Torture quiz

Question: What is the significance of June? Answer: June is Torture Awareness Month.

Guantanamo prisoners
Detainees at Camp x-Ray, Guantanamo Bay. Image in public domain.

Question: What is the significance of Guantanamo? Answer: Guantanamo is the symbol of American shame and self-degradation.

Fact: Our government has physically and psychologically tortured innocent men, and has kept them locked in a hellhole to the point that they are starving themselves.

Question: Why? Answer: The government fears that after the treatment those men have received at the hands of American henchmen, they may become terrorists if they return to their home countries.

Plea: Please watch this video and see the presentation of this infographic. Increase your awareness of what has been done by a government that is supposed to be of the people, by the people, and for the people.

Question: What does it take to get citizens to understand that torture, by any name, not only violates human rights, but also may be the most effective tool in the world for creating terrorists?

Answer: Recognition that the people being tortured are human beings, not animals, and they are being tortured not to get information but to terrorize groups of people designated as the “enemy” or “terrorist,” often on the basis of NO evidence but simply appearance.

Watch protest actions and “There is a man under that hood.”

Question: Does awareness of the inhumane and illegal behaviors of the U.S. government in Guantanamo lead to any sort of protest?

Answer: Yes. Many courageous Americans have undertaken efforts to keep this particular group of torture victims in the public eye. For example, watch this brief video showing what a group of American high school students have done to make a difference.

And visit the sites of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture and Witness Against Torture.

These are the beacons that can help us regain some respect within the international community and our own minds and hearts.

Kathie Malley-Morrison, Professor of Psychology

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