a friend of mine wrote me the following email: "
you should update your narrative on khiam... did you know that it exists no more!! the israelis bombed the hell out of it... now your website remains amongst the rare evidences that such thing once existed...". what you read below was written years before i received the email.
the
khiam detention camp is at present time a museum, a museum of a horror committed, unfortunately, very recently. situated in south lebanon, it was active under the israeli occupation from 1985 until 2000: torture was routinely practiced to extort confessions from lebanese detainees who were held without trial and whose conditions were reduced to inhumane ones. it was only until 1995 that these conditions were relatively improved, ever since the international committee of the red cross was allowed to enter beyond the threshold of that hell. in the year 2000, precisely on may 23, all detainees were set free after the israeli troops withdrew from lebanon.
even though many words have been written, still the
khiam detention camp remains unknown to many. it might be impossible to imagine what those detainees have been through and what life they could conduct once free. we have attempted to do exactly that: we have imagined a man, an ex-detainee, who returns to that camp now that he is free: we have tried to put ourselves in his shoes and narrate the story of that horror, through images and words, through photographs and thoughts. we do not claim to be capable of replicating a true story, but we hope to induce some reflections in the thoughts of the viewers.
we all have a dark side within us; we should be conscious of containing within us a little bit of that horror: a horror which might be derived from fear, from the need to belong to the majority, from the need to discriminate so that we are not discriminated. to such horror, common human sentiments belong: fear and anger. these however should not direct the decisions of democratic states. the horror committed by one state, the horror which is eventually transformed into law is, if possible, more loathsome. states are born and borders are raised exactly for this reason, so that the group does not possess the weakness of the individual, so that we are taught to protect ourselves, from ourselves.
the original italian text of this project has been written entirely by
marco iosa, a very talented italian writer and a very good friend of mine. i have translated the text into english trying to stay as faithful as possible to the original one. all photographs have been taken during a visit to the
khiam detention camp in the summer of 2004.
