographs.

“I am not in jail now, I am right here. However I noticed myself within the pictures and pictures of the individuals in Syria. I used to be so comfortable for them, however I noticed myself there… I noticed the previous model of me there. I noticed after they raped me and after they tortured me, I noticed the whole lot in flashback.

He cries and we cease the interview. A couple of minutes, he stated.

I have a look at the wall of his front room.

There’s a picture of his ruined home in Syria, one in every of René operating a marathon in Utrecht. Then a picture of the Jesuit priest, Father Frans Van Der Lugt, 75, psychotherapist and ecumenical activist in Syria till his assassination in 2014.

It was Father Van Der Lugt who informed René – struggling in a deeply conservative atmosphere – ​​that he was a traditional human being, that Jesus liked him no matter his sexual orientation.

René takes a glass of water, then asks to proceed our dialog.

Why did he agree to point out his face on digital camera now, I puzzled?

“As a result of the republic of worry has disappeared. As a result of I’m now not afraid of them. As a result of Assad is a refugee in Moscow. As a result of all of the criminals in Syria have fled. As a result of Syria is returned to all Syrians,” he replies.

“I hope we are able to reside as a free and equal individuals. I’m very happy with myself as a Syrian, Dutch and LGBT.”

That does not imply he feels assured residing in Syria as a homosexual man.

Underneath Assad’s regime, gay acts have been criminalized.

The nation’s new leaders have fundamentalist spiritual roots and have been implicated in violence and persecution towards homosexuals.

“There are loads of Syrian LGBT individuals who fought,” says René.

“They have been a part of the revolution they usually misplaced their lives. [The Syrian regime] killed them just because they have been LGBT and since they have been a part of the revolution. »

René tells me that he’s “practical” in regards to the prospects for change. He’s additionally involved that each one spiritual and ethnic teams – together with Kurds – obtain safety.

René is one in every of round six million Syrians who’ve fled the nation and located refuge both in neighboring nations like Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey – the bulk – or additional afield in Europe.

A number of European nations have already suspended asylum requests from Syrians, following the overthrow of the Assad regime. Worldwide human rights teams criticized the transfer, calling it untimely.

There are round one million Syrians in Germany. Amongst them was a outstanding younger disabled Kurdish lady whom I first met in August 2015, when she had joined a big column of people that had landed on the Greek island of Lesbos.

She handed via Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Austria on her approach north.

To achieve Europe from northern Syria, Nujeen crossed mountains, rivers and the ocean – along with her sister Nisreen pushing her wheelchair.

“I wish to be an astronaut, and perhaps meet an alien. And I wish to meet the queen,” she stated.

I crouched subsequent to her on a dusty street, the place hundreds of asylum seekers lay exhausted within the noon warmth. His good humor and hope have been contagious.

She was a woman who taught herself English by watching American tv packages. Nujeen grew up in Aleppo after which, because the battle intensified, she traveled to her household’s hometown of Kobane, a Kurdish stronghold that was later attacked by the Islamic State (IS) group.

I meet her now in Cologne’s bustling Neumarkt sq., surrounded by Christmas market stalls the place locals eat sausages and drink mulled wine, and the tragedies of Syria appear distant.

However not for Nujeen.

All week she watched tv, lengthy after the remainder of the household had gone to mattress. It would not matter that she’s taking an examination for her enterprise administration course. She is going to handle.

By no means once more, Nujeen understands, will there be a second corresponding to the autumn of Assad, a second of hope as singular.

“Nothing lasts eternally. Darkness is adopted by daybreak,” she says.

“I knew that I’d by no means return to a Syria with Assad as president, and that we’d by no means have the possibility to turn into a greater nation with this man in cost. We knew that we’d by no means discover peace with out him gone. And Now that this chapter is over, I feel the actual problem begins.

Like René, she needs a rustic tolerant of variety and anxious about individuals with disabilities.

“I don’t wish to return to a spot the place there isn’t any elevator and solely stairs that result in an residence on the fourth ground.”

As a Kurd, she is aware of properly the struggling of her individuals within the area.

Right this moment, as Kurdish forces are pressured to withdraw from cities within the oil-producing north, Nujeen sees the hazard posed by a brand new regime backed by Turkey.

“We all know these individuals who have come to energy now. We all know the nations and the powers that help them, they usually’re not likely followers of the Kurds. They do not actually like us. That is our largest fear proper now .”

There are additionally fears of a attainable regrouping of IS if the brand new Syrian leaders fail to ascertain stability within the nation.

Households nonetheless residing in Kurdish areas obtain fixed calls.

“They’re anxious and anxious in regards to the future, like all of us,” says Nujeen.

“We by no means cease calling and we’re at all times anxious if they do not reply after the primary ring. There’s loads of uncertainty about what is going on to occur subsequent.”

The uncertainty is amplified by the change in asylum coverage in Europe.

Nonetheless, this can be a younger lady whose life expertise – experiencing extreme incapacity since delivery, witnessing the terrors of battle, touring via the Center East and Europe to turn into secure – created a capability for hope.

Within the almost decade that I’ve identified her, that continues to be intact. Assad’s fall has solely deepened his religion in Syria and its individuals.

“Lots of people are ready to see Syria sink into some form of abyss,” she says.

“We’re not individuals who hate one another, who envy one another, or who wish to get rid of one another. We’re individuals who have been raised to worry one another. However our default setting is that we love and settle for who we’re.”

“We will and will probably be a greater nation – a nation of affection, acceptance and peace, not a nation of chaos, worry and destruction.”

Many hearts in Syria and past hope that she is correct.