American President Demands
Humane Treatment of Prisoners
…but that was 237 years ago
“Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner]. . . I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require… for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country.”
…..— George Washington, September 14, 1775:
………. Charge to the Northern Expeditionary Force
[NOTE: If this post looks familiar, thanks — you're obviously a regular reader of the Refuge Media Project blog. I'll be on the road today, so thought I would honor the day by repeating what turned out to be one of our all-time most popular posts, first published last year.]
No mail today. I forgot – it’s Washington’s Birthday. When you work at home, you can lose track of what’s going on in the real world. Still, focused as I am on the issue of torture and its impact both on its victims and its perpetrators, this is a national hero I try not to forget about. In a speech published by the Los Angeles Time toward the end of 2005, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., noted that “Revolutionary War leaders, including Washington and the Continental Congress, considered the decent treatment of enemy combatants to be one of the principal strategic preoccupations of the American Revolution.”
“While Americans extended quarter to combatants as a matter of right and treated their prisoners with humanity,” Kennedy said, “British regulars and German mercenaries were threatened by their own officers with severe punishment if they showed mercy to a surrendering American soldier. Captured Americans were tortured, starved and cruelly maltreated aboard prison ships.” Washington’s stance, he noted, “puts to shame the conduct of America’s present leadership,” and he concluded that “America’s treatment of its prisoners is a test of our faith in our country and the character of our leaders.”
Kennedy was, of course, talking about the administration of then-President George W. Bush. I remain wistfully hopeful that the Obama administration – eventually – will reverse its predecessor’s policies, but the changes so far seem mostly cosmetic.
. ….In his Huffington Post blog for February 19, 2007, Scott Horton wrote “Against a loud public outcry of ‘an eye for an eye,’ George Washington stood fast. He made it a point of fundamental honor (and that was his word) that the Americans would not only hold dearly to the laws of war, they would define a new law of war that reflected the humanitarian principles for which the new Republic had risen.” After crossing the Delaware River to defeat the British and Hessian armies at Trenton, our first Commander-in-Chief’ gave the order, to “Treat them with humanity, and let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of the British Army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren.”
…. .As David Hackett Fischer wrote in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Washington’s Crossing: “In a desperate struggle [he] found a way to defeat a formidable enemy… [He] reversed the momentum of the war. [He] improvised a new way of war that grew into an American tradition. And [he] chose a policy of humanity that aligned the conduct of the war with the values of the Revolution.”
.. …You can hear or read the transcript of Robert Krulwich’s interview with Professor Fischer on NPR’s website. On the antiwar.com blog, Scott Horton (same name, different person) notes that, following the battle at Trenton, Washington intervened when he came across some of the Continental troops preparing to force Hessian prisoners to run the “gauntlet.” And it worked, he says: “Many of the German Hessians in fact joined the revolutionaries in their fight against the English and stayed here in America to be free when the war was won. Must we abandon this legacy? Is it already too late to reclaim it?” Good question…
(If ordering books or DVDs discussed in this blog from Amazon, please consider doing so through our website, which will help to support the work of The Refuge Media Project. Click on the book title above to be redirected to our site.)
Coming Events
Thursday-Friday, March 8-9, 2012
Fostering the Resilient Spirit: Holistic
Responses in the Torture Treatment Field
Sponsored by the National Partnership for
Community Training & Tulane University
Location: Tulane University, New Orleans, LA
Speakers Include:
Richard Mollica and James Lavelle, Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma;
Allen Keller and Hawthorne E. Smith, Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture;
Leslie Velez, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service;
Abbey Weiss, Center for Victims of Torture;
And others…
Registration and Additional Information here, or call (305) 805-5060
__________________________________________
Saturday & Sunday, March 24-25
Physicians for Human Rights National Conference:
Sustainable Connections & Collaborations
for Health & Human Rights
Location: University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
This year’s PHR National Conference is being held in conjunction with the Sujal Parikh Memorial Symposium for Health & Social Justice, in memory of a University of Michigan medical student active in PHR’s Student Program.
Click for Additional Information
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Saturday & Sunday, March 31-April 1, 2012
The Asylum Program of Physicians for Human Rights is offering two training programs for health professionals seeking to aid asylum seekers and other immigrant survivors of torture and human rights abuses:
Saturday, 3/31
Introduction to Physical and Psychological Documentation of Trauma
For those with no formal training and moderate to no experience conducting forensic medical examinations. Location: Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, MA
Sunday, 4/1
Advanced Forensic Training for Experienced Volunteers:
Techniques for Increased Effectiveness of Evaluations and Testimony
For evaluators who have attended past trainings or are experienced in providing forensic medical examination.
Location: Physicians for Human Rights, Cambridge, MA
(NOTE: PHR also offers self-guided online training on forensic investigation.)
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Friday, Saturday & Sunday, March 30-April 1, 2012
Amnesty International’s Annual Human Rights Conference, on the theme of “Rise Up for Rights.” The Annual General Meeting includes events for youth participants as well as all human rights activists.
Location: Denver, CO
For details contact Amnesty International
………..
Study Seeks to Interview LGBT Persons
Who Have Experienced Immigration Detention
A study co-sponsored by the Research Institute Without Walls, Physicians for Human Rights, and Psychologists for Social Responsibility is exploring the impact of immigration detention on LGBT persons. According to the researchers, the results of the study, LGBT Persons in Immigration Detention: Mental Health Needs and Challenges, “will be helpful to all of us who provide mental health and legal services to LGBT immigrants and refugees.” The study leaders are:
- Ariel Shidlo, PhD, psychologist and Co-Director, Research Institute Without Walls (RIWW)
- Mike Corradini, JD, Asylum Advocacy Associate, Physicians for Human Rights
- Joan Ahola, MD, LGBT Asylum Research Coordinator for RIWW; Medical Director, Weill Cornell Medic al Center
Interviews will be confidential:
The researchers are looking for people who have been in immigration detention and may be willing to be interviewed in person or via phone or Skype. Interviewees need only give their first names, and the study leaders promise that their participation will be confidential. To volunteer or for more information, email Ariel Shidlo at Research Institute Without Walls.
For a quick look at what LGBT detainees are up against, check out this article from Chicago Now, or this report from the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association, source of the photo above. A quick web search on “immigration detention — LGBT” will yield many more.
…………
Nothing Has Changed
Nobel prize-winning poet Wislawa Szymborska died yesterday at the age of 88. NPR’s David Orr describes her as a “poet of gentle irony,” but her irony could be visceral and corrosive as well. I was introduced to Szymborska’s poetry when a reader sent us a copy of her poem, “Tortures,” from a 1986 collection, The People on the Bridge.
Tortures
Nothing has changed.
The body is a reservoir of pain;
it has to eat and breathe the air, and sleep;
it has thin skin and the blood is just beneath it;
it has a good supply of teeth and fingernails;
its bones can be broken; its joints can be stretched.
In tortures, all of this is considered.Nothing has changed.
The body still trembles as it trembled
before Rome was founded and after,
in the twentieth century before and after Christ.
Tortures are just what they were, only the earth has shrunk
and whatever goes on sounds as if it’s just a room away.Nothing has changed.
Except there are more people,
and new offenses have sprung up beside the old ones–
real, make-believe, short-lived, and nonexistent.
But the cry with which the body answers for them
was, is, and will be a cry of innocence
in keeping with the age-old scale and pitch.Nothing has changed.
Except perhaps the manners, ceremonies, dances.
The gesture of the hands shielding the head
has nonetheless remained the same.
The body writhes, jerks, and tugs,
falls to the ground when shoved, pulls up its knees,
bruises, swells, drools, and bleeds.Nothing has changed.
Except the run of rivers,
the shapes of forests, shores, deserts, and glaciers.
The little soul roams among these landscapes,
disappears, returns, draws near, moves away,
evasive and a stranger to itself,
now sure, now uncertain of its own existence,
whereas the body is and is and is
and has nowhere to go.Translation: Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh.
© Wislawa Szymborska, Stanislaw Baranczak, Clare Cavanagh
Wislawa Szymborska’s Tortures is included in an excellent collection, Poems New and Collected, translated by Baranczak and Cavanagh.
…………
Criminalize Trafficking, not Prostitution
In his January 25th op-ed piece for the New York Times, columnist Nicholas Kristof tells the depressingly familiar story of a desperate 13-year-old girl trying to escape from the vicious pimp who has been marketing her “services” through online ads on Backpage.com. Almost equally depressing, it turns out that Backpage is owned by Village Voice media, owner of the Village Voice newspaper. The site, says Kristof, “is a godsend to pimps, allowing customers to order a girl online as if she were a pizza.”
…………Despite a national campaign of several years standing — as well as demands from the attorneys general of 48 states to eliminate the ads, Village Voice Media has refused to back down. (The photo at the beginning of this paragraph is from an ad campaign launched by The Rebecca Project and other groups more than a year ago, calling on Village Voice to do the right thing — so far without effect.)
…………Psychologist Melissa Farley is the founder of Prostitution Research & Education, a 15-year-old San Francisco-based nonprofit dedicated to the abolition of trafficking and prostitution. She is the lead author of the two studies mentioned in my recent post on Sexual Abuse & Trafficking. Melissa wrote in response to that post, suggesting several points that she thinks are of particular importance in discussing Garden of Truth, the group’s report on the prostitution and trafficking of Native American women in Minnesota. I agree, and wanted to pass her suggestions along:
The women’s poverty, their 98% rate of current or previous homelessness, the post-colonial theft of land and cultural identity, and the racism which results in a lack of educational and employment opportunities – all of these, to me and to them also, I think – are coercive. When you live in a place where the temperature falls below freezing and you are homeless, and someone offers to exchange sexual assault for a place to spend the night – to me that is trafficking, even though the Trafficking Victims Protection Act wouldn’t define it as such. Poverty, homelessness and racist lack of opportunities can coerce people into prostitution, but it’s not called “trafficking.” That’s a shortcoming of our law. We define trafficking as third party exploitation or control. And the control can be and often is psychological in nature.
…………— Melissa Farley, Prostitution Research & Education
Like many others, Farley notes that the definition of trafficking used by the United States – which necessitates that the victim herself prove “force, fraud, or coercion” – is excessively conservative. By contrast, she points out, the law in most Scandinavian countries focuses on perpetrators rather than victims. Sweden’s legislation, for example, de-criminalizes prostitution, and offers federally-funded supports for those seeking to escape it. At the same time, it enforces criminal sanctions against traffickers and purchasers of sex.
…………It’s reported that street prostitution in Sweden has been cut in half by this approach, without leading to an increase in other areas (e.g., via internet sites like Backpage.) Janice Raymond, of the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women writes that “the success of the Nordic model is not so much in penalizing the men (the penalties are modest) as in removing the invisibility of men who are outed when they get caught. This, in turn, makes it less appealing for pimps and traffickers to set up shop in countries where the customer base fears the loss of its anonymity, and is declining.”
(For more information on this approach, see Trafficking, Prostitution and the Sex Industry: The Nordic Legal Model, by Raymond, or The Swedish Law That Prohibits the Purchase of Sexual Services by Gunilla Ekberg in the journal Violence Against Women.)
NOTE: The image to the right, above, is by New York artist Mona Mark, and was created for the Coalition Against Trafficking in Women’s Fourth World Conference on Women, in Beijing (1995). Courtesy: Prostitution Research & Education
Some Resources:
Coalition Against Trafficking in Women
Promotes women’s human rights by working internationally to combat sexual exploitation in all its forms. The first international NGO to focus on human trafficking, especially sex trafficking of women and girls.
Human Trafficking & Sexual Exploitation
A blog by Heidi Hermann on groups fighting human trafficking in southern California, as well as nationally and internationally. (See Heidi’s right-column blogroll for other related organizations.)
National Human Trafficking Resource Center
The Polaris Project: For a World Without Slavery offers a toll-free, confidential hotline for issues related to trafficking.
Prostitution Research & Education
PRE’s goal is to abolish the institution of prostitution while advocating for alternatives to trafficking and prostitution, including emotional and physical healthcare for women in prostitution.
The Rebecca Project for Human Rights
Advocates for justice, dignity and policy reform for vulnerable women and girls in the United States and in Africa.
…………
Human Trafficking Awareness Day
An email from the Lutheran Immigration & Refugee Service reminds me that today, January 11, is Human Trafficking Awareness Day. Dedicated to raising awareness of and opposition to human trafficking, the day was established three years ago by the U.S. Senate. This year, President Obama has dedicated the entire month of January to trafficking prevention,
though it’s not clear to me that any increase in Federal funding follows from either of these pronouncements. I guess we can appreciate the thought.
In the opening pages of Bury the Chains, Adam Hochschild’s history of the slavery abolition movement in England (which considerably preceded that in the United States) he notes that “at the end of the eighteenth century, well over three quarters of all people alive were in bondage of one kind or another, not the captivity of striped prison uniforms, but of various forms of slavery or serfdom…close to eighty thousand chained and shackled Africans were loaded onto slave ships and transported to the New World each year.”
“But this was the world – our world – just two centuries ago,” he comments, “and to most people then, it was unthinkable that it could ever be otherwise.”
Later in the book Hochschild introduces Thomas Clarkson, a 25-year-old student writing an essay on the slave trade to compete for a coveted prize at Cambridge University. He did win, and intended to ride his success into a career as a clergyman. Instead, he became obsessed with what he had learned in his research. Midway on his ride to London, Clarkson wrote, “I sat down disconsolate on the turf by the roadside and held my horse. Here a thought came into my mind, that if the contents of the Essay were true,
it was time some person should see these calamities to their end.” He dedicated the rest of his life to putting an end to slavery.
Human trafficking represents the survival of one of the most vicious forms of slavery and, as it was 200 years ago, it’s hard for many people today to believe that we can ever abolish it. But perhaps the time is coming when we can begin to “see these calamities to their end.” The groups highlighted below are working to end the sex trade and, in the meantime, are providing help and support to its victims and those who care for them. There are many other excellent organizations working in this field which I’ll try to list in future posts.
- Prostitution Research and Education does research and consulting on prostitution, pornography and trafficking. Its goal is to abolish the institution of prostitution while at the same time advocating for alternatives to trafficking and prostitution – including emotional and physical healthcare for women in prostitution. I’ve written about some of this group’s research in the past and will be following up on some of that in the next few days.
- Lutheran Immigration & Refugee Service The LIRS website offers a number of trafficking-related links and resources including this resource guide for social service providers from the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.
- U.S. Committee for Refugees & Immigrants in Washington, DC, is one of three agencies offering assistance to victims under the National Human Trafficking Victim Assistance Project. The others are Tapestri in Atlanta, and Heartland Human Care Services in Chicago. Interested service providers can contact the visit the USCRI site to determine which organization services their State.
- The Polaris Project seeks to combat trafficking through training, advocacy, and public outreach. It operates a 24-hour trafficking hotline and offers social services to victims in New Jersey and Washington, DC. The Project’s blog, The North Star offers a range of content much of it – in approach and tone — seemingly aimed at teens.
Even the business-oriented periodical Forbes weighed in on this issue a few days ago, with an interesting post by contributor Nicole Skibola. (Unfortunately, Technology, Business, and 
Anti-Human Trafficking Innovation was relegated to the publication’s “Corporate Social Responsibility” blog, which is probably not high priority breakfast reading for the point-one percent.)
The article’s main focus is on efforts by companies such as Microsoft and Google to support technological responses to trafficking, in light of the fact that the sex “industry” itself is taking full advantage of those technologies. Skibola cites research by Microsoft which “described the Internet as the number one platform for buying and selling women and children for sex in the United States.”
In her lead, Skibola writes, “Could you have possibly imagined that there are 30 million slaves in the world today, more than any other point in human history?…A 2011 CNN article estimated that there are 100,000 to 300,000 children between 11 and 14 who are vulnerable to being sold for sex by pimp-captors every year in the United States, according to government statistics.” The scale of this crime against humanity is approaching the scale of eighteenth century slavery.
(NOTES: The Forbes article also mentions a number of corporate and foundation initiatives offering grant support for technology initiatives in this area — grantseekers take note. The photo immediately above is of Justin Timberlake, participating in the DNA Foundation’s anti-trafficking campaign.)
A Five-Year Odysey in Search of Asylum
After helping him escape to Pakistan when he was ten years old (he thinks) Enaiat’s mother made him promise never to use drugs, use weapons, cheat or steal. She also told him always to keep a wish in front of his eyes: “It’s in trying to satisfy our wishes that we find the strength to pick ourselves up.” The next morning she was gone, back to her other children in their village in Afghanistan.
As members of the Hazara minority, Enaiat’s family suffered discrimination by the majority Pashtun, which had become dangerously aggravated with the rise of the Taliban. His mother had made the terrible choice to help her oldest son escape in search of a better life.
This slim, illuminating “novel” tells the story of Enaiatollah Akbari’s five-year odyssey through Iran, Turkey, and Greece before finally being granted asylum in Italy. It’s based on conversations between the author, Fabio Geda, and Enaiat, a young asylee from Afghanistan.
While working on the documentary, Refuge, I’ve been privileged to hear at least the bare bones of some torture survivors’ stories of persecution and escape, but most of us have no concept of what those who arrive on at our borders seeking political asylum have gone through to get here. 
In the Sea There are Crocodiles brings those experiences vividly to life. Enaiat’s travels include a month-long trek through the mountains of Iran to Turkey, during which 12 out of 77 immigrants died; days stuffed into an airless compartment under a truck’s load of rocks, and a simultaneously comic and terrifying crossing to Greece in a leaking rubber raft. But the story also includes episodes of kindnesses from strangers, and of the remarkable solidarity among these involuntary travelers, many of them children.
The book is punctuated by little exchanges between the author, Fabio Geda, and Enaiatollah. After the story of one elderly lady’s kindnesses to the boy, Geda says:
“You tell me things, Enaiat, and then immediately you go on to something else. Tell me more about this lady. Describe her house.”
“Why?”
”What do you mean, why? I’m interested. Other people might be, too.”
“Yes, but I already told you. I’m only interested in what happened. The lady is important for what she did. Her name doesn’t matter. What her house was like doesn’t matter. She could have been anybody.”
“How do you mean, anybody?”
“Anybody could have behaved like that.”But so few do…
In the Sea There are Crocodiles, by Fabio Geda
Based on the true story of Enaiatollah Akbari
Translated from Italian by Howard Curtis
Doubleday, New York, 2010, translation © 2011
……….
Some catch-up items accumulated
over the past couple of months…
Who Are We, Really?
In her blog post for The New Yorker, Amy Davidson asks, “Is it enough, in a place like Afghanistan, to believe that we are good? One of the many striking aspects of the Washington Post’s story, on how our forces sent prisoners to an Afghan detention center despite what seem to have been solid warnings that they would be tortured there, is the nature of some of the denials: they are based not on what happened, but on who we think we are.” One example she cites, quoting a U.S. official: “If there had been ‘serious, substantive allegations of systemic institutional torture of detainees, the embassy would have acted on these.”
In other words, “We are good people. Good people would have responded to allegations of torture. We did not respond. Therefore there were no allegations or, if allegations were made, they cannot have been serious or substantive.” It’s an important, provocative piece; check it out.
Torture in Syria’s hospitals
An editorial in the November 5, 2011 issue of The Lancet deals with international concern over the abuse – in some cases torture – of physicians caring for victims of state violence in government-run Syrian hospitals.
“Doctors in state-run hospitals in Syria are facing a grievous trade-off: to offer treatment and risk torture to patients and possibly themselves, or withhold treatment to those under their care. A report by Amnesty International, published on Oct 25, 2011, alleges that patients with firearms injuries admitted to state-run hospitals are being targeted and tortured by the authorities to quell dissent that has spread throughout the country since March, 2011. The central blood bank, which is controlled by the Syrian Ministry of Defence, is the sole provider of blood. Therefore, doctors face a dilemma every time they receive a patient with firearm injuries: if they request blood for transfusion, the authorities will be alerted, putting the patient at risk of arrest, torture, and death.
Sadly, as the editorial also notes, the Amnesty report also cites incidents in which medical personnel have mistreated or denied care to wounded patients based on their ethnicity or politics.
Supreme Court Will Hear Torture
Suits vs. International Corporations
Bloomberg’s Greg Stohr reported in October that the U.S. Supreme Court will consider two cases determining whether international corporations can be sued in American courts for complicity in torture that takes place in other countries. In one case, a group of Nigerians claimed, under 
the 200-year-old Alien Tort Statute, that units of Royal Dutch Shell were complicit in torture and executions in the Ogoni region in the early nineties, including the killing of well-known playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa.
A divided (2-1) federal appeals court threw out the case, saying companies cannot be sued under the statute creating, in the words of the victim/plaintiffs, “a blanket immunity for corporations engaged or complicit in universally condemned human rights violations.” As Stohr reports, most courts to consider similar issues in the past have held that companies can be sued under the statute, so a decision to uphold the appeals court denial in this case would overturn established precedent.
The second case was brought under the Torture Victims Protection Act, and involves the alleged torture and murder of a U.S. citizen by agents of the Palestinian Authority and Palestinian Liberation Organization. The TVPA authorizes suits against “an individual” engaged in torture. The case was thrown out by the appeals court, which ruled that the term means only “natural persons,” not corporations or organizations. It would be interesting to see how the Supreme Court justices could justify agreeing with that argument after ruling, in the “Citizens United” case that corporations are persons for the purpose of campaign contributions.
The cases will be argued before the court next year, with a possible decision by June.
…….
Companies Responsible for Carrying Out Torture
Flights Squabble in Court Over the Profits
Voluminous documents, establishing once and for all the complicity of American private corporations in the “rendering” of “war on terror” suspects for torture, have been revealed in an unlikely forum. Though both the Bush and Obama administrations have done their sloppy best to keep details of the 
rendition program hidden from U.S. voters, they turned out to be powerless to keep their private sector contractors from publicly haggling over the spoils.
As Ian Cobain and Ben Quinn reported in the Guardian in early September, previously unreleased details of the torture flights – including the names of some of the private carriers involved (along with their executives) – have come to light in a New York court case involving two private airlines, Sportsflight and Richmor, over who did or didn’t get paid how much and by whom. One potential consequence, according to the Guardian article, “may be that some of those corporations and individuals are now at risk of being sued in proceedings brought on behalf of the al-Qaida and Taliban suspects who were the victims of the programme.”
“The documents were discovered by staff at the legal charity Reprieve. Its legal director, Cori Crider, said: ‘These documents reveal how the CIA’s secret network of torture sites was able to operate unchecked for so many years. They also reveal what a farce it was that the CIA managed to get the prisoners’ torture claims kicked out as secret, while all of the details of its sinister business were hiding in plain site.’”
The Red Sox Connection
The story wasn’t widely reported in the U.S. press (though note Amy Davidson’s piece for The New Yorker) and I kind of dropped the ball on it at the time. However, I was struck by today’s expanded story by Sharon Churcher and Christ Hastings in Britain’s Daily Mail. Their piece includes considerably more detail on one of the aircraft owners who has special significance for us here in the United States – and in the Boston area in particular. Phillip Morse, the “ultimate owner” of one of the planes, according to both newspapers, is the vice-chairman of the Fenway Sports Group, which owns the Red Sox. According to Cobain and Quinn, the same plane was used to fly the team “in between rendition flights.” Fenway Sports Group also recently acquired Britain’s Liverpool Football (soccer) Club, at which point the Daily Mail took notice:
“The disclosure that such a senior figure in New England Sports Ventures (NESV) has been paid millions by the CIA is likely to alarm football fans already concerned that one of the country’s most prestigious clubs is still in American hands.
“A European Parliament report linked the jet directly to the abduction of Abu Omar, an Islamic preacher, who was snatched from a Milan street by the CIA in 2003 before being taken to Cairo…despite having been granted political asylum by the Italian government…
”The European Parliament report reproduced flight documents for Mr Morse’s jet, which carries the logo of the Boston Red Sox baseball team, also owned by NESV, on its tail fin.”
(Photo above: Phillip Morse during a White House visit with George Bush Senior.)
…….
Video: Forensic Evidence Helps Unravel
Coverup of Torture by Egyptian Police
In June, 2010, Khaled Said was publicly tortured and beaten to death by Egyptian police. A new video from the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims focuses on how forensic assessments by the IRCT and its Egyptian member center, El Nadeem, helped to demolish the police coverup and spark the Tahrir Square revolution that erupted six months later. The video, World Without Torture, is a little slow at times, but the information it provides is vital and timely, and the sections focusing on the Said case are totally riveting. It’s in English but can be screened with French, Spanish, or Arabic subtitles.
The IRCT is the world leader in promoting the use of medical examination and forensic evidence in the investigation and prosecution of torture cases, both in the courts and by human rights institutions. 
World Without Torture and other videos can also be viewed on the IRCT’s website (including Be a Part of the Solution, an award-winning spot developed for the IRCT by the Refuge Media Project.)
“Torture often takes place in secrecy, and many torture methods are designed to be as painful as possible without leaving physical marks. A key purpose of documentation, in a word, is to make it impossible for perpetrators to deny their crimes…
“Perpetrators are seldom brought to court; and torture survivors rarely receive any kind of redress. In a climate of impunity, perpetrators of torture can continue their crimes without risking arrest, prosecution or punishment. Besides adding to the suffering of the victims, such a situation leads to a general lack of trust in justice and the rule of law. Consequently, few complaints are brought forward and few actual prosecutions are made.”
— From the IRCT website
…….
Code Name “Bright Light” – the
CIA’s Secret Prison in Romania
Despite denials that continue even today, the CIA for years utilized a basement prison under a Romanian government building in Bucharest to hold and interrogate “high value” detainees including Khalid Sheik Mohammad before they were transferred to Guantánamo Bay. According to the Associated Press and German Public Television, the facility was not in a remote location but only a few blocks off a major boulevard in the Romanian capital.
The basement consisted of six prefabricated cells, each with a clock and arrow pointing to Mecca, the officials said. The cells were on springs, keeping them slightly off balance and causing disorientation among some detainees. The CIA declined to comment on the prison.
During the first month of their detention, the detainees endured sleep deprivation and were doused with water, slapped or forced to stand in painful positions, several former officials said. Waterboarding was not performed in Romania, they said.
The AP article does not further elucidate the boundary between dousing with water and waterboarding. The prison was in operation between 2003 and 2006, when the prisoners were transferred to Guantánamo. Romanian officials continue to claim that “no such activities took place on Romanian territory.”
……
Three New Reports Discuss Options
for Reform of Immigration Detention
Far too many asylum seekers and non-criminal immigration law violators in the United States are being held for far too long, under conditions that are far too restrictive and punitive. Even the Departments of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement have acknowledged an inappropriate reliance on jails and prisons for detainees who are not criminals. Yet two years after DHS and ICE promised to transform the U.S. immigration detention system, little has changed.
A new report from Human Rights First indicates that we are currently jailing almost 400,000 asylum seekers and others each year, at a cost of over two billion dollars, yet plans for new facilities announced by ICE add up to fewer than 3,500 beds. If and when those are completed, they will still constitute less than fifteen percent of the number needed for more humane detention.
The Human Rights First report is called Jails and Jumpsuits: Transforming the U.S. Immigration Detention System and it’s available online. In addition to a detailed analysis of current conditions, the study outlines the steps needed to bring U.S. detention practices into line with international human rights standards.
Also recently published and available online, Unlocking Liberty: A Way Forward for U.S. Immigration Detention Policy is a policy proposal from the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service. Responding to the same facts as the HRF report, LIRS argues for minimizing incarceration of any kind, in favor of alternatives utilizing tailored supervision, case management, and legal and social services.
“Immigrant detention is the fastest growing, least scrutinized form of incarceration in the United States. On any given day, the U.S. government imprisons more than 33,000 immigrants — many of whom are refugees or survivors of torture or human trafficking — in a vast national network of about 250 federal, private, state, and local jails. The cost to U.S. taxpayers is $122 per detainee per day. These figures, however, fail to account for the human costs. It is well documented that detention has negative long-term consequences for immigrants’ mental and physical health and negatively impacts their ability to integrate into society upon release…In contrast, alternatives to detention (ATDs) are cheaper—they cost only $22 or less per person per day—and are more humane.”
— From the Executive Summary of Unlocking Liberty
And, finally, a study by the invaluable Detention Watch Network looks at the undue influence over immigration policy exerted by the prison industry. The Influence of the Private Prison Industry in Immigration Detention is available online, along with a printable fact sheet, a bibliography of related new stories, and other resources. Additional information and opinion are also available at the website/blog of the Fair Immigration Reform Movement, a coalition of a number of grassroots state and regional organizations. (NOTE: The color illustration above is from FIRM’s website. The Black and white photos are from the LIRS report.)
……
Moving Walls 19: Open Society Foundations
Honor Human Rights Photographers
Over the past fourteen years, a series of “Moving Walls” exhibits at the New York headquarters of the Open Society Foundations have honored documentary photographers whose work is aimed at tearing down obstacles to equality and justice. The foundation has honored more than 150 photographers. This year’s edition, “Moving Walls 19,” features work by James MacKay, Pete Muller, Greg Constantine, John Willis, Rena Effendi, Wyatt Gallery, and Bharat Choudery. The subjects they focus on include political dissent in Burma, and rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo; stateless Nubians in Kenya, Native Americans at Pine Ridge, and Muslims in the U.S. and U.K.; victims of oil pollution in Azerbaijan, and of earthquakes in Haiti. The photos can be viewed online at the Society’s website, as can photos from previous years.
FOR PHOTOGRAPHERS: Access application guidelines here for “Moving Walls.” Photo above, by photographer Bharat Choudhary, is substantially cropped from the original.
Global Campaign for Pretrial Justice
Also available from the Open Society Foundations is a new report on pretrial detention, Pretrial Detention and Health: Unintended Consequences, Deadly Results.
“The excessive use of pretrial detention leads to overcrowded, unhygienic, chaotic, and violent environments where pretrial detainees — who have not been convicted — are at risk of contracting disease. Pretrial holding facilities, which include police lock-ups not designed for large numbers or extended stays, often force detainees to live in filthy, teeming conditions without access to fresh air, minimal sanitation facilities, health services, or adequate food. In the worst cases, detainees die from these conditions and associated disease, and surviving detainees sleep with the corpses. Some pretrial detention centers are so bad that innocent people plead guilty just to be transferred to prisons where the conditions might be better…
“Monitoring visits made by human rights experts and committees in many countries have revealed a complete lack of respect for the health rights and other human rights of detainees…”
— From the report’s introduction
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Khmer Rouge Trial Opens in Cambodia
The trial of three of the Khmer Rouge’s top officials, accused of responsibility for murders and other atrocities in Cambodia’s killing fields, finally opened this past Monday. As Sopheng Cheang reports for the Associated Press, the charges to be adjudicated by the U.N.-backed tribunal include “crimes against humanity, genocide, religious persecution, homicide and torture stemming from their 1975-79 reign of terror”:
An estimated 1.7 million people died of execution, starvation, exhaustion or lack of medical care as a result of the Khmer Rouge’s radical policies, which essentially turned all of Cambodia into a forced labor camp as the movement attempted to create a pure agrarian socialist society. Intellectuals, entrepreneurs and anyone considered a threat were imprisoned, tortured and often executed.
On trial are Nuon Chea, the Khmer Rouge’s No. 2 leader; Khieu Samphan, an ex-head of state; and Ieng Sary, the former foreign minister. All are in their 80s, and there has been great concern that they be brought to trial as soon as possible. Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot died in 1998. The tribunal’s only prior case resulted in a 35-year prison term for Kaing Guek Eav, after he confessed to crimes against humanity and other offenses. The current defendants maintain their innocence.
Brazil to Examine Torture and Other Crimes, but
Amnesty Law Will Prevent Punishment of Perpetrators
As a recent article in The Economist points out, Brazil’s current President and her two predecessors were all persecuted during the country’s military dictatorship of 1964-1985. Dilma Rousseff was tortured, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was jailed, and Fernando Henrique Cardoso was exiled.
On November 23rd President Rousseff is expected to sign legislation creating a new truth commission to look into the widespread crimes of the Generals, but an existing amnesty law will make it impossible for the commission to do more than investigate the murders, tortures and “disappearances,” and publicize its findings. It will not be able to impose punishment. The article quotes Pedro Taques, a Senator, as saying “there can be no justice when no one is held responsible.” However Matias Spektor of the research institute Fundação Getulio Vargas said that the torturers and murderers “will still die in bed, but this way, at least they’ll be known for who they are.” (Photo above is President Roussef’s 1970 police mug shot.)
U.S. Supreme Court to Consider Whether Corporations
Can be Prosecuted for Human Rights Abuses
According to a late October Bloomberg piece, the Supreme Court has agreed to consider “whether corporations can be sued under federal laws that protect people in other countries from human rights abuses.” The case involves units of Royal Dutch Shell which are accused of complicity in the torture and execution of Nigerians in the Ogoni region in the early ‘90s, including the well-known playwright Ken Saro-Wiwa.
A federal appeals court had ruled that companies can’t be sued under the Alien Tort Statute; the appellants (Shell’s victims) argue that that ruling mistakenly created “a blanket immunity for corporations engaged or complicit in universally condemned human rights violations.”
According to Bloomberg, “most federal appeals courts to consider the issue have said that companies can be sued under the 1789 Alien Tort Statute, just like individuals.” However, a divided three-judge panel of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York disagreed in this case. The journal predicts a decision in the case by next June.
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California Artist Calls for a Closer Look
at Corporate Sponsorship of the Arts
A couple of years ago, we profiled Los Angeles-based artist and activist Mark Vallen in the “Image Gallery” section of the Refuge Media Project website. Mark’s popular blog, Art for a Change is dedicated to an examination of art and its intersection with politics.
Mark’s latest post, “Occupy the Art World,” calls for the arts community to take a renewed and more critical look at corporate use of arts sponsorship to gild its public image. “For those inured to the art world having been commandeered by high finance, now is the time of reckoning,” he writes.
“The Occupy Wall Street movement describes contemporary U.S. society as being under the domination of the “one percent”, those super-wealthy individuals and corporations that control everything from the media to the halls of Congress. While the primary focus of
OWS has been aimed at the home foreclosures, unemployment, and social inequality fostered by the greed of rapacious banks and corporations, some critical assessment of the impact corporate titans have exercised over culture is also in order.”
Vallen quotes Los Angeles art critic Mat Gleason’s recent Huffington Post critique of the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time exhibits in Southern California – heavily financed by Bank of America: “Could there be a crueler indictment of an art world that is convinced of its moral superiority to mainstream culture than to be subsidized by one of the criminal financial forces that has brought our culture to its very knees?”
“The prickly question,” Vallen asks, “is how do artists circumvent the hegemony of the privileged few to establish and sustain truly autonomous art?” He doesn’t offer an answer, at least in this post, but it’s an important question.
What he does suggest, however, is that the Occupy movement – particularly those participants who are artists or concerned with the arts – might well turn its attention to the issue of corporate sponsorship. In that context I would note that 
Bank of America shows off its corporate collections through “Museum Partners” and in its own galleries – open to the public – at headquarters buildings in Charlotte, Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Wilmington and London. Addresses and hours are listed on the corporation’s website.
See Mark Vallen’s website for further information on the above images:
1) Photo from Occupy Wall Street by anonymous artist
2) Image from AdBusters by anonymous artist
3) Image from Just Seeds by Josh MacPhee
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Occupy Oakland Participant
Could Face Deportation
Another emergency deportation appeal, I’m afraid. I just received the following notice from the folks at Presente (substantially edited):
“Occupy Oakland participant Francisco ‘Pancho’ Ramos-Stierle was arrested on Monday as he was sitting in silent, non-violent protest against the deep inequality that pervades our society and affects so many Latinos and immigrants…Pancho was arrested during an early morning raid on the Occupy Oakland encampment on November 14th. Although local courts dropped the charges against Pancho, his fingerprints were forwarded to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as soon as he was in custody, under the Secure Communities Program. He is presently under immigration “hold” and could be deported…
“Before his arrest, Pancho was pursuing a PhD in astrophysics at UC Berkeley but resigned from the program when he learned that his work would be used to promote “safer nuclear weapons.” His service to community took many forms – whether promoting community gardens or working with youth in Oakland.”
You can Join the petition against Ramos-Stierle’s deportation at the Presente website. According to this article at ColorLines, Ramos-Stierle, who is from Mexico, was without immigration status because of having overstayed his student visa — possibly because of having dropped out of the UC Berkeley grad program. Deportation could also be based on his arrest, even though the case was dropped by the Oakland authorities. As I’ve written previously regarding the deportation threat to Shamir Amirali Ali, despite new promises by the administration, Obama’s supposedly more rational and humane deportation policy is still being inconsistently enforced. (Regarding the apparent resolution of the Shamir Ali case, see here.)
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A Torture Trifecta at the New York Times
“There are few issues that more clearly define a candidate’s national security policy in the 21st century than a position on torture,” says the New York Times in its Monday editorial on the Republican Presidential race, The Torture Candidates. “Three of the contenders for the party’s nomination have now come out in favor of the torture known as waterboarding.”
Both Herman Cain and Michelle Bachman announced their support for the technique during last Saturday’s Republican debate. Mitt Romney kept strategically mum during the debate but on 
Monday his campaign office confirmed that he does not consider waterboarding to be torture, and that he would not reveal which “enhanced interrogation techniques” he would authorize as president.
Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman – neither of whom appears to have much chance of becoming the party’s nominee – each denounced the use of waterboarding as, to his credit, did former candidate John McCain. McCain tweeted that he was “very disappointed” by the statements of his party’s candidates. “Waterboarding,” he said, “is torture.”
Op-ed columnist Frank Bruni’s Torture & Exceptionalism leads with this: “If we truly believe ourselves to be exceptional, a model for all the world and an example for all of history, then why would we practice torture?”
In his column, It’s Spelled T-O-R-T-U-R-E, Andrew Rosenthal quotes Huntsman’s statement: “We diminish our standing in the world, and the values that we project, which include liberty, democracy, human rights and open markets, when we torture.” I’m not sure what open markets are doing in there, but otherwise it was a pretty bold statement for a Republican these days – no doubt one of the reasons he doesn’t have a shot at the nomination.
Rosenthal’s column was also notable for an admirably terse but accurate 11-word paragraph: “Pretty much everything Mr. Cain and Ms. Bachman said was nonsense.”
Note: picture above is from a Life Magazine cover of 1902, during our war in the Philippines. Of that conflict, Lieutenant Grover Flint was quoted as saying: “A man suffers tremendously, there is no doubt about it. His sufferings must be that of a man who is drowning but cannot drown.”
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An Underground Childhood
Actor and playwright Carmen Aguirre has written a memoir of her childhood and coming of age as the daughter of a Chilean resistance member and international activist. 
She is interviewed by Patrick Barkham in The Guardian has an intriguing interview, “A Childhood on the Run.”
Alternately living in exile, underground, or on the run with their mother, Aguirre and her younger sister were expected to be “brave and mature and revolutionary,” but also learned other ways to cope with their fear: “When I was young I thought that if you were not screaming and running around pulling your hair out you weren’t terrified,” she says in her interview with Barkham, “but so often terror is more about disassociation, about leaving your body and becoming numb.”
One day when Carmen Aguirre was five, the pictures on the walls of her home in Chile started to sway. The china in the cupboards danced. It was not an earthquake: military jeeps were roaring up, surrounding the house. Her parents were out and Carmen, her younger sister, Ale, and their babysitter were confronted by soldiers loyal to the new dictator, General Pinochet. The house was ransacked. The soldiers laughed. “Oh, well,” said one. “I guess it’s the firing squad for you two.”
The little girls were made to face the wall. Shouting at them to hold up their hands, the soldiers raised their rifles. Quaking in the mud, Carmen heard them shout, “Ready. Aim. Fire.” And then the soldiers drove away. This is the first moment Carmen remembers a feeling of disassociation, a sense of her spirit fleeing her body. It was a sensation she felt throughout her childhood and early adulthood…
— From Patrick Barkham’s Guardian interview
Something Fierce: Memoir of a Revolutionary Daughter has been published by Granta/Portobello Books in England. It apparently will not be available in the United States until early spring. I’ll be watching for it.
Ten-Year-Olds Imprisoned as Criminals
Defense for Children International announces the release of a new documentary on the incarceration of young children in four African countries: Kenya, Sierra Leone, South Africa and Tanzania. Produced in collaboration with Miran Films and other organizations, the video is called “10,” it says, because “whilst not officially recognized, many African countries regard children of 10 years old as having achieved the age of criminal responsibility.”
The documentary witnesses the difficult conditions in which children in some of the world’s harshest prison systems are forced to exist, which frequently are in flagrant contravention of internationally recognized human rights instruments and which leave them vulnerable to severe physical and psychological damage.
Children frequently find themselves incarcerated for months on end, often without trial or effective legal representation. Imprisoned children experience extremely cramped and overcrowded conditions, sharing cells with hardened adult criminals; are subjected to physical or sexual abuse; and are often recruited into violent street gangs on the inside, which increase the chances of recidivism and a life of criminality and repeated incarceration in the future.
For a chilling, firsthand story on this issue, see John Carlin’s piece in The Independent (UK), A Boy Named Abdul: Sierra Leone’s Child. (photo above from The Independent.)
Voices from East Jerusalem
Defense for Children’s Palestine Section has recently released Voices from East Jerusalem, a report on the situation of Palestinian children under occupation. The report is accompanied by a disturbing short video on the situation (also on YouTube.)
Israel’s Child Detainees
The Middle East Children’s Alliance reports that, despite the recent exchange of Palestinian prisoners for Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, more than 160 Palestinian children remain behind bars – none were included in the much-publicized swap. It cites a recent opinion piece by Dana Halawa, an American-Palestinian medical student writing on the website, The Electronic Intifada.
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Some Good News & More Bad News
on Immigration Enforcement
So, let’s at least start with the good news: In late October, I sent out an appeal via this blog, via my newsletter, and to personal contacts, asking you all to sign online petitions in support of Shamir Amirali Ali, who was facing immediate deportation after being picked up in a workplace raid (actually aimed at someone else.) It seemed like an early and upsetting signal that President Obama’s promise of a more rational and humane immigration enforcement policy might be just words.
Thanks to a national outpouring of support, the good news is that Shamir Ali has been freed, and will be allowed to stay in the U.S. under an “order of supervision,” which will enable him to apply for a work permit. That, in turn, will allow him to get a driver’s license and attend state college at resident’s rates. According to Julia Preston’s article in today’s New York Times, Shamir is grateful for the reprieve, but wonders, “If I didn’t have all that support, what would have happened to me?”
Good question! Which leads me to the bad news: According to the same article, the new enforcement policy, in its execution, continues to be just as inconsistent and maddeningly irrational as we have feared.
Since June, when the policy was unveiled, frustrated lawyers and advocates have seen a steady march of deportations of immigrants with no criminal record and with extensive roots in the United States, who seemed to fit the administration’s profile of those who should be allowed to remain…
In a report released Wednesday, the American Immigration Lawyers Association and the American Immigration Council collected 252 cases from lawyers across the country who had asked Mr. Morton’s agency, known as ICE, to exercise prosecutorial discretion to spare immigrants from deportation. “The overwhelming conclusion is that most ICE offices have not changed their practices since the issuance of these new directives,” the report found.
“This is a classic example of leadership saying one thing and the rank and file doing another,” said Gregory Chen, director of advocacy for the lawyers association.
— Julia Preston, New York Times
[A press release on the findings of the AILA/AIC survey is available here, including contact information for further details.]
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Report Claims Israeli Physicians Fail to
Observe International Human Rights Norms
According to a report released by Israel’s Public Committee Against Torture, together with the Israel branch of Physicians for Human Rights, Israeli medical professionals have been complicit in the abuse of prisoners by security personnel. This post is based on advance press coverage, but the full report, Doctoring the Evidence, Abandoning the Victim, has now been released and is available online.
According to Harriet Sherwood, reporting from Jerusalem for The Guardian (UK), the report is based on the cases of 100 Palestinian detainees brought to PCAT since 2007. It alleges that medical staff are failing to document and report injuries caused by ill-treatment and torture by security personnel; and that staff do not report suspicions of such treatment, return detainees to their interrogators after medical treatment, and pass medical information to interrogators – all in violation of their ethical codes. Quoting from the document:
“This report reveals significant evidence arousing the suspicion that many doctors ignore the complaints of their patients; that they allow Israeli Security Agency interrogators to use torture, approve the use of forbidden interrogation methods and the ill-treatment of helpless detainees; and conceal information, thereby allowing total immunity for the torturers.”
The report alleges that abusive treatments include beatings, stress positions, sleep deprivation, and threats, and that doctors fail to keep proper medical records of the injuries caused by these treatments.
Agence France Press quotes government spokesman Mark Regev as saying, “Guidelines have been passed to the relevant authorities. If years ago the guidelines were not clear, they are today. And if there are allegations of wrongdoing against people in custody, they are investigated thoroughly.”
Illustrations from Physicians for Human Rights, Israel (above)
and Public Committee Against Torture (at right.)
