Shameful testimonials

From standardized transfer procedures of detainees undergoing extraordinary rendition documented by the International Committee of the Red Cross:

From here: The detainee would be photographed, both clothed and naked prior to and again after transfer. A body cavity check (rectal examination) would be carried out and some detainees alleged that a suppository (the type and the effect of such suppositories was unknown by the detainees), was also administered at that moment. The detainee would be made to wear a diaper and dressed in a tracksuit. Earphones would be placed over his ears, through which music would sometimes be played. He would be blindfolded with at least a cloth tied around the head and black goggles. In addition, some detainees alleged that cotton wool was also taped over their eyes prior to the blindfold and goggles being applied.... The detainee would be shackled by [the] hands and feet and transported to the airport by road and loaded onto a plane. He would usually be transported in a reclined sitting position with his hands shackled in front. The journey times...ranged from one hour to over twenty-four to thirty hours. The detainee was not allowed to go to the toilet and if necessary was obliged to urinate and defecate into the diaper.

Edouard Manet, 'The Execution of the Emperor Maximilian', Oil on Canvas, 120" x 99", 1867

Detainee 063 began to cry - a poem

Detainee began to cry.
Detainee cried.
Visibly shaken. Visibly emotional.
Very disturbed. Detainee sleeps awhile.
Detainee rudely woken up.
Heavy Metal. Judas Priest.
Iced water laced with seaweeds.
Strapped to a metal chair.
Incandescent light bulb overhead.
Detainee began to cry.
Detainee cried.
Detainee bites the IV tube.
IV tube splits in two. Meshuggah.
Injected again intravenously.
Rants and raves. Delirium.
Moaning softly. Detainee mutters.
Curses at the doctor. Lunges.
Visually uncomfortable. Moaning.
Turned his head from left to right.
Detainees clothes changed. Naked.
Someone pokes and prods.
Detainee began to cry.
Detainee cried.
Detainee begins to pray.
Strapped to a plank. Uncomfortable position.
The sounds of flowing water.
Blindfold. Heavy Metal. Steppenwolf.
Detainee wears her panty as crown.
The female orderly sniggers.
Detainee plans on confessing.
Object inserted into detainee’s anus.
Routine body cavity search.
This time a little more painful.
Looks at the corporals eyes.
Remorse and loathing. Spinal Tap.
Detainee began to cry.
Detainee cried.
Plans on making confession.
Urinates on self. Smell of urea.
Falling asleep. Very uncomfortable.
Detainee angry. Struggles.
Agitated and violent.
Wet and soggy pants. Excreta.
Detainee regurgitates food.
Detainee proclaimed his innocence.
Pushed guard. Solitary 24 hours.
The silence hurts and soothes.
No bright lights for 24 hours.
No flowing water for 24 hours.
No nothing for a whole day.
Dizzy. Headache. Near tears.
Detainee began to cry.
Detainee cried.
Yelled at Allah. Yelled for Allah.
Yelled for deliverance. Screams.
The water seems to ride into the lungs.
The fine muslin taut over detainees face.
Near crying. Tears and sweat stream.
Irritated and annoyed.
Attempted to liberate himself.
Plastic hangar too flimsy.
Strapped to links on the wall.
Aeroplane stress position is what this is called.
Made several attempts to stand up.
Unsuccessful.
Detainee screamed....

Note: Poem quickly stitched together after reading this article in the Vanity Fair magazine…

It is slowly becoming clear that we have moved from a 'gut based, touchy feely' policy and decision making apparatus to a more rational, 'brain oriented' policy and decision making...

From here: President Obama is expected to sign executive orders today directing the Central Intelligence Agency to shut what remains of its network of secret prisons and ordering the closing of the Guantánamo detention camp within a year. This will also prohibit the C.I.A. from using coercive interrogation methods, requiring the agency to follow the same rules used by the military in interrogating terrorism suspects.

No more Gitmo

Day before yesterday on the television program 60 minutes, the President elect Barack Hussein Obama came forward and made a fairly bold statement in public:

I have said repeatedly that I intend to close Guantanamo, and I will follow through on that. I have said repeatedly that America doesn’t torture, and I’m going to make sure that we don’t torture.

After being a helpless observer for the last eight years and in particular, after watching the systematic excision of liberties as depicted in the movie ‘Torturing Democracy’, I must say that it is a sign of change when the only person who has the power to close Guantanamo actually makes a statement that he is going to do so.

Depiction of Strappado by Bessonov Nicolay titled ‘Interrogation’, Oil on canvas, 1992.

Strappado is a form of torture that began with the Medieval Inquisition. In one version, the hands of the accused were tied behind his back and the rope looped over a brace in the ceiling of the chamber or attached to a pulley. Then the subject was raised until he was hanging from his arms. This might cause the shoulders to pull out of their sockets. Sometimes, the torturers added a series of drops, jerking the subject up and down. Weights could be added to the ankles and feet to make the hanging even more painful. It is alleged that this form of torture was also routinely used at Gitmo.

Signs of our times...

A new video game named “The Torture Game 2” has debuted recently. It is available for free and it allows you to... well, torture the lead character to death. The player may use any of the following to commit the torture: chainsaw, razor blade, spikes, pistols and a variety of other devices.

In the words of the reviewer: Sure, it’s a computer game in which you, the player, are asked to do horrible, unspeakable, and totally sick, sick, sick things to a defenseless man-like person tied up in some dark room from which he has absolutely no hope of escape. And, sure, one of the horrible, unspeakable, and totally sick, sick, sick things you might, perhaps, do to this man is put a chainsaw to his neck until his head falls off. And while you could choose to do nothing worse than splatter him with paint, most players probably won’t stop there. I didn’t. Curiosity got the better of me and before I knew it I was jabbing giant spikes into his belly, peeling back his face to the bone, and sawing the poor guy’s head from his neck. Because I could.

On torture by Dr. Inge Genefke (Founder of Copenhagen's Rehabilitation Center and Council for Torture Victims) in Vol 74 No. 2 of the New Letters magazine. Translated from the Danish by Thomas E. Kennedy.

The problem with torture is that when you even open the door an inch and say it is acceptable to torture a terrorist to get information about plans that will lead to deaths, it is soon impossible to shut that door again. How much torture can we use on terrorists? Is it also permissible to also threaten their families? And in which cases is torture permissible? The answer is that when you begin to use torture, it will automatically spread, and suddenly we have betrayed all those rights which belong to civilized society.

I remember two brothers who were ordered to beat one another in prison. The torturers knew that the one who hit hardest loved less. The one who hit least was trying to protect the other. Later, they tied the gentler brother to a chair and forced him to watch while the torturers poked out the eyes of the brother who had hot the hardest. They knew that for the sensitive brother, it would be a trauma he would never get over. I met that man, the one who had been forced to witnessed this atrocity, and it was as though he had turned to stone. He only sat there, staring.

Trevor Paglen: KEYHOLE/IMPROVED CRYSTAL Optical Reconnaissance Satellite (USA 129) near Scorpio, 2007; C-print; image from Bellwether Gallery, New York.

Mashup

Lewis Lapham mashes up Gitmo, Milton, Iraq and Sean Bell in a three page broadside against erosion of individual rights in the July issue of Harpers.

Liberta Obscura

"Thus they who of late were extolled as our greatest deliverers, and had the people wholly at their devotion, by so discharging their trust as we see, did not only weaken and unfit themselves to be dispensers of what liberty they pretended, but unfitted also the people, now grown worse and more disordinate, to receive or to digest any liberty at all. For stories teach us, that liberty sought out of season, in a corrupt and degenerate age, brought Rome itself to a farther slavery: for liberty hath a sharp and double edge, fit only to be handled by just and virtuous men; to bad and dissolute, it becomes a mischief unwieldy in their own hands: neither is it completely given, but by them who have the happy skill to know what is grievance and unjust to a people, and how to remove it wisely; what good laws are wanting, and how to frame them substantially, that good men may enjoy the freedom which they merit, and the bad the curb which they need."

– John Milton, The History of England, From the First Traditional Beginning, Continued to the Norman Conquest:—collected Out of the Ancientest and Best Authors Thereof, (1670). From Harpers.

Weekend verse

Prison Nightfall

Rung by rung, night descends
its spiral staircase of stars.
A breeze passes gently by,
as if words of love had been whispered.

Trees in the prison courtyard, like exiles
with heads bowed, are absorbed
in embroidering arabesques on the skirt of the sky.
On the crested roof are glittering
the beautiful fingers of moonlight,
dissolving star-shine into dust
and washing the blue sky into white.

In the green corners, dark shadows collide
as if the ache of separation
might eddy and fill my mind.
But one thought keeps running through my heart—
how sweet these moments are. Though
there are those who may concoct tyranny’s poisons,
they will have no victories, not today or tomorrow.

So what if they douse the candles in rooms
where lovers meet? If they’re so mighty,
let them snuff out the moon.

From Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s Prison Lyrics in Dast-e Saba

Note: In addition to the country of my birth India, gaining independence sixty years back this month (talked about here), Pakistan also woke to the throes of freedom this month. The echoes of which reverberate even to this day. The lines above were composed by Faiz Ahmed Faiz - a prominent writer and poet during those turbulent times. Even if he initially supported the creation of a separate state, he realized the blind opportunism underlying the partition logic (see brilliant essay by Pankaj Mishra in the New Yorker on the Machiavellian maneuvers of Churchill, the then prime minister of England) of the occupiers (British) after witnessing the communal violence in Punjab (during and after the partition) and the the mysterious deaths of the leaders who led the country to independence. Added to all this the corruption and social intolerance of the new government under Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan was the last straw. Faiz’s early enthusiasm for the possibilities of a viable state quickly faded. He was jailed for his writing and these were among the lines he composed during respite from the oppressive solitary confinement that he was subjected to for years...

Sunil, 'Gitmo', Digitally altered photograph