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
