Torture Victims Relief Reauthorization Act of 2007

Floor Speech

TORTURE VICTIMS RELIEF REAUTHORIZATION ACT OF 2007

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Mr. CAPUANO. Madam Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 1678, Torture Victims Relief Reauthorization Act of 2007, which was passed under suspension of the rules today. I rise also to pay tribute to those who provide these tragically essential services.

I am privileged to represent the Boston Center for Refugee Health and Human Rights. The BCRHHR, based at Boston Medical Center, cares for survivors of torture, slavery, oppression, and war. Its dedicated physicians, therapists, and social workers provide individual counseling and group support, as well as legal, social, and vocational services to individuals and families who, in many cases, have nowhere else to turn. Patients have suffered terrible injuries, both physical and psychic, and most are grieving the loss of close friends and relatives. Above all, the Center recognizes the essential connection between health and human rights. Its clinical work succeeds, I believe, because it helps people regain their sense of dignity and worth as human beings.

Doctors work closely with pro bono lawyers to support political asylum applications and to reunite families of refugees and asylum seekers. Shame and anxiety may keep torture survivors from seeking asylum because, in order to gain asylum, applicants must recount their sufferings in a judicial setting. Thus, in order to secure their patients' freedom to remain in the United States, doctors must help them as they relive their traumas. They give them courage to persevere and they sustain the hope that, once asylum is granted, surviving spouses and children can enter the United States.

One wishes our world did not need services for survivors of torture, but we do need them. We are privileged, as Members of Congress, for this opportunity to recognize and support this work.

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