Founded by and for Survivors of Torture

TASSC, the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International, is. the only national, anti-torture organization founded, run, and organized by survivors of torture. TASSC's mission is to provide support for torture survivors through a network of partners aiding in medical, legal, basic necessities and more importantly, providing a community that helps survivors through the long and often traumatic healing process. We work together to confront torture wherever it occurs and through our education, outreach and advocacy work to end torture around the world.

Survivors and the Torture Law

For survivors of torture, the Military Commissions Act is especially deplorable.  While the United States has been complicit in the use of torture for many decades, the MCA marks the first time that the U.S. government has openly tried to establish legal justification for the practice of torture. Allowing the use of “coerced evidence”—evidence obtained under torture—in military tribunals marks a new low in the history of U.S. human rights compliance. Many of us who are survivors of torture were tortured as part of an interrogation. For this reason, the MCA’s attempt to provide legal cover for the CIA’s program of torturing U.S. detainees in interrogation settings is particularly offensive.

Equally offensive is the retroactive immunity that the MCA authorizes for U.S. torturers who committed grievous human rights violations in places such as Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo. Many of us during the course of our own torture were told “scream as loud as you like, no one will ever hear you.” The MCA delivers this same message to those victimized by torture at the hands of U.S. military or intelligence officials. The only thing possibly more abhorrent than torture itself is an effort by a government to sanitize or whitewash it. This is precisely what the United States has attempted to do through the MCA, and this is why the MCA is fundamentally flawed on both legal and moral grounds.

Learn more about The Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International.

We are joined by many friends in our Campaign to Repeal the Torture Law

Hundreds of organizations have joined hands with us in our mission to expose the torture legalized through the Military Commissions Act. Please see the complete list of organizations that have endorsed the campaign. If you represent an organization that would like to endorse the Campaign, please contact us.