{"id":162,"date":"2013-04-06T16:25:49","date_gmt":"2013-04-06T13:25:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nasrinparvaz.org\/web\/?p=162"},"modified":"2016-09-10T16:34:14","modified_gmt":"2016-09-10T13:34:14","slug":"working-with-refugees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nasrinparvaz.org\/web\/2013\/04\/06\/working-with-refugees\/","title":{"rendered":"Working with Refugees"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the Saturday Forensic Forum 2013<\/em><\/p>\n

I was born in Iran. I first came to the UK in 1978, at the age of 20, in order to
\nstudy. When the revolution broke out the following year I returned to Iran for a
\nbrief visit to my family, not realising that it would be 15 years before I would
\ncome to Britain again \u2013 as an exile. In post-revolutionary Iran I became active in
\nthe field of women\u2019s rights and civil rights, as a result of which I was arrested in
\n1982. I was tortured and sentenced to execution. My life was saved by the
\nintervention of my father, who managed to get my sentence reduced to
\nimprisonment. I was released in 1990 after spending eight years in prison.
\nA few months after my release from prison a friend asked me if I had been
\nfrightened the day I was arrested or when I was taken for torture. I thought for a
\nfew moments \u2013 I pictured that day and the following events \u2013 before answering,
\n\u2018No, I didn\u2019t feel fear.\u2019 She was surprised; I was surprised by my answer, too. She
\nasked, \u2018How come?\u2019 I replied that I didn\u2019t know. But her question and my answer
\nstayed in my mind; now and then I thought about it, but I couldn\u2019t understand
\nwhy I hadn\u2019t felt afraid then and there. Now, about 30 years later, I can see that I
\nfelt no fear at the moment of my arrest because I\u2019d gone into a state of shock.
\nThe shock, which was the overriding sensation, led to a kind of freezing that
\naffected my body both physically and psychologically and working as a defence
\nmechanism at the time of my arrest and in the subsequent days and months.
\nNow, thinking back, I realise that I stayed in that initial state of shock for some
\ntime. It wasn\u2019t caused solely by the torture that I went through; witnessing the
\ntreatment of other prisoners was also shocking for me. However, I assume a
\nstate of shock, numbness or freezing must have different levels, since I
\nremember I feared losing my life years later, not in 1983, when I\u2019d been subject
\nto an execution order, but in 1988 (for example), when everyone was awaiting
\nher own death during the massacre of prisoners. In 1988, even the guards were
\nfrightened; they came to the ward in a pack, like wolves. Perhaps the shock I\u2019d
\ninitially experienced had lost its grip by then, and I could feel my surroundings
\ndifferently.
\nPerhaps what saved me in prison was the realisation that they wanted to break
\nme, and I told myself I would not let them succeed. Under the interrogation I was
\nsubjected to psychological pressure to denounce my belief in a TV confession. I
\nrefused. Psychological pressure on prisoners led some of them into mental
\ndisturbances. Some prisoners became so disturbed that we felt that they might
\ncommit suicide, but we could not save them. After a few years in prison I could
\ntell when a prisoner was going downhill and if she might commit suicide sooner
\nor later. They withdrew themselves from others, by creating a wall of silence; a
\nwall we could not penetrate. You were rejected from being with them whilst
\nbeing so cramped that physically there was no gap between us. In some cases I
\ntried hard to talk to them but I could help only a few people. Though I read a few
\nNasrin Parvaz. Working with Refugees. Saturday Forensic Forum 6th April 3013.
\nbooks about psychology in prison that I had acquired illegally, but it was still
\ndifficult to grasp what was happening within us. After a while I could recognise
\nthe patterns and identify that there was something wrong the next time I saw
\nthem. Silence and isolation were the warning signs that someone was going
\ndownhill and needed help.
\nHere I want to tell you about one particular woman who could not withhold her
\ninformation under torture and betrayed one of her friends. It seemed she could
\nnot forgive herself and perhaps to bring about her own execution in
\ncompensation, she defended Marxism; which meant being an infidel in the eyes
\nof the regime who should be killed. However, they did not kill her but put her in a\u00a0box for months sitting blindfolded, among more than hundreds of prisoners in
\nthe same situation. They could not see each other, nor talk to each other. If they
\nbroke the rules and talked, coughed or touched their blindfold, they would be
\nbeaten. Most of those subjected to that torture were broken, but she wasn\u2019t. I
\nmet her a week after she had come out of that situation without accepting Islam
\nor denouncing her beliefs. I realised she was psychologically disturbed. Why? She\u00a0didn\u2019t talk to anyone. I saw her sitting face to the wall, as she had been forced to\u00a0do for months. A few times I tried to talk to her, but every time she rejected me\u00a0very politely. Four years later during the massacre of prisoners in 1988, when our\u00a0situation was very tense and we thought we all were going to die, she committed\u00a0suicide.
\nIn 1988 when she killed herself, I was in the same ward with her; we had
\norganised a team to work night and day watching her and another prisoner, who
\nwas also trying to kill herself. As she tried a few times to kill herself and we
\nprevented it, we became her jailers, who were not letting her do what she
\nwished to. She started to have hallucinations and swear at us. In that tense
\nsituation our only connection with the outside world, visits from our family, were
\ncancelled, and she steadily deteriorated. We heard that prisoners were killed
\ndaily, and they executed more than fifty women from the ward I was in. About
\nfive thousand prisoners who were sentenced to imprisonment, many of whom
\nhad finished their sentences, were executed in those few months. The fact that
\nshe had been a healthy young woman when she was arrested and became
\npsychologically disturbed in prison, gave me so many things to think about. The
\nfirst lesson I had from her and other people who became disturbed in prison was:
\nthere are two essential connections each person needs if they are to stay
\nhealthy. One is between mind and body and the other is between the person and
\ntheir environment. It is not difficult to push people to the corner of psychological
\nproblems or lead them to commit suicide.
\nAfter my release in 1990, I continued to see people who were organising
\nthemselves to fight for their rights, such as having unions. About a month after
\nmy release I stood in a bus stop queue and heard the man in front of me saying,
\n\u201cthis is the men\u2019s queue\u201d and, pointing his finger to somewhere else, \u201cthat\u2019s the
\nwomen\u2019s queue\u201d. I became furious and realised how things had been changed for
\nthe worse regarding women\u2019s rights during the eight years that I had been in
\nprison. After some time living in society again, I could see that people, especially
\nNasrin Parvaz. Working with Refugees. Saturday Forensic Forum 6th April 3013.
\nwomen, were depressed. I realised how women were suffering because of the
\nopen discrimination and segregation. Sexual apartheid, branding women as
\nsecond class citizens, is the cause of so many suicides by women in Iran. I
\nwitnessed the fact that oppression is the cause of depression.
\nAfter my release I found myself constantly followed by the Islamic guards, and
\nsome of my friends were re-arrested. Realising that I could get arrested again, I
\nfled to the UK where I claimed asylum in 1993. I was granted refugee status a
\nyear later. After a few months living here I started to have flashbacks of arrest
\nand torture, and it led me to seek help from the Medical Foundation for the Care
\nof Victims of Torture, where I received psychotherapy for a number of years.
\nMy experience led me to study for a degree in psychology and getting involved
\nwith people who had psychological difficulties or relationship problems. I have
\nto emphasise that a combination of things helped me to understand the affects
\nof prison. As I understood them, they lost their grip on me. After my release I
\nstarted to learn music and continued for a number of years, which I have to
\nadmit helped me a lot. Reading about the affects of abusive situations or
\nrelations, research about the aims and affects of prisons and writing all helped
\nme to understand the impact prison on me.
\nHowever, I should say that the poverty and loss of attachments associated with
\nexile in some way reminded me of prison; not exactly like the one I was in but a
\nwider prison, a reformed prison. Exile means losing your attachments, which are
\nvital for one\u2019s everyday life. Exile is like buying a one way ticket to walk out of
\nyour life, and losing the right to return; it puts an end to the relationships you
\nhave and you might take for granted. So here, as in prison, I could not see my
\nfamily. My parents could not come and see me because of old age and illness.
\nThe loss of my father gave me a new understanding of exile and freedom
\nbecause I was not able to visit with him when he needed me. My friends could
\nnot come and see me because of the border restrictions, which are only for
\nordinary people (the brutal rulers in Iran and everywhere else are free to come
\nhere or go anywhere they wish to). I want to emphasise to Westerners what
\nlosing our family and friends means to us; people from countries like Iran are still\u00a0family- and community- oriented and losing them doesn\u2019t mean only losing your\u00a0roots; some people dry up under stress and loneliness. So, even if refugees come\u00a0here without any psychological problems, they soon have one, due to loss of\u00a0attachments. The first problem with exile is attachment issues, the way refugees\u00a0lose connection with their families and environment. When the connections are\u00a0destroyed they feel despair and depression. Now these feelings are shaping their\u00a0lives; they might constantly think about those who they left behind. After loss of\u00a0attachment, loss of position is very important for refugees, by which I mean loss\u00a0of one\u2019s position and status. For instance, many people define themselves
\naccording to their jobs but when people flee from their country they lose their
\nposition and cannot continue their profession. Language is one of the many
\nbarriers that prevent refugees from holding the same position or even gaining a
\njob. If refugees can find work it tends to be working in roles of lower status and
\nNasrin Parvaz. Working with Refugees. Saturday Forensic Forum 6th April 3013.
\nincome. Position is related to the income also and refugees not only lose their
\nwork and people related to their jobs, but they drop to the poverty. In a way they
\nwere someone there, and now they are nobody here.<\/p>\n

I mentioned about writing, I would like to talk about the effects of writing. As a
\nrefugee I could not have a voice in exile as I had not in Iran, yet the act of writing
\nhelped me so much. In the process of writing, I realised I\u2019d built up so much
\nanger and hatred in prison because of the torture and humiliation I\u2019d
\nexperienced. Other emotions were suppressed and couldn\u2019t flow naturally as
\nthey once did. I needed to shed the hatred, because otherwise I knew I would
\nbecome like those in power, and that was what they wanted. I learned to channel
\nmy anger into campaigning against execution and helping others who had similar
\nproblems. I can see that now I\u2019m more comfortable in expressing my feelings \u2013
\nsomething I\u2019d found too difficult before.
\nIt was only in the process of writing that I could understand what PTS, which
\nyears ago my therapist had said I was suffering from, meant. It\u2019s said that writing
\nis therapy, because it distracts you and takes your mind off your problems or
\nexperiences; but now, after a few years of practising writing as a survival
\nmechanism, I feel it offers something more. For me, reading a good novel and
\nsocialising with friends are tools of distraction, while the act of writing is like a
\nstream that carries pain from our well of suffering and pours it out into the sea.
\nmeans of distraction can\u2019t change us, or take the pain away \u2013 it\u2019s a temporary
\nrelief that only lulls the pain, whereas writing, by helping to wash the pain away,
\ncan make our lives so much easier to bear.
\nWriting isn\u2019t only a process of producing; at the same time it\u2019s a process of being
\nproduced. Other activities take from their makers and give them nothing in
\nreturn, corroding them as they give themselves over to their creations. By
\nwriting, we can revisit the past and look at the effects of things that are done to
\nthe body. It\u2019s important to remember, however, that language, which is the only
\nmeans available to a writer, can be another prison for someone who doesn\u2019t
\nknow how to write, or hasn\u2019t yet mastered the language she\u2019s trying to write in.
\nAt the same time the second language provides a distance that makes it easier to
\nexpress painful feelings.
\nI want to finish this part of my talk with a bitter experience I had, which must be
\ncommon among refugees. In the early years of my being here, apart from
\ntherapy, I also joined a writing group of which the aim was to help refugees like
\nme to use writing as a therapeutic means. In this group there were European
\npeople as mentors and refugees as mentees and in this group I experienced
\nracism. I reported it to the clinic and they didn\u2019t even care! When I left the group
\nI learned that other clients too had experienced racism and reported it, and the
\nperson in question is still in her job! Looking down at refugees, treating them
\npatronisingly and with ideas they don\u2019t understand adds to their pain. I witnessed
\nlaughing at what they did or criticising them for not knowing something. Perhaps
\nI should mention that the media shape lots of people\u2019s minds here, particularly
\nNasrin Parvaz. Working with Refugees. Saturday Forensic Forum 6th April 3013.
\ntheir attitude to refugees. I have to admit that I don\u2019t read them now, but I
\nremember there was much writing about bogus refugees, while there was
\nnothing written by refugees. We were all considered guilty before it was proven.
\nEspecially after 7.7 in 2005, the media used the atrocity against refugees and
\nforeigners. Like so many others I too experienced racism. I can say that after
\ntwenty years living here, I don\u2019t feel I belong to here, nor do I belong to the place
\nI was born. My home is my body, yet I\u2019m not free to take it wherever I wish to go,
\nnot to the place I was born for sure.
\n————————————————————————————————————
\nA few problems regarding working with refugees that I have noticed:
\n– The main discourse regarding survivals of abuse \u2013 systemic or domestic
\nwhatever the cause has been- is categorising them as victims. I remember the
\nfirst time I went to The Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture,
\nI felt offended. I used to see myself as a survivor, and I believed I was strong
\nenough to help myself, but I needed help. I also don\u2019t use victim narrative,
\nwhen I talk to the people I see. Contrary to the position of victimhood, the
\nsurvival position helps people to see their power, the power that helped
\nthem to go through a domestic hardship, or could bear years of
\nimprisonment. It also helps them to think how they can change their situation
\nfor the better, or put an end to an abusive relationship. Likewise, taking the
\nsurvival position helps them to rebuild their life again in exile with injured
\nmind and body. I mean you can help them to use their strength to help
\nthemselves, thus reducing the effects of prison. I know that there is a
\ntendency within many people to take the position of victim; but we cannot
\nhelp them before inviting them to come out of that position and look at
\nthings with their strength lenses. I think locating people into the victim\u2019s box,
\ncloses the possibility of change, which is crucial if they are to get better.
\n– Another problem is to treat refugees or people from countries like Iran, with
\nthe notion of cultural relativity. I see this as accepting patriarchy for women
\nof colour, rather than recognising human rights for them too. There are
\ncases in which even when an Iranian woman is traumatised from her family
\nor husband\u2019s abuse, and asks for help, she is denied. The system or the
\ntherapists don\u2019t help her to change her situation or walk out of the abusive
\nrelationship. I heard a therapist say, it\u2019s their culture and we should not
\ninterfere with their system! I ask whose culture is this. This is some men\u2019s
\nculture, and not women’s. Which side are we standing? Are we going to
\nsupport the husband by not helping the woman? So, not only women in
\ncountries like Iran are subjected to systemic patriarchy, they are treated the
\nsame here! You might have heard about women who were subjected to
\nhonour killing after they asked for help from police and were denied. If
\nyou want to have more information about it, you can look at the Iranian and
\nKurdish Women\u2019s Rights Organisation website. Of course there are other
\nNasrin Parvaz. Working with Refugees. Saturday Forensic Forum 6th April 3013.
\norganisations, this is only one, which is helping women in danger of domestic
\nviolence.
\n– The next problem I would like to mention is about not being open enough to
\nlearn about our client\u2019s culture, and treating them with our stereotype. The
\nsimplest example of this is that if you\u2019re from Iran, then you\u2019re Muslim!
\nCultural barriers provide a blind spot for therapists. For example many Iranian
\nparents have a favourite child, and this can be the cause of children\u2019s
\nproblems; for someone who doesn\u2019t know the culture, it\u2019s difficult to pick up
\nsuch a thing soon.
\n– Another problem is, not taking account of refugees\u2019 environment, the social
\nsituation they\u2019ve grown up and lived in, and escaped from. For example,
\nthere was a big transition in Iran, which is the 1979 revolution; when the
\nIslamic regime took power and caused more than 4 million people to leave
\nthe country. Some of these people are refugees, who have escaped to save
\ntheir lives. Among them are people who experienced hardship like
\nimprisonment and arrived in the host country traumatised. Becoming aware
\nof the social situation that people escaped from helps us to understand their
\nproblems better. For example the law and enforcement in Iran tell men and
\nwomen that they are not equal; and there is an on going struggle by women
\nto change this inequality. In this situation in which the system gives men the
\nupper hand, they might become over-confident while women lose their
\nconfidence. Everyday the humiliation in the street that women experience
\nfrom the moral police to make sure they\u2019ve observing their compulsory outfit,
\nbreaks something inside a woman. Women I\u2019m working with have lost part of
\ntheir confidence in a long process of systemic and domestic pressure.
\n– Taking account of refugees\u2019 situation means seeing if they have a decent life
\nhere and that poverty doesn\u2019t add to their psychological torment. Now that is
\na difficult time for everyone I can see that it is more difficult for refugees than
\nperhaps any other section of the society. I can see widespread psychological
\nproblems, such as anxiety and depression among refugees, and not all of
\nthose who suffer seek help; and those who go to their GP\u2019s, only receive pills,
\nbecause it\u2019s cheaper. Even when they are receiving therapy, their situation is
\nnot examined to see how for example poverty is contributing to their mental
\ndisturbances.
\nI like to conclude that, in a course of therapy, something has to be changed, so
\nthat the person with a psychological problem feels better. Since it\u2019s difficult to
\nchange their life\u2019s situation, the way they see things might be changed.<\/p>\n

Click here to download the PDF version.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the Saturday Forensic Forum 2013 I was born in Iran. I first came to the UK in 1978, at the age of 20, in order to study. When the revolution broke out the following year I returned to Iran for a brief visit to my family, not realising that it would be 15 years … Continue reading Working with Refugees<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[13,14],"class_list":["post-162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-autobiography","tag-prison"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nasrinparvaz.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nasrinparvaz.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nasrinparvaz.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nasrinparvaz.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nasrinparvaz.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=162"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nasrinparvaz.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":165,"href":"https:\/\/www.nasrinparvaz.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/162\/revisions\/165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nasrinparvaz.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nasrinparvaz.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nasrinparvaz.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}