torture – Page 4 – Engaging Peace

The US government: Guilty of torture, as charged

Posted on December 15, 2014January 1, 2015 by kathiemm

Unknown — Abu Ghraib, Oct. 20, 2003. Nude detainee handcuffed to bed with pair of panties draped over his face. In the public domain.

Today’s post is an excerpt from an interview with guest author Dr. Anthony Marsella back in 2008. What the US administration has been doing and attempting to justify in its “war on terror” is terrifying; it is also torture, as the recently released report on torture from the U.S. Senate corroborates.

“The issue of torture is important for our very nation. What is at stake is our moral authority in the world. The US Administration has simply used the notion that torture is an essential tool for our national defense. In fact, [George Bush] has had the audacity to say that the use of torture may be necessary to protect America.

This kind of rabid nationalism, this fear of non-existent provocation is consistent with many political leaders throughout history who sought to control and dominate people by creating fear and anxiety, so that they would increasingly rely upon their national leader for protection. This is an old trick used by dictators.

Unfortunately the media has failed to respond and the American public has been taken in by all this propaganda, so resistance has not been as widespread as we would like it to be. It would be wonderful if throughout the US all organisations as well as people would simply say to the government: what are you doing? Stop it! It is against the law! You are destroying our national character and integrity….

On the one hand Bush said: “We refuse to be part of this. America does not torture” and on the other hand we know what happened in Abu Ghraib, in Guantanamo, in Kandahar and in rendition. We also know that the Pentagon has decided to eliminate some of the Geneva Convention restrictions on Torture from its army training manual and the highest members of the US administration have had meetings in which they have authorised and actually orchestrated torture activities.

This duplicity, along with the very act of permitting torture itself, has a heavy cost on America because in the eyes of the world we have lost our moral authority. We have lost whatever role and stature we had. We are no longer the voice for democracy, freedom and justice.”

Anthony J. Marsella, Ph.D., is Emeritus Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Hawaii. The complete interview can be found at http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/6158459/1031475337/name/Marsella%20-%20The%20Moral%20Cost%20of%20Torture%2Edoc

Today’s Assignment: Human Rights 365

Posted on December 8, 2014December 7, 2014 by kathiemm

Wednesday December 10 is Human Rights Day, a commemoration day for the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The theme this year is Human Rights 365—that is, a reminder that every day should be a human rights day.

Brothers and sisters, we have a long way to go.

Racism violates human rights.
Slavery violates human rights.
Torture violates human rights.
Murder violates human rights.
Prolonged solitary confinement violates human rights.
Even severe poverty is a human rights violation.

Racism, slavery, torture, murder, prolonged solitary confinement, and severe poverty are not things people choose or desire. Nor, according to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, do people deserve such abominations, even if those people are different, annoying, foreign, other, scary.

The US government is fond of pointing the finger at human rights violations in selected other nations (not, generally, their allies), but such finger pointing is just another example of “Do as I say, not as I do.” All those human rights violations take place in the US today, every day, and all too many people are quick to find “justifications” concerning why racism , slavery, torture , murder, etc., are not human rights violations if done in or by the United States.

On Human Rights Day, 365 days a year, try to listen to a different drummer. Fight racism, fight slavery, fight torture. Raise your voice against murder, solitary confinement, poverty, forced feeding, unequal opportunity, and all the social injustices that infect our society and damage us all. Make the world a better place. Right here at home. Do what you can. 365.

Seeking the kindness of strangers, Part I

Posted on July 24, 2014July 20, 2014 by kathiemm

This is the first in a series of two posts by Alice LoCicero.

It is easy to blur the truth with a simple linguistic trick: start your story from “Secondly”…..Mourid Barghouti

Since 2006, I have worked with children and adolescents who come to the US out of fears and traumas similar to those faced by the children now at our borders, children seeking a fair hearing and requesting asylum here.

I know what their faces look like, and what their experiences have been. I have talked with children from four continents about experiences of torture, abuse, and trauma. I have helped them cope with their fears. I have been happy to see them gain asylum. I look forward to the citizens they will become. Several are in college or graduate school now. They have become contributing members of our society. We will all benefit.

Most important, the children I met have all depended on the kindness of strangers in many parts of their journey towards asylum. Ordinary Americans have helped them tremendously. I know how Americans can and do help children, once they understand their story. Once they meet them. Once they see their faces. Americans are not, by nature, mean and stingy towards children in need. So what is happening to make ordinary Americans so fearful of the children seeking help at our borders?

The manufactured “crisis” of the Central American youth coming to our border unaccompanied has a long history, and the media coverage of this situation starts with “Secondly.” Briefly, US intervention in the affairs of its neighbors has caused less stable and highly dangerous conditions, including chronic political instability, rebel forces and gangs. Many children, personally in grave danger, traumatized and terrified, have taken the huge risk of fleeing to the US border. Those that arrived alive and intact are now facing hatred, mostly whipped up by media misrepresentations that tell the story of the children starting at “Secondly.”

Dr. Alice LoCicero is a staff member at Boston Medical Center in the Center for Multicultural Training in Psychology, an adjunct professor at Lesley University, and a volunteer psychologist at Community Legal Services and Counseling Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her book, “Why Good Kids Turn into Deadly Terrorists: Deconstructing the Accused Boston Marathon Bombers and Others Like Them” will be released at the end of July.

Does Nonviolent Resistance Work? Part 3a

Posted on June 2, 2014June 1, 2014 by kathiemm

This is the first of three posts comprising Part III of a series of posts in which Dr. Ian Hansen shares his thoughts on nonviolence.

Protestors responding to tear gas in peaceful anti-government protest in Venezuela, March 12, 2014.
Photo by Daga95.

In a previous post, I ended by discussing the dubiousness of partially nonviolent revolutions that result in the coup-like overthrow of deeply flawed but democratically-elected governments—like the Yanukovich government in the Ukraine and the Morsi government in Egypt.

Sometimes, of course, the system of elections is too broken or corrupt for there to be any hope of reflecting the popular will, in which case a popular nonviolent revolution can present a tempting alternative to just tinkering around with a broken or rigged system. But any such revolution should be undertaken carefully to facilitate a better and more equitable system of government accountability than the one it overthrew, and to do so quickly. It is a rare occasion when unelected revolutionary leaders make better decisions than the democratically-elected leaders they overthrow.

I am not cheered by the post-democratic governments of Egypt and Ukraine, and I think the fragile corrupt democracies overthrown by the partially nonviolent coups should probably have been given more time to work. Now that these nascent democracies have been replaced by coup leaders of very mixed political extractions (including fascists in Ukraine and aficionados of torture and military dictatorship in Egypt), the people in the streets cheering the revolutionary downfall of the leaders they elected face an uncertain and probably darker future. And I am nervously watching developments in Venezuela.

Ian Hansen, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at York College, City University of New York. His research focuses in part on how witness for human rights and peace can transcend explicit political ideology. He is also on the Steering Committee for Psychologists for Social Responsibility.