Today is the beginning of “Torture Awareness Month” and I would like to open this grassroots movement with some thoughts of my own, as well as, some gentle reminders from the past.
We as a Nation signed and witnessed into law the Geneva Conventions. We understand that human rights violations are serious and demand attention. We hold countries accountable for flagrant violations.
Some of these offenders include;
China
Korea
Israel
South Africa
Burma
Syria
Uzbekistan
Libya
Iran
And of course Iraq and the evil Saddam Hussein. You remember him don’t you, the evil dictator who killed his own people with poisonous gas. The tyrant who committed such flagrant human rights violations we had no choice, but to remove him from power. At least that was the excuse we used after we couldn’t find WMD.
Why have we made these countries suffer economically? Simple, they have not followed guidelines set forth by the world community. These guidelines are specific and vast. Today I will be focusing on a “Core International Human Rights Instruments” as laid out be the United Nations. The “Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment” instrument reveals the US has not been very accurate in it’s portrayal of following the rules of the world community. The UN passed in 1984 the international law, which contains a few articles I would like to review.
Article 1
1. For the purposes of this Convention, the term “torture” means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.
I wonder how closely we have been following this article?
From the New Yorker
Breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.
From MSNBC
The highest ranking soldier charged in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal was sentenced to eight years in prison for abusing inmates at Abu Ghraib during a court martial Thursday in Baghdad.Staff Sgt. Ivan “Chip” Frederick, 38, an Army reservist from Buckingham, Va., was also given a reduction in rank, forfeiture of pay and a dishonorable discharge. The sentencing came a day after he pleaded guilty Wednesday to eight counts of abusing and humiliating Iraqi detainees.
NEW YORKER
Internal U.S. military documents show an interrogation unit reported mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in November 2003, two months before military officials have said they learned of prisoner abuses, The New York Times reported on Monday.
So we see some misinterpretations of the first article already. I wonder what gave them the idea that all of this was appropriate treatment of prisoners?
GONZALES APPROVED MEMO AUTHORIZING TORTURE: An August 2002 Justice Department memo “was vetted by a larger number of officials, including…the White House counsel’s office and Vice President Cheney’s office.” According to Newsweek, the memo “was drafted after White House meetings convened by George W. Bush’s chief counsel, Alberto Gonzales, along with Defense Department general counsel William Haynes and [Cheney counsel] David Addington.” The memo included the opinion that laws prohibiting torture do “not apply to the President’s detention and interrogation of enemy combatants.” Further, the memo puts forth the opinion that the pain caused by an interrogation must include “injury such as death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functions–in order to constitute torture.”
Funny I don’t see that definition in the article mentioned above. What president is he working from?
GONZALES BELIEVES MANY GENEVA CONVENTIONS PROVISIONS ARE OBSOLETE: A 1/25/02 memo written by White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales said “the war against terrorism is a new kind of war” and “this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva’s strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions.” The memo pushes to make al Qaeda and Taliban detainees exempt from the Geneva Conventions’ provisions on the proper, legal treatment of prisoners. The administration has been adamant that prisoners at Guantanamo are not protected by the Geneva Conventions.
So he feels that UN law and the Geneva Conventions are obsolete. I guess this would follow the line of thinking in Washington at the time. You remember, “we live in a post 9-11 world now…” which translates into the re-interpretation of everything under the sun, or at least the re-interpretation of laws we don’t have the ability to up and change ourselves. So we move along to;
Article 2
- Each State Party shall take effective legislative, administrative, judicial or other measures to prevent acts of torture in any territory under its jurisdiction.
- No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political in stability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.
- An order from a superior officer or a public authority may not be invoked as a justification of torture.
Have the officers in the military read any of this? So no torture in any territory under our jurisdiction is pretty clear. I’m assuming “our” refers to the DOD since they run the detention centers. I remember Gen. Hayden saying something about this during his ceremonial confirmation hearing for Director of the CIA.
“We followed the law as it is laid out in the Army field manual, the Geneva Convention and legislation that pertains to DOD detainees and it’s facilities.” (loose quote)
Ok so there you have it. Anyone else want to jump on the “we haven’t done anything wrong” bandwagon? Maybe something from Secretary Rumsfeld after the detainee abuses were uncovered in Abu Grhaib?
Q Mr. Secretary, this administration has said repeatedly that in removing Saddam Hussein, the United States has gotten rid of a man who has murdered and raped and pillaged and tortured people in his country. And now these photographs and stories show that in fact the U.S. military has done that to prisoners in Iraq. And you say that this has — I believe you said it’s damaged U.S. attempts to establish trust in the country. I guess I’d ask you more broadly, is this a major setback for U.S. efforts in Iraq?
SEC. RUMSFELD: Oh, I’m not one for instant history, Charlie. The fact is this is an exception. The pattern and practice of the Saddam Hussein regime was to do exactly what you said, to murder and torture. And the killing fields are filled with mass graves. And equating the two I think is a fundamental misunderstanding of what took place.
Ok so this was a “one time” ooops I guess we need to fix some things on the ground.
WRONG
If we widen the scope of the playing field a bit, we could probably get around this nasty business about UN law. And I’m sure we wouldn’t find any more examples of prisoner abuses because it’s not exactly like they have US civil rights.
Article 3
1. No State Party shall expel, return (“refouler”) or extradite a person to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture.
Oooops again. So we can’t move a person into another country for the (well let’s be honest) sole purpose of torture? To be fair the military could be honoring frequent flier miles now or giving fabulous weekend packages to remote undisclosed locations, but for the sake of argument let’s stick with the nefarious motivations for flying people around the globe.
The Washington Post
The existence and locations of the facilities — referred to as “black sites” in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents — are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country.
The BBC
Speaking at a news conference in Berlin, the EU Justice Commissioner said he would call for tough penalties against any involved state. “I would be obliged to propose to the Council [of EU Ministers] serious consequences, including the suspension of voting rights in the council,” he said. “Right now, there is no [US] response.”
The World News and EU Investigations in Extreme Rendition Centers
Over the last few months, a number of former officials of the American intelligence services, some of whom had held responsible positions, have given interviews and provided many details of the resources used against actual and suspected terrorists. These statements, which have in fact been corroborated by indiscretions from officials still serving, clearly confirm that the current US Administration seems to start from the principle that the principles of the rule of law and human rights are incompatible with efficient action against terrorism. Even the laws of war, especially the Geneva Conventions, are not accepted or applied. The relocation of prison camps to Guantanamo and elsewhere indicates that even American legal standards are seen as obstacles by the US Administration. “Extraordinary rendition” and secret detention facilitate the use of degrading treatment and torture. It is even the stated objective of such practices, as the following quotations would appear to confirm.
So it would appear that we got article 3 wrong as well. Can it be that we are torturing detainees?
“There’s an enemy that lurks and plots and plans and wants to hurt America again. So you bet we will aggressively pursue them but we will do so under the law. We do not torture,” – President Bush
What does the president think of Ian Fishback’s testimony that abuse and torture was routine and that no one in the military hierarchy would say they were not permitted during eighteen months of his trying to get an answer? What does the president make of the following quote from another servicemember of his time in Iraq: “I think our policies required abuse. There were freaking horrible things people were doing. I saw [detainees] who had feet smashed with hammers. One detainee told me he had been forced by Marines to sit on an exhaust pipe, and he had a softball-sized blister to prove it. The stuff I did was mainly torture lite: sleep deprivation, isolation, stress positions, hypothermia. We used dogs.” Since the president signed the finding of September 17, setting up a series of secret CIA detention camps where “waterboarding” is permitted, does he believe and will he state categorically that no torture has ever occurred at those camps?
By Sullivan
A blogger alliance formed to promote Torture Awareness Month, June 2006.
Torture Awareness Month is an effort to respond to the growing evidence that the United States government is engaging systematically in the use of torture and inhuman treatment as part of the Global War on Terror.
Sponsoring organisations include Amnesty International (USA) and Human Rights Watch. Please take the time to join us in this movement.
