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The Body as Testimony: Giving Asylum Seekers New Hope |
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MD/PhD student Brandon Kohrt remembers his first asylum case clearly. A young man from Guinea had been imprisoned for political activism, escaped to the U.S. and applied for asylum. Through the Atlanta Asylum Network, an Institute of Human Rights program that Kohrt coordinates, the man was examined by an Emory medical resident and received documented evidence that he had sustained injuries consistent with torture. Based on this affidavit, his asylum claim was approved, and he now attends college in Georgia.
“I am lucky to have met this brave and politically devoted man,” said Kohrt. “I hope that we were able to play a small part in helping him to follow his dreams and live without constant threat of persecution.”
Every year, nearly 700 people arrive in Atlanta seeking political asylum and must prove they have either been persecuted or have a well-founded fear of it in their home countries. In these cases, it is the asylum seeker who carries the burden of proof, and proof of persecution is often difficult to come by. The odds are not good. In 2003, immigration judges in Atlanta approved only 3 percent of asylum cases that came before them, the lowest rate of approval in the U.S. Those denied asylum were deported back to the very countries they had fled.
Now the Institute of Human Rights at Emory has increased asylum seekers’ chances to stay in the U.S. by helping them attain documented evidence of torture. In 2003, in cooperation with Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), a Boston-based nongovernmental organization, the Institute started the Atlanta Asylum Network, which organizes local health professionals to provide free physical and psychological evaluations and court testimony for survivors of torture in Atlanta, which is the third largest refugee settlement in the U.S.
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MD/Phd student Brandon Kohrt coordinates the Institute of Human Rights’ Asylum Network.
Emergency Medicine resident Jeremy Hess examines an asylum seeker from West Africa. Physicians in the network do not wear white coats during examinations, since torture survivors often associate them with doctors who often accompany torturers to make sure their victims do not die. |
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“In many cases, asylum seekers have no documentation that they’ve suffered torture. But the body is testimony,” said Kohrt, who co-founded the Atlanta Asylum Network along with Institute of Human Rights Executive Director Dabney Evans and Emory Emergency Medicine resident Jeremy Hess. “You can look at the body and see, for example, very clear signs of certain types of abuse. Beating the soles of the feet leaves very clear traces. People who have been hanged by their arms have nerve damage. There are psychological signs as well, such as post traumatic stress disorder.”
The Atlanta Asylum Network organizes workshops at Emory to develop a core network of physicians and psychologists in the Atlanta area. Workshops include training on how to recognize indications of different torture techniques, as well as sensitivity training in issues unique to torture survivors. For example, since in many cases doctors have been complicit in torture, physicians in the Asylum Network do not wear white coats or scrubs during examinations.
The Network now has twenty-five core doctors and five psychologists, but participation in the project encompasses many groups at Emory, including Emory College undergraduates who research and prepare briefs for physicians on the political situations of the countries from which their patients have fled.
Today, of the fifty-five asylum cases that have come through the Atlanta Asylum Network, 45 percent have been approved by immigration judges.
“Asylum gives people a chance to start their lives over again,” said Kohrt. “There are a lot of problems with the system, but when it works, it’s part of the good story of the U.S.”
Visit the Institute of Human Rights’ website at http://humanrights.emory.edu/ |
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