When the Oppressed becomes an Oppressor

I remember watching a Channel 4 documentary a while back.

I still remember it even now because it shook me to my core. 

It was called “Pakistan's Hidden Shame" and it exposed the widespread sexual abuse of young boys in Peshawar, Pakistan. 

The documentary estimated that 9 out of 10 street children in Peshawar have been victims of sexual abuse and most of those are poor and vulnerable young boys, many of whom live on the streets due to poverty. Bearing in mind there was an estimate of up to 1.5 million children who live on the streets - and the 9 out of 10 estimate was not just limited to Peshawar - this harrowing stat just highlighted the sheer extent of this problem. 

Imran Khan, whose party Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) formed the government in the region at the time, was interviewed for the documentary and stated:

"It's one of the most sad and shameful aspects of our society. I am totally embarrassed by this and that we have not really been able to protect them." 

This is of course shocking and showed the collective failure of the powers that be in the region to safeguard the most innocent.

Arguably even more disturbing, was commentary from the director of the documentary, Mohammed Naqvi, who stated the pattern he witnessed was that “abused boys carry on the cycle by abusing younger boys.”

Rinse and repeat. 

This sentence adds another layer of tragedy to an already dire and traumatic situation.

It means there’s a never-ending cycle that perpetuates and expands, producing more and more victims with each passing generation.

What are the after-effects of abuse and this type of trauma? 

I have many clients that have undergone some type of trauma and you can see the impact, years, sometimes decades after the incident. 

Sometimes it’s emotional, sometimes it’s physical, sometimes, it’s generational.

But trauma stays inside. It doesn’t fade away.

It intercepts and influences your thoughts, feelings, emotions and eventually actions.

It imprints itself deeply within a person’s psyche.

The longer it stays, the more it turns to poison. Slowly but surely, your behaviour and entire identity changes along with it, often in ways the individual may not fully comprehend.

Imagine a child growing up in a home where shouting and hitting are normal. They might think this is how everyone behaves. When they grow up, they might treat others the same way, not realising there's a different, healthier way to interact.

Why do some victims become perpetrators though? It's not because they're bad people, but because unresolved pain often finds a way to express itself, sometimes in harmful ways. Toxic in = eventually, toxic out - no matter how ‘good’ the person may be.

Psychologists refer to this phenomenon as the "cycle of abuse," where victims of abuse are at higher risk of becoming perpetrators themselves.

Dr. Judith Herman, a renowned trauma expert and author of Trauma and Recovery explains traumatic experiences can disrupt an individual's sense of self, safety, and control. The trauma becomes internalised, and without proper intervention, the individual may unconsciously reenact aspects of their trauma, either in relationships with others or within themselves.

This cycle is often fuelled by unprocessed emotions such as anger, shame, and helplessness. In the case of abused children, it is obviously abhorrent what happened to them - why would they even consider doing the same? But it is said that victims may adopt such abusive behaviours as a misguided attempt to regain a sense of power or control that was stripped from them.

Dr. Bessel van der Kolk explains in the bestselling “The Body Keeps the Score” that trauma can alter the brain's wiring, affecting how individuals perceive threats and respond to stress, which can lead to aggressive or harmful behaviours toward others.

This often-overlooked issue is significant, with the World Health Organisation noting that up to 70% of adults worldwide have experienced at least one traumatic event in their lifetime, which, if unhealed, will lie in wait internally, as a dormant force that eventually resurfaces unexpectedly and often destructively .

Instead of letting it go, the incident has now sadly become ‘part of them’.

It sometimes comes to define them.

Many times, people with trauma can live with it for years and years, as they’ve stored it deep, deep within. They can even live a decent life. However, they are a ticking time bomb. The dormant trauma may be triggered and activated when something reminds them of the traumatic incident, which can then lead to a full-blown crisis.

When trauma remains unaddressed, it can lead to a heightened state of stress or hyperarousal, where the person is constantly on edge, anticipating danger even when none exists. This state is both psychological AND physiological; the body's stress response system remains activated, leading to various health issues over time.

Moreover, the dormant trauma can often impair one's ability to form healthy relationships. Trust issues, emotional detachment, and difficulty in regulating emotions are common after-effects.

This is why healing from trauma is vital.

To release, to let go, to reframe and to get it out of the system, for good. To the point where it has no power over you.

This will not only allow the individual to overcome past events but also prevent the cycle of trauma from continuing long into the future—both for the individual and those they interact with.

Another example of this pattern on a global scale

I have mentioned many times in previous articles the link between the macro and the micro. We can see this pattern play out on a global scale, too.

We have another clear example of the oppressed becoming an oppressor with the state of Israel.

They are a famous “victim” who educate en masse on the ills of antisemitism, on the holocaust and now on the now immortalised 7 October. They have owned the label of ‘suffering’ proudly to the extent it has become a national identity an entire people identifies with.

The phrase "never forget" is a cornerstone in Israeli society, emphasising the importance of remembering past atrocities to prevent their recurrence. Holocaust education is mandatory in schools, and memorials like Yad Vashem (The World Holocaust Remembrance Centre) serve as constant reminders of the past.

For 9/11, 7/7 or 7 October, we all now know these anniversary dates, they are burned into our brains through repetition. Every year as those dates get closer, we see the ceremonies, the TV documentaries, the token sombre symbol as we are told we should never forget that such atrocities occurred once upon a time.

This process of "date-ification," is especially apparent in the West, where specific dates are memorialised annually, and keeps the trauma alive in the collective consciousness.

The same privilege is not given to non-Western victims, however. Their atrocities are often under-reported and given mere descriptive titles - such as the Nakba, the Christchurch mosque shooting, the Srebrenica massacre, the Transatlantic slave trade et al.

The Nakba for example, is a deep and foundational trauma for Palestinians, yet it lacks any type of international recognition and memorialisation in the same way.

I am not saying that’s a bad thing. Any intense focus on past suffering will hinder the ability to heal and move forward.

When you’re constantly reminded that you were a victim, that bad things happened to you and to ‘never forget’ - you diminish the ability to ever, ever forgive. That trauma is never released and instead, it becomes an entitlement, a burden and a stick to beat others with.

Not only do you now have unresolved anger, what’s worse, you feel it is justified.

The cycle of abuse continues further.

How do we move forward as a society?

“A reporter once asked the Dalai Lama whether he had any anger towards China. He replied: ‘They have taken everything from us, should I let them take my mind as well?” - Patrick McKeown

We need to normalise that it’s okay to forget about the Holocaust.

We can both say it was a tragedy AND say it’s a long time ago and we need to move on. They are not mutually exclusive and I am not a monster for saying it.

Even those directly affected by it will recognise the importance of not living in the past and the need to finally move forward.

Ditto with the 9/11 anniversary every year and October 7.

If any society remains perpetually anchored in its traumas, what is the long-term play for the people who live there?

Will love ever penetrate their hearts or will hate continue to grow?

Will they ever fully recover or will each generation become more and more bitter?

Even those who are two are three generations removed are infected by the toxic and negative trauma of the tragedies.

You end up with a distant ancestor of trauma, fuelled by this false need for vengeance becoming the oppressor and the roles reversing. If this education is continually spread, the hatred and violence will never stop. It’s like a person who, after being scratched by a cat once, becomes afraid of all cats and decides to keep them all away, even friendly ones… and programs his entire family for generations that all cats and kittens are evil and must be killed on sight.

Ludicrous, when we put it like that, isn’t it?

Trauma need not dictate destiny.

We need to stop this ridiculous memorialisation of past tragedies - it’s serving no one except a few. We need to put in place proper methods and techniques to heal the collective consciousness and start building bridges again.

And we NEED to call a spade, a spade.

The new oppressor MUST be called out and his privileges stopped. Without accountability and rule of law, there is nothing except anarchy and chaos, which is what we’re seeing now.

We wouldn’t allow a rapist to continue committing abuses - even if he had once been abused himself. That isn’t justice. That isn’t how law and order operates. We would throw the book at them and they would go to jail for a very long time. And rightly so. What we WOULDN’T do is justify their right to commit the crime - let alone aid and abet them - so why oh why are we allowing it to occur in the case of Israel?

To end, I want to refer again to Imran Khan’s hauntingly apt admission in the documentary.

Me too, Mr Khan. Me too.

The same applies here. These powerful words echo loudly on a global stage. They now reflect the collective failure to protect the Palestinians.

The pressing questions are: How can we heal? How can we halt the cycle? And how can we hope for a better future?

The West must be willing to recognise their failures and the question is, will they really take responsibility for enacting change?

The journey is tough, but the destination—a world where justice is done and the Palestinians are free again—is undeniably worth striving for, insha’allah.