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Witness Against Torture
July 1st, 2010
The Burge trial, Police torture scandal, and The Illinois Coalition Against Torture
With the recent conviction of former Chicago Police commander Jon Burge for perjury, Voices for Creative Nonviolence is excited to see some progress towards justice in the Chicago police torture scandal. Starting in the 1970s and continuing into the 1990s, Jon Burge and officers under his command allegedly tortured and extracted coerced confessions from more than 100 victims, almost all of them black men from Chicago’s South and West sides.
In July of 2006, the United Nations Committee Against Torture recommended that the government: “promptly, thoroughly and impartially investigate all allegations of acts of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment by law-enforcement personnel and bring perpetrators to justice…” It was not until Burge’s 2008 indictment that any formal charges were filed in the police torture cases.
With the statute of limitations being expired for relevant crimes relating directly to torture, Jon Burge was convicted on Monday of federal perjury and obstruction of justice charges for lying about the torture and now faces a possible 45 years in federal prison.
June 29, 2010
On February 22, 2010, Chris Gaunt began conducting a weekly sit-in at the local offices of her US Senators, Chuck Grassley and Tom Harkin, in Des Moines, Iowa, urging them to refuse any further funding for war. A number of other local peace activists joined Chris in conjunction with The Peaceable Assembly Campaign. As part of the sit-ins which took place during office hours, Chris made a point of connecting with the office staff, person-to-person, while she endeavored to educate them on the dire urgency of ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite these efforts, it was clear that the Senators themselves were not willing to seriously consider voting against war funding or even listen to the rationale that Chris and others were offering. Chris recognized that, to be taken seriously, more had to be done.
On March 11, 2010, Chris changed the weekly peaceful sit-in to a peaceful die-in. She lay down on the floor as if she were dead, with a note explaining that she would remain there until she could get a straight answer from the senator about cutting off funds for the wars. The office staff called on the police to physically remove and arrest her. She and others have returned to conduct die-ins nearly every week, a total of eleven times, since. Speaking of the results, Chris describes the opportunities she has had to interact with a variety of people, including Senate staffers at all levels, both in Iowa & DC, Federal Building Security Officers, Police Officers, Prosecutors, and now Judges.
Below is a poem Chris wrote about her experience as well as an excerpt from a letter to Senators Grassley and Harkin and their staffs.
June 22, 2010
Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
—U.S. Constitution, Amendment I
An old cliché says that anyone who has herself for a lawyer has a fool for a client. Nevertheless, going to trial in Washington, D.C., this past June 14, I and twenty-three other defendants prepared a pro se defense. Acting as our own lawyers in court, we aimed to defend a population that finds little voice in our society at all, and to bring a sort of prosecution against their persecutors.
WASHINGTON, D.C. - On Monday, June 14, twenty-four activists with Witness Against Torture were acquitted in Washington, D.C. Superior Court of charges of “unlawful entry with disorderly conduct.” The charges stemmed from demonstrations at the US Capitol on January 21,2010 - the date by which President Obama had promised the closure of the Guantanamo detention camp.
 design by Kate Kelly
…No one expects a Hilton Hotel when going to jail, neither do I desire one when traveling. Many of us had been sleeping on the floor of a local church for the previous twelve days, and I found it quite comfortable. But the conditions at Central Cell Block were deplorable. The cells were hardly bigger than the bed frame and the grimy toilet and sink combo took up most of the floor space. The beds had no pads. They were just a slab of thin metal that made an obnoxious pop sound, similar to a gunshot, every time a prisoner so much as rolled over. It had to be close to ninety degrees in the cell and the massive overhead light, which remained on all night, was reminiscent of an interrogation lamp. The room had the look and feel of an oven. Cockroaches lined the walls and vied for space on our beds, now dripping with sweat. These irritating conditions were amplified by the fact that most of us were on the twelfth day of a liquids only fast to be, in some small way, in solidarity the men who remain on hunger strike at Guantanamo to protest the illegality of their detention.
By Jerica Arents
January 24, 2010
In the absence of an intact corpse, families often gather for memorial services rather than funerals.
The families of Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi, and Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani – three Guantánamo prisoners whose earlier purported suicides were declared “asymmetrical warfare” by the Bush Justice Administration – received Salah’s, Mani’s and Yasser’s broken and lifeless bodies. Previously the families had gathered to wake their loved ones, after authorities in their countries informed them that their sons had died in Guantánamo.
January 18, 2010
Taking part in Witness Against Torture’s Fast for Justice has caused me to reflect on the nature of torture and why it exists in society. For the past couple years, I have been involved in one way or another in both the movement to shut down the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay and the movement to seek justice for over 20 police torture victims that still remain incarcerated in Chicago based on confessions extracted by torture by former police commander Jon Burge.
While working to end torture and its repercussions, meeting survivors of torture and participating in this fast, I have often found myself looking for rational explanations to explain both the plight of the tortured and the torturer. Many of the individuals I have known or read extensively about who have been tortured do belong to some minority or excluded group. Listening to and looking at their stories, there are some strong socio-political connections to be made. — An African-American man in racist Chicago; a bi-sexual man from an intolerant Cameroon; a Muslim man from Yemen caught in the indiscriminate and ever-expanding spider’s web of the United States War on Terror.
But Will D.C. Rally Spark Groundswell?
by Eli Saslow
October 7, 2009
Washington Post
View picture gallery
 Sarah L. Voisin-The Washington Post
The protesters convened for a final planning meeting, already triumphant, convinced that nine months of preparation was about to pay off. Antiwar organizers who had come to Washington from 27 states exchanged hugs inside a Columbia Heights convention hall and modeled their protest costumes: orange jumpsuits, “death masks,” shackles and T-shirts depicting bloody Afghan children. Then Pete Perry, the event organizer, stood up to deliver a welcome speech.
“This is a great moment for our movement,” he said. “We are continuing an incredible tradition.”
“Like Gandhi,” said the next speaker.
“Like Martin Luther King,” said another.
By Dana Milbank of The Washington Post
October 6, 2009
 Sarah L. Voisin/Washington Post
It was a scene repeated countless times during the Bush years:
A few hundred people massed on Pennsylvania Avenue outside the White House, wearing orange jumpsuits and hoods, holding photos of wounded children or carrying coffins. They chanted antiwar slogans, acted out waterboarding and pretended to die on the sidewalk. Those who refused orders to leave the area - including ubiquitous activist Cindy Sheehan - were arrested.
But the remarkable thing about this familiar antiwar demonstration is that it occurred Monday, and the target was not George W. Bush but the White House’s current occupant. Protesters’ signs carried Obama-specific barbs: “Change? What Change?” “The Audacity of War Crimes.” “Yes We Can: U.S. Out of Afghanistan.”
By Garance Franke-Ruta
October 5, 2009
 REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
“Cheerleaders for the war refuse to acknowledge that there could be any viable strategy other than a bigger and bigger military footprint. …” the group said in the letter. “The hawks are making their position heard. Now, the majority of Americans — those of us who are for as quick and as responsible an end to the war as possible — need to make our voices heard, too.”
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