RINF.COM: HET BREKENDE ALTERNATIEF VAN HET NIEUWS
Dinsdag, 17 Juni, 2008
RINF.COM: HET BREKENDE ALTERNATIEF VAN HET NIEUWS
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BREKEND NIEUWS |
Hoeveel onschuldige mensen uitgaan vandaag van hun meningen?
Dinsdag, 17 Juni, 2008
Zelfs als de historici op de een of andere manier de onwettige oorlog, het mangelen van internationale wet, het trashing van het milieu en maatschappelijk welzijn moesten vergeten, zijn de bankwezencrisis, en de overdracht van rijkdom van rijk aan armen, één beeld indelibly gestempeld op dit voorzitterschap: de verankerde automaten in sinaasappel jumpsuits. Het beeldt een grootmacht af die bereid is om zijn blinde gevangenen te ontmenselijken, om te verpakken, en deafen hen, om hen tot mannequins, in een plaats zo grimmig en te verminderen industrieel zoals een kip-inpakkende installatie. Slechter, was de overheid trots van wat het had gedaan. Het paradeerde zijn straffeloosheid. Het wilde ons weten dat niets zich op zijn manier zou bevinden: zijn macht was zowel soeverein als unaccountable. Drie dagen alvorens Bush besliste het de V.S. opperste hof in van Groot-Brittannië aankwam, dat de medebewoners bij Baai Guantánamo het recht hadden om hun detentie in de burgerlijke hoven te betwisten. Dit is de derde keer het opperste hof tegen het gevangeniskamp heeft beslist, maar bij deze gelegenheid kan Bush de wet veranderen niet: het hof heeft beslist dat de de gevangenen' rechten constitutioneel zijn. Symbolically kon het besluit nauwelijks belangrijker zijn. Praktisch kon het nauwelijks zijn minder. Het Ministerie van defensie kan zijn gevangenen naar een oubliette in een ander land overbrengen, waar het bevelschrift van de grondwet niet loopt. De openbare wreedheid van Baai Guantánamo heeft een nuttige afleiding van iets nog slechter verstrekt: het het uitspreiden zich systeem van geheime detentie kampeert de looppas van de V.S. rond de wereld. Wij, natuurlijk, kennen veel over dit programma niet. Bush erkende het eerst in September 2006. „Van duizenden terroristen die over de wereld worden gevangen, zijn slechts ongeveer 770 ooit verzonden naar Guantánamo.“ Andere verdachten werden, zei hij, „gehouden in het geheim“ door De CIA . “Many specifics of this program, including where these detainees have been held and the details of their confinement, cannot be divulged.” He went on to claim that all the secret prisoners had now been transferred to Guantánamo Bay. Several lines of evidence suggest that this claim was false. The CIA appears to have overseen or controlled, and in some cases appears still to be running, black sites in Poland, Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Macedonia, Kosovo, Morocco, Libya, Egypt, Djibouti, Somalia, Ethiopia, Iraq, Jordan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Thailand and, possibly, Diego Garcia. The US appears to be using ships as secret prisons. In just two years the CIA ran 283 flights – which the Council of Europe believes were used for transporting secret prisoners – out of Germany alone. It admits that it possesses 7,000 documents about its ghost detention programme. Are we to believe all this was done for the 14 men transferred to Guantánamo Bay? In Iraq, the US now admits to holding 22,000 prisoners without charge in its own facilities, some of whom are known to be kept away from the Red Cross and other visitors. Apart from those moved to Cuba, hardly anyone, so far, has come out of this system. At the end of last year salon.com interviewed Muhammad Bashmilah, who was arrested and tortured by Jordanian police, handed to the Americans, flown to an unknown country in autumn 2003, and held secretly by the CIA until he was transferred to Yemeni custody in May 2005. He reports that he was kept in a cell about the size of a transit van throughout the 19 months of his confinement, without any human contact except during interrogation. The lights and a source of white noise were left on permanently. Driven mad by isolation and sensory deprivation, he tried to kill himself several times. Eventually, when it became obvious even to the CIA that he had nothing to do with terrorism, he was handed over to the Yemeni government, who held him for another year until he was released without charge. Lawyers for some of the men transferred to Guantánamo Bay claim that, while in secret detention, their clients were left hanging from the ceiling by their wrists, beaten with electric cables, yanked around on a dog’s leash, chained naked in a freezing cell, and doused with cold water. “The CIA worked people day and night for months,” one prisoner reports. “Plenty lost their minds. I could hear people knocking their heads against the walls and doors, screaming their heads off.” Could it be worse than this? Yes. In 2003, a US official admitted to the Sunday Telegraph that the CIA was detaining and interrogating children. Discussing two boys aged seven and nine held in secret detention by the CIA, the official explained: “We are handling them with kid gloves. After all, they are only little children, but we need to know as much about their father’s recent activities as possible. We have child psychologists on hand at all times and they are given the best of care.” According to another prisoner, the boys had already been tortured by Pakistani guards. A former CIA official told the New Yorker that “every single plan [in the secret detention programme] is drawn up by interrogators, and then submitted for approval to the highest possible level – meaning the director of the CIA. Any change in the plan – even if an extra day of a certain treatment was added – was signed off by the CIA director.” Never mind detention without trial; this is detention without acknowledgement. When men and women disappear into this system, neither they nor their families know where they are. The Red Cross cannot reach them; they are beyond the scope of the law. They have been disappeared in the Latin American sense of that word. Do I need to explain that this treatment breaks just about every article in the Geneva conventions? Do I need to tell you that – without charges, trials, lawyers, scrutiny or even recognition – it is just as likely to net the innocent as the guilty? In 2006 George Bush maintained that “these aren’t common criminals, or bystanders accidentally swept up on the battlefield – we have in place a rigorous process to ensure those held at Guantánamo Bay belong at Guantánamo”. But a new and detailed investigation by the McClatchy newspaper group has found that many of them were indeed either common criminals or bystanders, or men sold to the authorities in order to settle a feud. Who knows how many innocent people are going out of their minds in the CIA’s secret prisons today? Along with its innocent victims, the US government has locked itself into this system. As the justice department has argued, these prisoners cannot be released in case they describe the “alternative interrogation methods” (the euphemism it uses for torture) the CIA used on them, which could “reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage”. Like almost everything Bush has done, this programme promises to backfire. George Bush will be remembered not only for the lives he has broken, but also for smashing everything he claimed to defend. See More:World NewsHave Your Say: How many innocent people are going out of their minds today? Please note, only selected comments will be published. Or discuss this report in our new forums One Response to “How many innocent people are going out of their minds today?”
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[…] How many innocent people are going out of their minds today? Tuesday, June 17th, 2008 By George Monbiot | We shouldn’t be surprised to hear that George Bush dined with a group of historians on Sunday night. The president has spent much of his second term pleading with history. But however … […]