June is Torture Awareness Month

Photo: Demonstrators with Witness Against Torture in orange jumpsuits and black hoods prepare to march from the US Supreme Court to the DC Superior Court in Washington, DC, on May 27, 2008 protesting that the rights and humanity of Guantanamo Bay detainees be respected. AFP PHOTO/Jim WATSON (Photo credit should read JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)

Today was an Anti-Torture Lobby Day in North Carolina. This was held at the North Carolina General Assembly, in Raleigh. I could not be there in person, but I was with them in thought. They are asking our NC legislators to support NC No Place for Torture bill. Their goal is to stop torture flights out of North Carolina, and to stop companies like Blackwater from privatizing torture.

This week, McClatchy newspaper is running a series on what has happened to people picked up and thrown in Guantanamo or other off-shore US prisons. The people locked up by the US were tortured – and denied due process under the rule of law. Here are a few clips from the article:

"Because President Bush loosened or eliminated the rules governing the treatment of so-called enemy combatants, however, few U.S. troops have been disciplined under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and no serious punishments have been administered, even in the cases of two detainees who died after American guards beat them."

...snip.....

"Adel al Zamel, a Kuwaiti, said guards frequently waved sticks at him and threatened to rape him at Bagram during the spring of 2002. During an interview in Kuwait City, Zamel shook his head and said he remembered hearing detainees being beaten and "the cries from the interrogation room" at Bagram. He wasn't the only person to report sexual humiliation. Sgt. Selena Salcedo, a U.S. military intelligence officer, said that sometime between August 2002 and February 2003 she saw another interrogator, Pfc. Damien Corsetti, pull down the pants of a detainee and leave his genitals exposed. In a 2005 sworn statement in the court-martial of Corsetti, she said she'd left the room and that when she'd returned the detainee was bent over a table and Corsetti was waving a plastic bottle near his buttocks. She said she didn't know whether the detainee had been raped."

...snip ......

"At Bagram, however, the rules didn't apply. In February 2002, President Bush issued an order denying suspected Taliban and al Qaida detainees prisoner-of-war status. He also denied them basic Geneva protections known as Common Article Three, which sets a minimum standard for humane treatment."

Full article link.

Remember a couple of weeks back, when the staff at the Asheville Citizen Times said I was out to lunch by claiming that bush supported a policy of rape? Well, it looks from the above clips that he did support a policy of THREATENING rape, at least, if not rape itself. Of course, rape always comes along with war and torture and other evils. (Thank god we have some real journalists in this country – MCCLATCHY. I am very sorry to hear that they will be cutting their staff.)

Recently, I ordered a banner to be used by the Asheville Friends Meeting to show our opposition to torture. It said:

HONOR THE IMAGE OF GOD:

STOP TORTURE NOW!

I went to the meeting house on Thursday afternoon, and a friend and I tied up the 3 foot by 8 foot banner to the front porch. The people at the meeting wanted us to hang it from the upper windows, on the roof – but I could not figure out how to attach the banner without putting some eyehooks into the window frames, and I didn’t want to do that. My intention was to hang the banner for a couple of weeks and then have another local church hang up the banner for a couple of weeks, and keep rotating it throughout the area.

Unfortunately, I did not take a picture of the banner. It has gone missing, and was noted to be missing on Saturday morning. It is looking like someone came unto the property and just took it. I hope this turns out to be wrong, but so far, it seems like the most likely thing that has happened.

Over this past weekend, a lot of my fellow Friends were at a retreat. They passed this statement against torture:

From the local Religious Society of Friends:

The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) believes there is “that of God in every person.” This divine light, a universal principle of goodness and love, exists in all people, regardless of religion or geography.

Torture – in wars, in prisons, and in homes – diminishes this divine light in the victim and the perpetrator, and those who have knowledge of it. In situations where torture is used, one individual has power and the other is powerless. The misuse of this power against a defenseless person to cause pain, humiliation, fear and suffering is the ultimate denial of our common humanity, degrading and dehumanizing both the tortured and the torturer.

We Quakers of the Southern Appalachian Yearly Meeting and Association join with our fellow citizens who are taking action to bring the practice of torture to an end. Our condemnation of torture is not based on any political opinion or on the laws or treaties of any nations, but on the Golden Rule, the standard for moral behavior established by religious and secular communities across history and around the world.