In the United States, we assume that individuals won’t be publicly scorned or physically or mentally harmed for criticizing government leadership or by belonging to a religion, race, gender, politic party or social group fallen from favor.

Asylum from sanctioned harm is what your great grandparents, my grandparents, all of our ancestors emigrated toward. They were often citizens of other countries seen as of no use to anyone, often certain candidates for persecution, that leadership felt entitled to bestow.

Since 1989, Nobel Peace Prize winner Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) has provided individual medical and psychological evaluations to asylum seekers. They document the injuries from past victimization and the persistence of symptoms which compromise functioning.

Asylum seekers are usually those in the U.S. with temporary legal documentation who have a well-founded fear of scorn and harm through any number of methods, including torture, if sent home.

The culturally, if not government endorsed, perception that they are of no use to anyone gives tacit, if not explicit, permission to harm — an entitled stance taken on by adversaries in their country of origin.

After conducting evaluations, members PHR’s Asylum Network of health care providers write affidavits to accompany lawyers’ presentation of the asylum seeker’s request to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services or the Department of Justice Executive Office for Immigration Review.

The persecution histories of these seekers of refuge shed light on why the United States continues to be seen as an asylum from abuse and government derision. Our status as an asylum, itself always under threat, is seen as precious to individuals seeking freedom from politically, ethnically or religiously driven contempt and its subsequent entitled perception that some people are of no use to anyone.

In their own countries, that entitlement is a permission to persecute, taken up by those whose motivation can be completely unknown.

The following is an excerpt from an asylum seeker’s deidentified

PHR affidavit:

“(The asylum seeker) states that his work as a journalist in Iran has led to his alleged arrests and detention. He states that he is a member of the Association of Journalists in Iran. … In 2000, (he) was ordered by the Iranian Ministry of Information to engage in no further publishing of any newspapers or magazines. … In 2001, he published an article about a reformist Mullah who resigned from the government in protest, despite warning from the National Security Council that he could not print this article.

“In summer of 2002, the Iranian government shut down his newspaper. (The asylum seeker) also gave a BBC Persia interview about the shutdown of the paper.”

He was subsequently detained four times where he was repeatedly tortured.

“In February 2012, Iranian colleagues (an Iranian human rights activist living in the U. S.) asked ( him) to attend and report on an opposition rally planned by the Green Movement, a reformist group.

“(He) did publish an anonymous account. (He) was arrested again and brought to Revolutionary Court. He was severely beaten and told to confess to the authorship of his articles … He refused to confess, and in fact, denied that he had written the articles …

“After the beatings, (the interrogator) threw him in the hallway … and called his family … who took him to the hospital … (The interrogator) and another official came to his bedside to warn (him) that if he kept writing, he would be referred to a higherranking prosecutor who would tie him up and cause him further pain and suffering.”

The persecution of asylum seekers has been legally documented through many, many PHR affidavits. Entitled harm of individuals who write, speak or present discredited views or in some cases, who just belong to a group out of favor, can be a pen stroke or one legislative vote away, anywhere.

There are many who are imprisoned by truths avoided by others. Here at home, (the asylum seeker) and Physicians for Human Rights remind us that there is always someone “like a bird on the wire” in the Leonard Cohen song trying “ in his way to be free.”

Susan Cook lives in Bath.

letters@timesrecord.com