Preferring secrecy: Guantanamo

Transparency is a term seen increasingly in the media. Wikileaks, founded in 2006 by Julian Assange, is best known for releasing secret documents provided by Bradley Manning. Wikileaks, like many of the progressive online media sources, strives for transparency when people in power would prefer secrecy.

Consider this recent story from Al Jazeera: For over three months, more than 100 of the detainees at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, most of whom have never been accused of a crime and/or were actually cleared for release three years ago, have been on a hunger strike.

As one prisoner, Musa’ab Omar Al Madhwani, said, “Indefinite detention is the worst form of torture….I have no reason to believe that I will ever leave this prison alive. It feels like death would be a better fate than living in these conditions.”

Consider also the issue of forced feeding. In its Declaration of Malta on Hunger Strikers, adopted in 1991 and revised in 2006 (in large part due to issues at Guantánamo), the World Medical Association states: “[f]orcible feeding is never ethically acceptable. Even if intended to benefit, feeding accompanied by threats, coercion, force or use of physical restraints is a form of inhuman and degrading treatment”—and “inhuman and degrading treatment” violates the United Nations Convention on Human Rights, which the U.S. helped develop and has ratified.

Some people argue that it is more humane to force feed prisoners than to let them die in protest of their treatment. But are there not alternatives to these two extremes, alternatives that are consistent with human rights principles?

If Americans want to live in a truly democratic society, we need:

  • Information about inhumanity and injustice being perpetrated by Americans
  • The opportunity to reflect on the inhumanity and injustice and its alternatives
  • The will to consider and promote alternatives.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

Committed to non-violent protesting (Quaker reflections, Part 3)

A continuing series by guest author Jean Gerard

Moving to California, I married and began raising three boys. It was the time of World War II, with its nuclear atrocities that wiped out vast portions of my beloved Japan.  All too soon again came the Korean “engagement.”

Quaker star
Quaker star. Image in public domain

Finally worried and angry enough, I joined Quakers. With the strength of their comradeship and guidance, I committed to non-violent protesting of further nuclear testing and missile development.

I was a paid office manager for the Sane Nuclear Policy Committee, then later for Women’s Strike for Peace and the Nuclear Weapons Freeze movement, and finally for the American Friends (Quaker) Service Committee.  My main interest has long been in world peace:

  • To what extent could it be taught?
  • What are the essential ingredients of intercultural understanding and acceptance?
  • What does empathy have to do with understanding differences?

It is no surprise that I have fallen in with Occupiers.  I find them particularly engaging because they are trying to do what I failed to do – discover and employ the most important fundamental of peace-making – creative alternatives to violence.

I have read some, listened a lot, and thought a great deal about the works of Gene Sharp, Richard Gregg and others, and the practices of Gandhi, Mandela, Schweitzer, Havel and Walesa, the Berrigan brothers, and Catholic Worker activists.

When the recent uprisings began in the Middle East, I started reading Al Jazeera and several foreign English language sources.  I recognized at last some hope for stopping the destruction of this failing world and for rehabilitating our decadent American democracy.

I see the free Internet as an aid to improving international understanding, and nonviolent revolution as a means toward a human future.