Amnesty International is starting an ad campaign in UK cinemas on May 9 showing a 90 second ad about water. Well, at about the 50 second mark it turns into a film about the horrors of waterboarding.
Watch (and, yes, it’s very graphic):
This has been making the rounds on European news sites today (The Guardian, Der Spiegel, etc.) but I haven’t seen anything yet on US news sites and wonder when and if it will actually be shown.
From the Guardian:
Amnesty’s 90-second film, called Stuff of Life, opens in slow motion with stylish shots of crystal-clear water and an upbeat soundtrack in the style of a typical mineral-water TV ad.
However, after lulling viewers the ad transforms into an interrogation room where a man is strapped to a table being subjected to waterboarding. Waterboarding involves first tying detainees to a board face-up and tilted backwards, then pouring water over the face and into breathing passages to simulate drowning.
“For a few seconds our film-makers did this for real, they poured water up the nose and into the mouth of someone who was pinned down with his head tilted back,” said Sara McNeice, campaign manager at Amnesty International UK.
“Even for those few seconds it is horrifying to watch. The reality, in a secret prison with no one to stop it, is much, much worse.”
The launch of the ad, which Amnesty International has dubbed “the film the CIA doesn’t want you to see”, follows the publishing of a book called Torture Team, which claims to shed light on interrogation techniques used in places such as Guantanamo Bay.
And here’s the website of ai’s unsubscribe me campaign:
The campaign is part of Amnesty International UK’s “unsubscribe” initiative launched in October last year that aims to gather support for human rights in the era of the “war on terror”.
Cross posted from My Silver State.