#detention and torture

[internationalwomenday]

Women under Foreign Occupation (CSW68 Side Event).

The panel discussion will evaluate different dimensions of the challenges that girls and women face specially those under foreign occupation and dwell upon possible pathways to ensure the protection and promotion of their rights.

The objective of the panel discussion is to raise awareness regarding violations of the fundamental rights of women in situations of foreign occupation, specifically:

Sexual attacks, including rape, intimidation and exploitation, often perpetrated as a weapon of war;

Arrest and incarceration, including of male family members;

Denial of food, shelter and medical help;

Privacy intrusions, including in house searches;

The abduction, detention and torture of children;

Trauma suffered due to security operations, torture and intimidation; and

The indiscriminate bombing of homes, dwellings and places of refuge.

Launch of the Women under Foreign Occupation (CSW68 Side Event).

[odinsblog]

With the backing of Lebanon’s Hezbollah group, Khiam became a memorial to those who suffered and died at the hands of the SLA and Israel. But in the summer of 2006, during the 34-day Israeli onslaught against Lebanon, Israeli planes bombed the remains of the site and the neighbouring village.

Amine, a 56-year-old father of four, spent four years at Khiam after his arrest in September 1996. Today, he works to help maintain the remnants of the memorial site. Stepping through the rubble of what were once torture chambers and prison cells, he leans on a metal pole, where he and other detainees were hung by their wrists, and explains how at least 10 people died under torture at Khiam.

“Prisoners were kept naked and splashed with hot and cold water, and subjected to electric shocks,” he tells Al Jazeera. “They then had salt put in their wounds.” There were no court proceedings or charges brought against him during his detention, Amine adds.

“The address, Khiam detention centre, is a terrible address,” he says. “The importance of this place is showing that the Israelis occupied Lebanon and tortured us.”

(continue reading)

[this-aint-massachusetts]

God damn it i need to stop looking at Pinterest because it keeps giving me fic ideas when I’m already drowning in drafts. But i saw this and made me think of drummer!clapton x reader

[agentfascinateur]

The Israeli Abu Ghraib ?

They paint a picture of a facility where doctors sometimes amputated prisoners’ limbs due to injuries sustained from constant handcuffing; of medical procedures sometimes performed by underqualified medics earning it a reputation for being “a paradise for interns”; and where the air is filled with the smell of neglected wounds left to rot.

...

"(The beatings) were not done to gather intelligence. They were done out of revenge,” said another whistleblower. “

[01432853]

The Symbol of Anguish.

Detention (2019) dir. John Hsu

[cavalierzee]

IDF Gang Rape Was "Self-Defense"

9 IDF soldiers handcuffed a Palestine man and then gang raped him.

They are claiming the gang rape was an act of self-defense.

[mermaidsirennikita]

Please, give us some loser heroes

Hahaha gladly

(this got long)

I mean, I've gotta say, one of the loseriest heroes I've read recently is Envy from Throne of the Fallen by Kerri Maniscalco. I've said it before and I'll say it again--if you're looking for a fantasy romance to try, especially if you normally read historicals, this is it (and TotF does stand alone if you want to try it first versus the trilogy that comes before it).

Envy is like, on a quest to save his court, and he's ostensibly a Prince of Hell and therefore very strong and full of supernatural gifts but like... He spends so much of this book falling flat on his face, ESPECIALLY with his heroine Camilla, who is Extremely Unimpressed. (There's a moment wherein he has to do something amazing to save his own life, and she's genuinely like assuming he's just going to die lmao.) His brothers randomly show up to dunk on him throughout the book. Not even for like, plot, just to be like "Sooooo have you seduced her yet? No? Shocker." He does things he thinks are so cool and then is like "Oh God immediate regret mistake".

*love him*

Seven Nights in a Rogue's Bed by Anna Campbell is a recent read wherein the hero presents himself as very suave and confident, and he's like "I SHALL KEEP YOU HERE FOR SEVEN DAYS AND SEDUCE YOU, MY INNOCENT MUAHAHAHA" before being like "nooooo I have harmed the innocent, I AM A WORM!!!" when the heroine shows pitches an emotional fit at him.

Allegreto in Shadowheart by Laura Kinsale is another "muahahahahaha" hero, and he is like, legitimately dangerous and threatening (TW: noncon in the first encounter) but once the heroine, Elena, gets her hooks in him... He is.... a sad little baby. A sad little baby who doesn't think he can go to church because he's done too many murders and is going to hell. BUT HE'S COOL WITH THAT. He's totally cool with that.... he's cool.... Arguably even more of a loser if you read For My Lady's Heart first, which is set ten years earlier and features another couple (the hero is less of a loser but still has embarrassing moments like being visibly aroused in front of the heroine and getting called out on it by her in front of SEVERAL priests, and also thinking this heroine is his perfect lady who he's pledged to for thirteen years only to meet her for real and be like "oh my god she's kind of EVIL??? My life has been devoted to a VILLAINESS???? I'm so STUPID") and also a teenage Allegreto who does absolutely RIDICULOUS things like carry a plague apple around because he's scared of plague, and like, hold the hero's hand during sleep because he thinks the hero will ward off plague, and pretend to be A CASTRATO for an ELABORATE SCHEME which he HONESTLY DID NOT HAVE TO DO.

A Rose at Midnight by Anne Stuart (TW: a lot of dubcon between the hero and heroine at first, noncon in the heroine's past not with the hero) has another "I am such a villain, my lady!!!" hero who is actually a massive ball of guilt and angst. The first time they sleep together she actually secretly enjoys it and hates herself for it, but she didn't Get All The Way There and he walks away like "I'M SO EMBARRASSING I CAN'T DO ANYTHING RIGHT" and like kicking rocks while pretending to be very above it.

Mafia Madman by Mila Finelli. Enzo d'Agostino's master plan is to kidnap the heroine by blowing up a bar for REVENGE and everyone around him is like "honestly your master plan... doesn't even make a lot of sense" even though it TOTALLY makes sense, y'all just DON'T GET IT. He then proceeds to get schooled by the heroine at every opportunity and become her dog (literally there's a bonus epilogue where she's gone for like 30 seconds and his brothers are like "look at what she did to him, he used to be a perfectly good mafia don, now he has anxiety").

Charlotte and The Seductive Spymaster by Grace Callaway has the titular spymaster who faked his death to keep his wife safe and IMMEDIATELY regretted it, returning from the dead twelve years later and getting mad that she's flirting with another man. So he like. THROWS ROCKS AT THE OTHER MAN??? FROM A SECRET HIDING PLACE? Embarrassing behavior. He also faints at one point. Like, it made sense, but I still laughed my ass off. And his wife is super competent, so she's constantly like "... really?"

Seduce Me at Sunrise by Lisa Kleypas has Kev Merripen, who is extremely competent on paper because he's literally the only person in that series who has a real job, but emotionally... the boy ain't right. He literally thinks that if he sleeps with Win ONCE she'll get pregnant and die. He like, hides in the background. Married by Morning also has an extremely losery moment from Leo Hathaway in which he basically does that thing from that meme where he trips and drops all of his obsessive things about the heroine, and the obsessive things are tons of drawings he did of her wearing nothing but her glasses. And she's like ".... you sure have an active imagination". Honestly, Harry from Tempt Me at Twilight also has his share of cringe, like the time he thought he was super hurting Poppy during her first time, so he just jumped off her and hated himself for days and ran away and she had to literally hunt him down and go "I'm FINE now FINISH IT".

Hart Mackenzie from The Duke's Perfect Wife, I will always maintain, is a massive loser who pretend to be extremely competent. Like, he's all "Eleanor, as you know, we did it three times when we were engaged" and she's like "yes.... like a decade ago Hart... I'm not.... impressed". He's being blackmailed by a stranger who sent Eleanor (a reporter) nude photos he took years ago and he's like ".... well those certainly are photos I took Eleanor". He gets all growly at her and she boops his nose. It's pathetic.

Dreams of a Dark Warrior by Kresley Cole, aka "he's constantly being reincarnated after sleeping with the heroine, like they hook up and then he just dies half an hour later in what sound like frankly increasingly comical death scenes, and she's immortal so she finally just gives up on even kissing him"... One of the legitimately saddest heroes I've ever read, lol. He's been brainwashed into hating immortals (with some solid reasons tbf) so he's like, the head torturer in this prison of immortals (TW, it's kinda intense) and he HAAAATES the heroine and she's DETERMINED to kiss him to kill him this time because she HAAAATES him. But like. His body count is like 1.5 because he's never actually really been interested in anyone because, though he doesn't know it because he doesn't remember, his soul only wants HER. So he meets her and is very *boing* about her and HATES it, and they literally have a fight in his office where he ends up on top of her and she's like "... I can feel EXACTLY how into this you are" and he's like !!!!!!!!!! He's just increasingly confused.

Also, this leads very nicely into Lothaire, where the big bad of the series is revealed to be a frankly loony tunes nightmare who's like "honestly I'm only 50% lucid at any given time". And he does a lot of puzzles in his spare time. And he wears trenchcoats because he thinks it looks cool (it doesn't). And he's constantly getting OWNED by a 24 year old psych major dropout. Like, she'll just perfectly diagnose him and he goes "... well you got me there". At one point, she hops on it with their clothes on (because he's trying to menacingly be like "YOU HAVE NO CHOICE" but it was actually exactly what she wanted him to do) and he has an Incident in his jeans, and she later finds him in the shower and throws said jeans at him like "NEXT TIME YOU TRY TO BE ALL HIGH AND MIGHTY REMEMBER WHAT I MADE YOU DO LOSER". Sad of him.

Embry Moore in Sierra Simone's New Camelot trilogy falls in love with Ash when he's literally stepping on him. And it's honestly just a string of embarrassments after that.

The Master by Kresley Cole (Kresley kinda specializes in Powerful Losers) features a billionaire Russian mafia hero shivering in the rain while the heroine takes an important test texting her like "I hope you do well :D!" because he's trying to get on her good side again lmao I was frankly embarrassed on his behalf

A Demon's Guide to Wooing a Witch by Sarah Hawley features the demonic big bad of the last book coming back with AMNESIA and the heroine rescues him from getting beaten up in like, the first chapter. And he's all "wooooow she's so strong *_*"

Hugo and The Maiden by S.M. LaViolette has a sex worker hero who's all "I'M JADED, I CARE FOR NOTHING BUT MYSELF" getting shipwrecked while being transported on a tiny island, and he gets picked up by a giant, sweet guy who carries him like a baby (while he angrily protests) to this makeshift hospital where the heroine, a vicar's uptight, bossy daughter berates him, and it's like all downhill for his dignity from there.

We cannot forget my beloved Duke of Lockwood from The Duke Gets Even, who spends three books getting swerved or cucked or both, and finally admits he's into Nellie and is all "we shall begin a no strings affair" only to like, immediately fall in love with her. And the rest of the book is her being like "we aren't going to get married Lockwood" and he's all "but whyyyy" and she's like "because you literally said this was a no strings affair which is the only reason why I agreed to it. (Him: :(.) He's also completely broke and thinks that he, as a duke, has sway in America, and there's an entire scene where Teddy Roosevelt himself is like "I like you but I can't help you because you're actually just a broke loser here" after he tries to boss up.

Wynter from C.L. Wilson 's The Winter King is all, "I'm a conqueror, I'm so dangerous, if you don't give me a child within a year I'll leave you on a glacier to die" only for everyone in his employ to be like "girl the glacier thing is actually bullshit". He's actually a puppy. The heroine discovers that he makes sad little ice sculptures of his dead family because he's so lonely. I was like "aww" but also "Jesus dude go outside".

The Duke Gets Desperate features a duke who's an art history major, basically, and like all art history majors (I say as one) he has no applicable life skills and his estate is going under. (I LOVE a broke aristo.) So when the heroine shows up having also inherited the estate and is like "we're going to charge people for tours of the castle to make sure we can pay for it" he's all "GAAAAAASP MADAME DUKES DO NOT HAVE TOURS OF CASTLES DUKES ARE DIGNIFIED AND BROKE!!"

Mercy by Sara Cate features a hero who was literally a cheater in a previous book, a rotten SCOUNDREL finding out that what he really needs to straighten up is to be humiliated and dominated by an older woman (ideally, his dad's close friend).

The Queer Principles of Kit Webb by Cat Sebastian has former highwayman and local sad man and cafe owner Kit begin tutoring dandy swordsman Percy on how to like, rob people. But Kit is ridiculously attracted to Percy, something Percy clocks immediately by being like "this loser is looking at my ankles" and whenever Percy Does Something to Kit Kit is like "THANK YOU OMG".

Oh, speaking of, Shane in Heated Rivalry is like, a perfect athlete and also a massive dork. He's also a "thank you omg that was amazing" guy and then is immediately like "I SAID THANK YOU???" At one point when he and Ilya do it for the first time his inner monologue is like "what if we get stuck together and the fire department has to come and pull us apart and EVERYONE WILL KNOW". A human ball of anxiety. Constantly embarrassed by himself. Ilya is more confident and smooth but also has some losery moments, like when they're camming for each other and he looks at Shane after and says in Russian "I'm so in love and it's horrible" lmao.

Lol Jamison from Tracey Livesay's American Royalty is notably pathetic because he's like, a frosty uptight British prince, and as soon as he sees the heroine he immediately becomes a slobbering ridiculous mess. He manages to keep up the frosty prince act for approx. five minutes.

Managed by Kristen Callihan. Scottie is so in control and prickly and TOGETHER... except for the scene where he fishes her dirty laundry out in the bathroom and does Unspeakable Things and then hand washes it and hides it under the mattress for Later and she FINDS IT.

Hotel of Secrets by Diana Biller has a virginal hero who believes he must be celibate to be an amazing operative, and he's great at the operative stuff, but he's soooo into the heroine. At one point there's a scene where she's bandaging him and she touches his ribs and he's like "pls stop" and she's all "why" and then Looks Down and goes "oh". Humiliating stuff!

Lush Money by Angelina M. Lopez has a hero who gets caught by the paparazzi when he's servicing the heroine on his knees in a car. Very sad for his dignity.

[ivie-online]

was going to comment on the ‘failure of basic journalistic dilligence in the mass media’ or whatever but realized it would make it seem as of the problem was a momentary lapse in integrity that had been addressed. and it hasn’t been, not in the slightest.

It is so morally unthinkable that these major outlets never once mentioned the thousands of Palestinian adults and children stolen from their homes and from the streets by Israel. And even now, when it comes to their release, these pieces spend endless paragraphs describing Israeli ‘hostages’, but just a few words on the many children being returned (many of whom were arrested after being accosted by the IOF), who they refer to only as ‘prisoners’.

these white supremacist rags have been very consistent in their efforts to uphold the most violent tendencies of western imperialists, yes. but this refusal to acknowledge the reality of the situation: that Israel took thousands of hostages first, is one of the most blatant examples of their explicit support of this project, and of their mass failure to recognize the humanity of Palestinians.

[because--palestine]

Israeli whistleblowers detail abuse of Palestinians in shadowy detention center

Strapped down, blindfolded, held in diapers: Israeli whistleblowers detail abuse of Palestinians in shadowy detention center

[onbreakreadlastpost]

Women rights being eroded

[documenting-apartheid]

December 21 2023 - Suhaib, a Palestinian boy from Jenin in the northern occupied West Bank, was detained by Israeli forces for six months without charge or trial.

Video transcript:

"I was administratively detained for 6 months without charges. I was next to the wall. Suddenly, the soldiers noticed me. They fired at me to force me to stop. They rushed towards me and tied me up and started hitting me with their hands and feet. They blindfolded me and tied my hands and feet. They put me under the sun for 4-5 hours. Then I was moved in a jeep between several settlements. The jeep continued moving until one o’clock in the morning. Then I was transferred to prison. During the first 17 days, I was interrogated and brought before courts. The lawyer was telling me that I would be released soon. I have not been convicted of any charges. That’s why I was placed in administrative detention. There was no evidence against me to charge me with. Administrative detention is a form of imprisonment without charge or trial but based on “secret evidence” that is neither disclosed to the detainee nor the detainee’s attorney. When my administrative detention expired, I was happy because I would see my family and loved ones. I was surprised when they brought me a paper stating the administrative detention had been renewed for another 3 months. I returned to my prison bed. It was a difficult moment. I was shocked then. I started spending less time with fellow prisoners. I became less talkative. It is difficult to end your detention, and to receive renewal on the day you are supposed to be released.  When I finished my second detention order, I shaved, dressed, and prepared for my release. At the same time, I was ready to receive news of another extension. I prepared myself not to be shocked. After I was released, my life was ruined. I had a good job and I lost it. Before prison, I intended to complete my education, but my mentality changed and I no longer wanted to. I didn’t want to socialize with people. My life was ruined."

1 in 3 Palestinian child detainees in the occupied West Bank are held without charge or trial. By the end of June 2024, Israeli forces were detaining 226 Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank. 75 are held without charge or trial in administrative detention, which is a record number since DCIP began monitoring child administrative detainees in 2008.

Source: Defense for Children International - Palestine

[protoslacker]

We have a legal and moral obligation to deliver justice for these family members, rather than false promises that these commissions will ever deliver more. That’s why I am troubled by your decision to revoke the guilty pleas that, in the reasoned judgment of the prosecutors of the case, were the best path forward to finality and justice.

Dick Durbin as Chair of Senate Judiciary Committee in a letter to LLyod Austin. Durbin Presses Defense Secretary Austin On Decision To Revoke Guilty Plea Deal For Accused September 11th Plotters

[news4dzhozhar]

[feckcops]

The hidden racism that turned a Nazi concentration camp into a detention centre for Muslims

“Today, a national memorial exists at the site of the Vught concentration camp. The main building is a museum with exhibits on the history of the camp and Nazism in Europe. Outside are life-size reconstructions of the camp’s living quarters, watchtowers, and barbed-wire fences. Various components of the memorial commemorate those killed at Vught or murdered after passing through it. The final part of the memorial is a reflection room where several short films convey the message that you should not be a bystander when you see others needing help ...

“It is impossible not to notice that alongside one of the memorial’s walls is a much taller wall, topped with barbed wire and closed-circuit TV cameras. On the other side of that wall are prison buildings, their arrangement mirroring that of the memorial’s reconstructed camp buildings. The memorial, in fact, takes up only a small part of the original concentration camp site. A larger part is occupied by a functioning prison. If you look left from the memorial’s main entrance, the tall metal doors of the prison entrance are visible, flanked by lines of people waiting to visit inmates. Many are women wearing hijabs and niqabs, a result of the fact that the Vught prison includes a high-security unit where anyone suspected or convicted of being a terrorist or ‘Islamic radicaliser’ is automatically separated from other prisoners and held under especially punitive conditions. Because almost all of those imprisoned there are Muslims, the unit has come to be known informally as a ‘Muslim detention centre’.

“Dutch prison authorities opened the high-security unit in 2006. Prisoners held there are isolated and confined for up to 22 hours per day. One woman imprisoned there, who was eventually acquitted of all charges, spent two full stretches – one for ten consecutive weeks and the other for three – cut off from anyone else. This kind of isolation has been a focus of research for Craig Haney, a psychologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who writes that prisoners held in long-term solitary confinement suffer effects that ‘are analogous to the acute reactions suffered by torture and trauma victims’. Former United Nations special rapporteur on torture Juan E. Méndez has said that, based on the medical evidence, solitary confinement for longer than 15 days can amount to torture ...

“What happened at Vught in 1943 and 1944 and what happens there today are, of course, not equivalent. Yet neither are the uses to which the camp has been put in these two periods entirely separable. The Nazis sought the complete elimination of European Jewry; incarceration was a means to this end. The European and US governments that implemented a global ‘war on terror’ have a different aim. Their goal is the integration of Muslims into what they call ‘liberal’ society. What is regarded as the cultural identity of moderate Muslims is celebrated within a framework of diversity and inclusion. Extremist Muslims, on the other hand, have their mosques and community organisations closed down, their speech criminalised, their bank accounts frozen, their clothing regulated (as with the Dutch ban on wearing a niqab or burka in certain public spaces, introduced in 2019), even their citizenship cancelled. In the cases of Afghanistan and Iraq, entire countries were invaded, occupied, and destroyed.”

[agentfascinateur]

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#abducted today

[diarystuff123]

Me in French