[Congressional Record Volume 145, Number 105 (Thursday, July 22, 1999)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E1623-E1624]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




   TRIBUTE TO DR. INGE GENEFKE AND THE INTERNATIONAL REHABILITATION 
                      COUNCIL FOR TORTURE VICTIMS

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. TOM LANTOS

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Wednesday, July 21, 1999

  Mr. LANTOS. Mr. Speaker, it is an honor and a pleasure for me to call 
to the attention of my colleagues the work of an extraordinary woman, 
Dr. Inge Genefke, and the institution which she established, the 
International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims. Dr. Genefke, 
a Danish physician, is an outstanding humanitarian and a distinguished 
medical doctor who uses her training and compassion to bring healing to 
those who have endured the pain of torture and abuse inflicted by 
repressive governments with whose policies or ideologies these 
unfortunate victims have questioned.
  Today, at the end of the 20th century, some experts say that one-
third of the 185 member states of the United Nations still practice 
torture or tolerate its use, and torture has been a dark side of human 
history for centuries.
  The clinic which Dr. Genefke established in Copenhagen, Denmark, in 
1979 was the first of its kind anywhere in the world which was devoted 
specifically to treating such victims of torture. Dr. Genefke's unique 
mission--fighting for the forgotten victims and survivors of torture 
around the world--makes her one of the great heroines of humanity.
  Mr. Speaker, Reader's Digest published an excellent article in March 
1999 on Dr. Genefke and her humanitarian work. I urge my colleages to 
read this article and to join me in paying tribute to this courageous 
and compassionate woman.

                   [From Reader's Digest, Mar. 1999]

                        She Heals Tortured Souls


Thanks to the dedicated work of Dr. Inge Genefke, the lives of tens of 
                      thousands have been salvaged

                         (By Lawrence Elliott)

       Miguel Lee, desperate to find release from his inner 
     agonies, came one day to a clinic at the University Hospital 
     in Copenhagen, Denmark. But when he saw the white coats of 
     the hospital staff he began to tremble.
       ``What's the matter,'' Dr. Inge Genefke asked him. He 
     couldn't tell her. It was too black a memory.
       But Miguel was able to speak of the anxiety that raged in 
     his stomach, the headaches that felt like spikes being driven 
     into his skull, the nightmares that jolted him into shrieking 
     wakefulness and terrified his family.
       Dr. Genefke listened carefully. Miguel sensed her concern; 
     he trusted her. And finally he told her of the echoing 
     torture chamber, night after night, when they wired his head 
     to an instrument and sent excruciating electric shocks 
     surging through his ears.
       Dr. Genefke asked him about the white coats. ``The doctors 
     wore white coats,'' he said. ``And there was always a doctor 
     in the torture room to make sure you didn't die. Dying was 
     too good for us.''
       Once he had been a respected union leader and the head of a 
     loving family. Now, after three years of imprisonment and 
     torture by the junta that seized power in Chile in 1973 and 
     three years of exile to Demark, Lee is broken in mind and 
     body.
       Doctors assure him they understand how terrible the torture 
     must have been. But they remind him that it is over. It is 
     time to get on with his life.
       It is what everyone tells him. He couldn't make anyone 
     understand that the torture doesn't end when they stop 
     beating you--until now.
       ``But the pain wasn't the worst, was it?'' Dr. Genefke 
     asked him. ``Wasn't it worse that they made you feel guilty 
     and ashamed? And don't you still feel that way?''

[[Page E1624]]

       Miguel's eyes welled with tears.
       Dr. Genefke explained to Miguel that they had tortured him 
     to break his spirit, to destroy his faith in himself, to make 
     sure that he would never again have the courage to speak out 
     against them. ``We can help you here,'' she went on. ``But 
     you have to believe in one thing: nothing that happened to 
     you in prison was your fault. Nothing! It was all their 
     fault.''
       Miguel nodded mutely. He had finally found someone who 
     understood.
       ``Torture has been a dark side of human history for 
     centuries,'' Dr. Genefke says today. But the clinic she 
     established in 1979 was the first of its kind anywhere 
     devoted specifically to treat its victims.
       When she began, it was still thought that torture could be 
     restricted to a few bandit regimes, even eliminated. But it 
     remains widespread. Fully one third of the 185 United Nations 
     member states practice torture or tolerate its use.
       The appalling realization that dungeon brutality had become 
     the policy of many states changed Dr. Genefke's life. 
     Determined to break through the curtain of apathy and 
     ignorance in which torture flourished, she organized 
     seminars, addressed rallies and raised money. Today there are 
     more than 100 torture treatment centers around the world that 
     were inspired by the efforts. The lives of tens of thousands 
     have been changed by her and her team's work.
       Essentially the same techniques are used around the world: 
     slamming both ears simultaneously, often resulting in 
     ruptured eardrums; rape and homosexual rape; electric 
     torture; holding the victim's head under water polluted with 
     human excrement to the verge of suffocation. A universal 
     favorite if falanga, in which the victim is beaten on the 
     soles of his feet often in an upside down position. Sometimes 
     he is then made to walk barefoot on shards of glass.
       When Ahmad, (some names have been changed to protect 
     victim's families) a student leader from the Middle East, is 
     brought to Copenhagen he cannot walk. The soft flesh on the 
     bottom of his feet has been badly beaten and the soft tissue 
     and nerve-endings severely damaged.
       Ahmad remains at the clinic for a full year. In that time, 
     psychotherapy helps him regain a true sense of himself. Then, 
     having been treated with radiology, massage and other forms 
     of physiotherapy, he walks out of the hospital with the help 
     of a cane, but without pain.
       Today, an intact human being, he is married and a father.
       Nothing in Inge Genefke's early years foretold a life in 
     which she would come face to face with the agony inflicted by 
     one human being on another, or be nominated several times for 
     the Nobel Peace Prize.
       She grew up in middle class comfort, protected from life's 
     harsher sides by warm and loving parents. A graduate of the 
     University of Copenhagen, her career path as a specialist in 
     neurology seemed fixed until she and three other physicians 
     responded to a plea from Amnesty International to examine 
     political prisoners of the infamous late sixties government 
     of the Greek ``Colonels.''
       They had been tortured, but some with such diabolical skill 
     that there were no visible wounds, and only X rays and 
     laboratory tests revealed their severe internal injuries. 
     Deeply moved by their suffering, Dr. Genefke began a 
     pioneering study into the uses and long-term consequences of 
     torture, and of the medical treatment of its victims.
       ``In the beginning,'' Dr. Genefke says, ``we thought, Okay, 
     we patch them up, we set the broken bones and send them home. 
     But we soon realized it was the pain in their hearts and 
     souls that was devastating them.''
       Genefke had entered one of the least known branches of 
     medicine. She had her little team, working with a few rooms 
     and some beds made available at University Hospital, set out 
     on a stop-and-go, trial-and-error quest for ways to heal the 
     survivors of institutional torture.
       In time, the clinical studies and principles for a 
     rehabilitation programme would be shared with treatment 
     centres around the world. All tangible medical symptoms are 
     dealt with by specialists. Many of the patients believed what 
     their captors has told them--that the torture had left them 
     finished, living on borrowed time. So every symptom was 
     checked, every presumed fatal illness probed, and nearly 
     always disproved. Abused sinews and bones were ministered to 
     by medicine, physiotherapy and surgery.
       But, as Dr. Genefke says, broken bones are easier to mend 
     than broken spirits. One study has revealed that of 100 
     Polish victims of Stalinist torture, 75 still suffered 
     symptoms of severe stress or were chronically despondent 40 
     years later.
       In Nepal, M, a factory worker in her twenties, is summarily 
     arrested, beaten with rifle butts and raped by four policemen 
     before losing consciousness. Charged with prostitution, she 
     is moved from one town to another, verbally abused in public 
     and repeatedly raped by police officers. A month after her 
     arrest she is released and threatened with death if she takes 
     any legal action.
       Suffering constant bleeding, sleepless nights and blinding 
     panic whenever she sees a man in uniform, she finally comes 
     to the Nepalese Centre for the Victims of Torture.
       ``It's normal to feel ashamed,'' the therapist tells her, 
     ``but it's not your shame. The shame belongs to those who did 
     these things to you.''
       Her family has to be helped to understand this, too. It 
     takes time. So does her long and painful treatment. 
     Eventually she and her family are able to put guilt, shame 
     and despair behind them.
       Inge Genefke set up the Rehabilitation and Research Centre 
     for Torture Victims in 1982. Three years later, she organized 
     its international body, the International Rehabilitation 
     Council for Torture Victims (IRCT), of which she became 
     secretary-general and medical director.
       She is married to Professor Bent Sorensen, a burns 
     specialist and a member of the UN Committee against Torture. 
     Their time together is precious. Dr. Genefke is constantly 
     travelling to help launch new centres, to rally people to her 
     cause. This September, she is organizing a conference in New 
     Delhi with the National Human Rights Commission.
       Despite the worldwide enormity of torture, many of the 
     centres Dr. Genefke has inspired get little or no help from 
     their governments. But she has an uncanny ability to win over 
     gifted professionals willing to take up the cause. ``One 
     minute you have a certain kind of life and the next minute 
     that whirlwind, Inge Genefke, comes along and you're on her 
     team,'' said one.
       Yet there are times when the task seems insuperable. She 
     sees a ghostly army of torture survivors out there, from 
     communist prisons, military dictatorships in Latin America, 
     the victims of upheavals in Asia, Africa and the Middle East. 
     The number of victims seems to be growing, and her efforts to 
     help them sometimes seem insignificant. ``It is like trying 
     to climb a mountain that keeps getting higher,'' she says.
       Months of hospitalization and years of holistic therapy and 
     rehabilitation were necessary before Miguel Lee was entirely 
     sound. But now he has a steady job and with nine 
     grandchildren, a full and rewarding family life. And in the 
     end the junta did not defeat him. Although he speaks Danish 
     and is well-integrated into his new land, he spends much of 
     his free time working for the preservation of the democratic 
     freedoms Chile has wrested back from the military 
     dictatorship.
       Sometimes Inge Genefke has to seclude herself and spend an 
     hour or so reading poetry to replenish her soul. But when she 
     sees a man like Miguel Lee come back from the living dead, 
     when she knows that her work has helped save some of this 
     generation's best people from death and disability, she is 
     again ready to tackle the highest mountain.

     

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