Sacramento Bee Op-ed

Torture survivors need more help from California

By Kathi Anderson and Gregory Hall -
Published 12:00 am PDT Thursday, June 26, 2008

Imagine waking up one morning and instead of carrying out your daily routine, you are kidnapped at gunpoint and taken to a location where you are systematically and brutally beaten, with the fear that death would be the only escape.

That was a real experience for Carlos Mauricio, who was kidnapped in El Salvador in 1983 and tortured by his captors over a two-week period. Luckily, he survived to tell his story, and so have thousands of other survivors of torture now residing in California.

As detailed in last week's Sacramento Bee series on the treatment of terror suspects, torture isn't just something that happened in Central America in the 1980s. It's been used in the so-called war on terror, in the genocide in Darfur, and in numerous other conflicts where perpetrators - be they dictators, police, paramilitary forces, government officials or opposition forces - find ways to justify its use and avoid accountability.

Our state is home to the largest number of refugees, asylum seekers and immigrants in the United States. Many of them had to flee their homelands from unspeakable cruelty. Some were students, professors or other professionals who excelled in fields such as medicine, government, business, agriculture and community leadership, yet were targeted for persecution by their governments for what they thought, said or did.

Others were tortured as a way of punishing family members accused of opposition to political activities. Some were members of persecuted religious, ethnic, national or social groups. Others were in the wrong place at the wrong time, tortured as part of a government's campaign to terrorize and intimidate populations.

As expected, the lasting physical and psychological repercussions for survivors of torture can be a daily struggle.

Many suffer in silence as they strain to hold down jobs and adjust to a new life in the United States. This is made worse by the fact that most asylum seekers lack access to basic health care until they are granted asylum, which can take years. This presents a public health hazard, in addition to needless pain and suffering on the part of the asylum seeker.

Across the state, treatment centers and law firmswork to minimize these obstacles to care. In the Bay Area, the Center for Justice and Accountability, the Center for Survivors of Torture, the Institute for Redress & Recovery, and Survivors International provide torture survivors with the specialized care they need.

In Los Angeles, survivors can turn to the Program for Torture Victims and the Legal Aid Foundation. In San Diego, Survivors of Torture, International provides a holistic program of services. All the organizations are part of the California Consortium of Torture Treatment Centers.

Mauricio is an example of the positive impact these services can have on a survivor of torture. The centers address the physical and psychological effects of torture, pursue justice for survivors, assist families and provide communities of healing where survivors can build positive relationships.

Yet the centers struggle to meet the needs of torture survivors who have come from more than 100 countries, speak dozens of languages and dialects, and have complex health and mental health needs. States such as Minnesota and New York already have taken the lead in creating health care programs that provide assistance to survivors of torture. Unfortunately, California has been slower to recognize and respond to the needs of survivors.

Today is June 26, the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. Representatives from the California Consortium of Torture Treatment Centers are convening in Sacramento to educate state lawmakers about the importance and effectiveness of torture treatment centers.

We encourage members of the Legislature to recognize this unique population, to bring them out of our state's shadows, and to join our effort to ensure torture survivors have access to the specialized treatment they need to become healthy, productive members of our communities. It will benefit us all.

About the writer:

• Kathi Anderson is the executive director of Survivors of Torture, International. Gregory Hall is a senior program officer with the California Endowment, which supports programs addressing the health care needs of torture survivors.

Join Amnesty International's campaign to End Torture

Torture is a worldwide plague that often remains hidden from society, despite the long lasting physical and psychological effects on individuals and their families. We need you to help us raise awareness about torture and the importance of providing a safe haven for survivors of torture from all over the world.

Click Here to Stop Torture Today (warning: videos and images on this site maybe startling and disturbing)

Palestinian Detainees Suffer Torture

A new report from the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI) was released revealing that Israeli soldiers often beat and abuse Palestinian prisoners, even after they are detained and do not pose a threat.

The report titled “No Defense: Soldier Violence against Palestinian Detainees” focuses on a large number of incidents of violence against detainees after they had been arrested, bound, and no longer present a danger to the soldiers. Abuse occurs at various junctions - immediately following arrest, in the vehicle transporting the detainees, and during the time they are held in IDF military camps prior to their transfer to interrogation and detention facilities. At times abusive practices involve dogs that are employed by the military forces during arrest operations and transported in vehicles along with Palestinian detainees. On certain occasions, the ill treatment of Palestinian detainees is highly violent resulting in serious injury. At other times, abuse manifests itself in a routine of beating, degradation and additional abuse. Minors, who must be granted special protection under both Israeli and International Law, are also victims of abuse. The soldiers who carry out arrests do not treat minors with special care and at times – as revealed by various testimonies – exploit their weakness.

Read more.

Physicians for Human Rights Report

After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.

—Maj. General Antonio M. Taguba (USA-Ret.), preface to Broken Laws, Broken Lives

In PHR’s new report, Broken Laws, Broken Lives, we have for the first time medical evidence to confirm first-hand accounts of men who endured torture by US personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay. These men were never charged with any crime.

The report.

CNN report.

Op-ed in San Diego Union Tribune

Detaining asylum-seekers and torture victims

By William J. Aceves
June 18, 2008

For a country founded by immigrants fleeing religious persecution, the United States is now implementing a policy on political asylum that mocks our noble history. This policy has incarcerated thousands of innocent individuals whose only offense was to suffer persecution abroad and then seek refuge in the United States. It is a policy that few Americans see but many innocents suffer.

Under U.S. law, individuals who have been persecuted because of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group may apply for political asylum. To be eligible for asylum, individuals must submit an application and supporting documentation to the Department of Homeland Security. These applications are then reviewed by immigration officials. If the application is granted, asylum-seekers are allowed to remain in the United States, apply for work authorization and eventually seek citizenship. For decades, this policy has offered comfort and protection to countless refugees, from political dissidents in Africa to religious minorities in Asia.

In the 1990s, U.S. immigration policies became increasingly restrictive toward asylum-seekers. Since 2001, these policies have become even more Draconian. In a tragic turn, individuals fleeing persecution are now regularly imprisoned in county jails, federal detention centers and private facilities while U.S. immigration officials process their applications.

Our treatment of these immigrants is not an American narrative our country should seek to write. Individuals who have neither violated the law nor been charged with a crime have languished in detention centers for months or even years. Families are often torn apart, and children have been separated from their parents.

Asylum-seekers are routinely transferred to detention centers far from relatives. In some facilities, visitors are not even allowed to touch detainees, and they are separated by Plexiglas and forced to communicate by telephone.

The conditions of detention are equally troubling. Asylum-seekers are regularly detained in facilities with convicted criminals. They are forced to undergo invasive searches and daily head counts. Even children are subjected to these security measures. Living conditions often fall well below U.S. and international standards. Medical treatment is spotty, and injuries may go untreated. Psychological care is seldom provided.

The plight of torture victims is particularly troubling. It is no surprise that many asylum-seekers are also victims of torture. But these victims are not receiving needed counseling while in detention. Studies have found high rates of anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder among detained asylum-seekers. And the psychological harm worsens as the length of detention increases. Even the bipartisan U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom has criticized this policy and the conditions of detention, arguing that they create a serious risk of psychological harm to asylum-seekers.

Detention of asylum-seekers should only be used as a last resort, particularly since alternative programs exist. Individuals whose asylum applications are pending can be monitored in numerous ways, each of which is more humane and less costly than current detention policies. Individuals can be required to post bond or make regular visits to immigration officials. If there are unique concerns, electronic monitoring is a less invasive method.

Earlier this year, the U.N. special rapporteur on migrants, who visited San Diego in 2007, expressed concerns about the overuse of immigration detention in the United States. Indeed, he argued that the “availability of effective alternatives renders the increasing reliance on detention as an immigration enforcement mechanism unnecessary.”

San Diego County currently maintains one private detention facility that houses about 700 immigration detainees, many of them asylum-seekers. The San Diego Correctional Facility in Otay Mesa has been denounced by human rights organizations for its treatment of detainees. Lawyers and health care professionals have complained that placing their clients in these facilities undermines their efforts to provide quality and effective assistance. The San Diego facility has been criticized by the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security. It also has been the subject of a federal lawsuit alleging degrading conditions. This lawsuit seeks to ensure that the conditions of confinement are humane and comply with all appropriate constitutional and statutory safeguards. It is troubling, therefore, to consider that a second detention facility, which would house nearly 3,000 immigrants, is now in the planning stages in San Diego.

The cost of detaining one asylum-seeker at the San Diego Correctional Facility is estimated to be $89.50 per day, though total costs are undoubtedly higher. But the cost to these detainees, who have done nothing wrong, is immeasurable. When individuals seek refuge in our country, we should offer them protection, not prison bars.

---

Aceves is a professor of law and associate dean for academic affairs at California Western School of Law in San Diego.

June 26th 2008

Is the United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture. There are an estimated 500,000 survivors of politically motivated torture living in the United States. Recognize their strength by advocating on their behalf this June.

Series on Guantanamo Bay

The McClatchy News Group has released its findings after an eight month investigation into the men who have been detained at Guantanamo Bay. The conclusions of the story is that while many of the men held at Guantanamo were originally not affiliated in any way to a terrorist group, being tortured and abused at both Afghanistan and Cuba shifted their mind set.

This article is a great exploration into why torture is wrong and why it never works.

Read the report.

Supreme Court Rules in Favor of Detainees Rights

According to the BBC, the United States Supreme Court has ruled that detainees held at Guantanamo Bay have the right to challenge their detention in civilian court:

In a major legal setback for the Bush administration, the court overturned by five to four a ruling upholding a 2006 law which removed such rights.

It is not clear if the ruling will lead to prompt hearings for the detainees.

Some 270 men are held at the US naval base, on suspicion of terrorism or links to al-Qaeda and the Taleban.

US President George W Bush said he would abide by the court's ruling even if he did not agree with it.

Human rights groups have welcomed the move, Amnesty International saying it was an "essential step forward towards the restoration of the rule of law".

Read more.

J.K. Rowling Speaks of Human Rights at Harvard Commencement Address

One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books. This revelation came in the form of one of my earliest day jobs. Though I was sloping off to write stories during my lunch hours, I paid the rent in my early 20s by working in the research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London.

There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes.

Many of my co-workers were ex-political prisoners, people who had been displaced from their homes, or fled into exile, because they had the temerity to think independently of their government. Visitors to our office included those who had come to give information, or to try and find out what had happened to those they had been forced to leave behind.

I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.

And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just given him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed.

Every day of my working week in my early 20s I was reminded how incredibly fortunate I was, to live in a country with a democratically elected government, where legal representation and a public trial were the rights of everyone.

Every day, I saw more evidence about the evils humankind will inflict on their fellow humans, to gain or maintain power. I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard and read.

And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before.

Amnesty mobilises thousands of people who have never been tortured or imprisoned for their beliefs to act on behalf of those who have. The power of human empathy, leading to collective action, saves lives, and frees prisoners. Ordinary people, whose personal well-being and security are assured, join together in huge numbers to save people they do not know, and will never meet. My small participation in that process was one of the most humbling and inspiring experiences of my life.

Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s minds, imagine themselves into other people’s places.

Of course, this is a power, like my brand of fictional magic, that is morally neutral. One might use such an ability to manipulate, or control, just as much as to understand or sympathise.

And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.

I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think they have any fewer nightmares than I do. Choosing to live in narrow spaces can lead to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the wilfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.

Read the entire speech here.

Human Rights Watch Guantanamo Bay Report Released

Human Rights Watch has released a report on the prison conditions at Guantanamo Bay:

The 54-page report, “Locked Up Alone: Detention Conditions and Mental Health at Guantanamo,” documents the conditions in the various “camps” at the detention center, in which approximately 185 of the 270 detainees are housed in facilities akin to “supermax” prisons even though they have not yet been convicted of a crime. These detainees have extremely limited contact with other human beings, spend 22 hours a day alone in small cells with little or no natural light or fresh air, are not provided any educational opportunities, and are given little more than a single book and the Koran to occupy their time. Even their two hours of “recreation” time – which is sometimes provided in the middle of the night – generally takes place in single-cell cages so that detainees cannot physically interact with one another.

Download the whole report

June is Torture Awareness Month

Faith groups across the country are participating in Torture Awareness Month by displaying banners that make a clear statement: "Torture is Wrong." Leading the campaign is the National Religious Campaign Against Torture which believes that it is crucial for people of faith to stand up to the use of torture.

The Saint Louis Today reports places of worship that are participating in the campaign:

The black banner looked small, even modest, flapping in the wind against the old brick building. And though the banner's message — in white, lower-case letters — was modest, the issue it confronted was anything but:

"Torture is wrong."

The banner hung from the second floor of the Presbytery of Giddings-Lovejoy, the regional headquarters of the Presbyterian Church (USA) on Tower Grove Avenue, across from the Missouri Botanical Garden. It is part of an effort by the National Religious Campaign Against Torture to encourage Americans of faith to voice opposition to what its president calls "U.S.-sponsored torture."

Giddings-Lovejoy is one of just three religious bodies in the area participating in the program. The Sisters of Loretto, a Catholic order, and Westminster Presbyterian Church (USA) are the other two.

Read the whole story.

China encouraged to release Tiananmen Square Prisoners

The Jurist reports that Human Rights Watch is calling upon the Chinese government to release dozens of Tiananmen Square Protesters that are still in prison:

Human Rights Watch (HRW) [advocacy website] Tuesday called on China to release the remaining imprisoned Tiananmen Square [BBC backgrounder] protesters as part of a wider effort to improve the nation's human rights image before the 2008 Olympic Games. HRW urged [press release] the government to reverse its official 1989 classification of the protests as a "counterrevolutionary rebellion", release a complete list of casualties, compensate the victims, and allow future public demands for government accountability. Chinese officials have consistently refused to reverse [AFP report] the official 1989 classification, and a spokesman would not comment on the remaining HRW demands. Reuters has more.

Human Rights Watch Report

Human Rights Court Rules on Chechnya Disappearances

The Jurist reports that the European Court of Human Rights has found Russia responsible for the disappearance of civilians in Chechnya in 2002 and 2003.

Families of the victims, all of whom are presumed dead, had raised claims under the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms [PDF text]. The court directed Russia to pay a total of more than €350,000 ($550,000) to the families. Russia has three months to pay or to appeal.

Read more.