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.
These seem to be somewhat obvious cases of racial prejudice, heterosexism and what I see as U.S. imperialism coupled with a war on Islam. But why are similar scenarios and many less rational occurrences of torture so prevalent in human societies? What incrementally drives the torturer towards cruelty? I can’t say for sure. There are social hierarchies and peer pressure in law enforcement and military circles. But not all torture occurs in this realm. It happens in families and sometimes by random individuals. And I am always shocked to hear the almost arbitrary and unpredictable nature of many of the specifics of torture cases. — A young black man at the wrong place at the wrong time; a family turned on their son; a man in need of medical attention and sold for a bounty in Pakistan.
The suffering caused in these lives seems so needless and the level of intensity incomprehensible, yet the effects last for years. — Twenty years on death row in a state penitentiary separated from family and friends; a risky escape to the U.S. to find a three-month prison sentence in an ICE facility; 5 years of torture, hunger strike and three attempted suicides. Can we even begin to imagine what this anguish is like, not only for the tortured but also for their families? We should also recognize and attempt to comprehend the de-humanizing effects this cruelty has on those who order and carry out the torture.
The human cost of torture set aside, even many so-called military and intelligence experts have conceded that information gained through tortured confessions is useless. Humans will almost all break at a certain point, and they will say or do anything an interrogator demands of them simply to stop the pain. So what progress can be made through their false confessions?
Even with utilizing “enhanced interrogation techniques” and classified evidence, the United States has only been able to bring charges against just a few of the 774 men who have passed through Guantanamo. To start with, eighty-six percent of the detainees were captured by Pakistan or the Northern Alliance and were handed over to the U.S. at a time in which the U.S. offered large bounties for capture of suspected enemies. And of the 198 men that remain at the base, 103 have already been cleared for release through an intensive inter-agency review process. These men are clearly not “the worst of the worst,” and there is no justification for holding them indefinitely.
So we come back to the question of “why torture?” It all seems so arbitrary and pointless. But through my time in this fast, it has become all the more clear to me that, in some ways, it does not matter who we torture as a society. It just matters that we torture. This sentiment is not limited to the United States empire, but it is a notion that has been passed down through history. Examples have to be made, and dissent has to be discouraged. Fear has to be created, and people must be made to trust in the protection of their leaders. You will fear and you will obey. In the past it was kings. Now, governments and committees of bureaucrats make these Machiavellian choices all across the world.
If it’s not Guantanamo, it’s Bagram. If it’s not Bagram, it’s undisclosed CIA black sites. From Chicago to Cameroon, from Egypt to Israel, from Morocco to China, torture is a tool of the state and it sends a very intentional message. Whether written into law through Department of Defense lawyers like John Yoo, practiced blatantly by dictators like Hosni Mubarack in Egypt, or kept relatively secret through the slick PR campaigns of the Obama administration, torture serves a utilitarian purpose. It is a flexing of power and an exercise in control. In the same way, it seems that individuals apart from governments and institutions, let’s say an abusive father or a sexual predator, have some perceived need to maintain a sense of dominance over their victims.
This being recognized about, to quote Dick Cheney, the “dark side” and the “shadows” of human nature, I feel we need a worldwide Witness Against Torture campaign to oppose cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment no matter where it may be found - in our neighborhoods, in our police forces and prisons, off our coast at Guantanamo, or across the sea in Afghanistan. We must begin to look at the people of the world as a community of citizens, sisters and brothers, each one deserving a dignified pursuit of happiness and all the rights that are afforded to them in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the UN Convention Against Torture.
In closing, I am honored to be here as a part of this campaign to end torture with such a committed, centered and talented group of people. I am encouraged by the richness of each story and experience they bring to this circle. I have felt a connectedness here with the other fasters and also a connectedness to those still hunger-striking in Guantanamo. But, we fast, conscious of the fact that the detainees have many less luxuries and do not have the comforts of community. And so at the beginning of day 8 of our fast and as we plan for our direct action, we ask ourselves again; “how would the detainees like us to move forward?” “What can we do that is worthy of their struggle?”
