In an eye-opening feature published in the Summer 2011 issue of U of T Magazine, Samer Muscati lays out in detail the struggles he continues to face and document in Sulamaniyah, Iraq as a freelance photographer and Human Rights Watch researcher.
“This is a place where violence is festering,” Muscati tells writer Kevin Charles Redmon. “The concern is, how do you deal with it in a way that doesn’t create new terrorists, alienate a large part of the population or trample on people’s human rights?”
That’s a nearly impossible question to answer, but Muscati — a 2002 graduate of U of T’s law school whose book about the survivors of the Rwandan genocide was featured in the spring 2009 issue of Precedent — has made great strides in the name of human rights in Iraq since arriving there in January 2006. Among his more high-profile accomplishments, writes Redmon, is the exposing of secret prisons where detainees were being tortured into giving false confessions.
The son of scientist parents who left Iraq in the 1970s, Muscati grew up in Ottawa and worked as a finance lawyer in Boston before turning to human rights law. His work today is a reflection of his strong desire to carve out a place for human rights and justice in Iraq’s fledgling democracy. “It’s not enough to just report on the problems,” he tells Redmon. “We need to make sure that change occurs as well.”
Click here to read Redmon’s feature on Muscati and his work in Iraq.