Barefoot children play boisterously on the narrow dusty roads along the way to a gated edifice in the suburbs of Erbil. For the men and women who frequent this building, the children’s laughter may provide some comfort, a sense that the sacrifice of their own innocence might not have gone in vain. The Political Prisoners Generation of Kurdistan was established in February 2007 to help rehabilitate individuals who spent years in Ba’athist prisons during the heady days of the Kurdish resistance against the Iraqi regime. Ahmed Mam Rasool, deputy head of the organization, looks far older than his 36 years. He was detained in September 1989 when Ba’athist security agents discovered he was involved in clandestine activities in support of the Kurdish resistance. It was the kind of thing one might have dismissed as student activism - distributing leaflets, and providing medicine and foodstuff to rebels hiding out in the mountains. Rasool, a man of slight stature, recalls the beatings he endured and the brutal interrogation tactics used to extract information from him about Kurdish guerrillas. He claims he told them nothing, and was thrown into a tiny cell in which he could not even stretch out his legs. He spent one month and six days in this cell, and was released intermittently for torture sessions. “They would hang me up from my legs, with my hands tied behind my back, and give me electric shocks on my nipples and genital area,” he recounts. Though released a little over a year later in 1990, Rasool’s body still carries the scars of the ordeal - but the residual psychological scars cannot be showcased so easily. The Political Prisoners Generation of Kurdistan has a two-fold mandate: to archive Kurdish history through the oral testimonies of former prisoners, and to safeguard their legal rights. Rasool says they have nearly 12,000 members now, and the number is rising.

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