(...)
President Obama — a lawyer and a progressive, a president who ran on hope and change, promised to close Guantánamo, and won a Nobel Prize for Peace — has sadly furthered this corruption of legal principle more than anyone might have feared. Under his watch we experienced the killing by drone strike of Americans citizens, including a teenager whose main sin was to have been born to the wrong father. Extrajudicial executions came to include “signature strikes” — another shining example of Newspeak meaning we don’t know who we’re killing, of what exactly they have done — only that they fit “patterns” indicating they are a future threat.
But what has been happening in Guantánamo is perhaps even scarier.
Current prisoners who have been in detention for up to a decade have not been charged. In fact, most of them have actually been deemed un-chargeable for lack of evidence, and cleared for release. There is a kind of torture that goes beyond the isolation or physical abuse. It’s the psychological torture of denied hope, the indifference of a government that keeps you in prison just because it can. This is why the Guantánamo prisoners went on a hunger strike.
Prison authorities answered the protest with force-feeding — a violent and painful procedure, involving restraints and nasal intubation, that the United Nations and most medical ethicists consider another form of torture. The force-feeding has allegedly included a brain-altering drug. Over the course of a decade, Guantánamo detainees have thus been stripped first of freedom, then of the right to defend themselves in court, and finally of the right to protest — even through the starving of their own bodies. The U.S. government won’t let them return to their lives, yet it refuses to be embarrassed by their death. Prison officers have stated in the recent past that a hunger strike constitutes asymmetrical warfare — an expression in which “warfare” applies to a form of protest made famous by Gandhi, and “asymmetrical” is intended as a pejorative (as if symmetry were an option).
The government is effectively telling its detainees: You can no longer live — not in the basic sense of having a self-determined life — but neither can you die on your own terms. You can only exist in the nightmare limbo we have created for you, for as long as we deem appropriate. Full story...
Related posts:
President Obama — a lawyer and a progressive, a president who ran on hope and change, promised to close Guantánamo, and won a Nobel Prize for Peace — has sadly furthered this corruption of legal principle more than anyone might have feared. Under his watch we experienced the killing by drone strike of Americans citizens, including a teenager whose main sin was to have been born to the wrong father. Extrajudicial executions came to include “signature strikes” — another shining example of Newspeak meaning we don’t know who we’re killing, of what exactly they have done — only that they fit “patterns” indicating they are a future threat.
But what has been happening in Guantánamo is perhaps even scarier.
Current prisoners who have been in detention for up to a decade have not been charged. In fact, most of them have actually been deemed un-chargeable for lack of evidence, and cleared for release. There is a kind of torture that goes beyond the isolation or physical abuse. It’s the psychological torture of denied hope, the indifference of a government that keeps you in prison just because it can. This is why the Guantánamo prisoners went on a hunger strike.
Prison authorities answered the protest with force-feeding — a violent and painful procedure, involving restraints and nasal intubation, that the United Nations and most medical ethicists consider another form of torture. The force-feeding has allegedly included a brain-altering drug. Over the course of a decade, Guantánamo detainees have thus been stripped first of freedom, then of the right to defend themselves in court, and finally of the right to protest — even through the starving of their own bodies. The U.S. government won’t let them return to their lives, yet it refuses to be embarrassed by their death. Prison officers have stated in the recent past that a hunger strike constitutes asymmetrical warfare — an expression in which “warfare” applies to a form of protest made famous by Gandhi, and “asymmetrical” is intended as a pejorative (as if symmetry were an option).
The government is effectively telling its detainees: You can no longer live — not in the basic sense of having a self-determined life — but neither can you die on your own terms. You can only exist in the nightmare limbo we have created for you, for as long as we deem appropriate. Full story...
Related posts:
- 200 Days of Torture: Gitmo detainees still force fed, Obama folds his hands...
- Every day in Guantanamo is Groundhog Day... whether you're a guard or a prisoner.
- Guantanamo costs US taxpayers over $5 billion: Report...
- What it means to starve for freedom in Guantanamo...
- Yasiin Bey (Mos Def) force fed in standard Guantánamo Bay procedure...
- Gitmo detainees ask US court to end force feeding...
- Meet Shakira, 6-year-old victim of an Obama drone...
- The drone that killed my grandson...
No comments:
Post a Comment