Survivors of Torture, International

Ring in the New Year with SURVIVORS

2008-12-31T10:08:00.001-08:00

Dear Friends,

We would like to wish you a peaceful, happy, and healthy new year. Thank you for all that you have done to contribute to making San Diego a safe haven for torture survivors. We are so grateful.

Sincerely,
The Staff of SURVIVORS

P.S. There's still time to contribute to our year-end campaign! To qualify for the current tax year, your gift must be given online or postmarked by December 31, 2008.

CAN YOU MAKE A DIFFERENCE TODAY?

2008-12-18T10:47:00.000-08:00

As the year comes to a close, we are reflecting on the successes and struggles of this past year. Increasingly as survivors seek asylum in our country they are being detained in prison-like settings while their cases are evaluated. This year, more than 50% of our new clients- people we have evaluated and identified as survivors of torture-were or continue to be detained.
Providing services to detained clients is logistically difficult, time-consuming, and expensive, but the services we provide are critical. Detained torture survivors are already traumatized; the isolation and uncertainty of detention frequently deepens their trauma, and makes their ultimate recovery that much more difficult. Without the support of SURVIVORS, detained torture survivors are much less likely to be granted the political asylum they so desperately need.
We would like to invite you to make a difference for this group of San Diegans in crisis - torture survivors. Your contribution will be used to support services that help survivors to recover from torture through a holistic program that includes medical, dental, psychiatric, psychological, and social services. Your support helps torture survivors from all over the world to become integrated, healthy, and productive members of our communities.
Let's work together to show that we won't let torture survivors suffer alone. By making a thoughtful year-end donation, you will continue to help us meet the needs of individuals and families who have fled torture in pursuit of safety in San Diego County. All services are provided at no cost to the survivors and 91% of our funding is spent directly on our programs.
You can make a tax-deductible donation online through our secure website. Thank you for considering a year-end contribution to our effort to help survivors of torture and to help bring hope to them in their healing process.

Wishing You a Wonderful Thanksgiving!

2008-11-24T09:46:00.000-08:00

We have so much to be thankful for this year. All of our supporters have offered so much help and encouragement to us and we are very thankful for that! Help us keep the good work moving forward. Please go online and donate now www.notorture.org Happy Thanksgiving!

Interesting article:

Obama to Take On Torture?
By Michael Isikoff NEWSWEEK
Published Nov 22, 2008
From the magazine issue dated Dec 1, 2008

Despite the hopes of many human-rights advocates, the new Obama Justice Department is not likely to launch major new criminal probes of harsh interrogations and other alleged abuses by the Bush administration. But one idea that has currency among some top advisers is setting up a 9/11-style commission that would investigate counterterrorism policies and make public as many details as possible. "At a minimum, the American people have to be able to see and judge what happened," said one senior adviser, who asked not to be identified talking about policy matters. The commission would be empowered to order the U.S. intelligence agencies to open their files for review and question senior officials who approved "waterboarding" and other controversial practices.
Obama aides are wary of taking any steps that would smack of political retribution. That's one reason they are reluctant to see high-profile investigations by the Democratic-controlled Congress or to greenlight a broad Justice inquiry (absent specific new evidence of wrongdoing). "If there was any effort to have war-crimes prosecutions of the Bush administration, you'd instantly destroy whatever hopes you have of bipartisanship," said Robert Litt, a former Justice criminal division chief during the Clinton administration. A new commission, on the other hand, could emulate the bipartisan tone set by Tom Kean and Lee Hamilton in investigating the 9/11 attacks. The 9/11 panel was created by Congress. An alternative model, floated by human-rights lawyer Scott Horton, would be a presidential commission similar to the one appointed by Gerald Ford in 1975 and headed by Nelson Rockefeller that investigated cold-war abuses by the CIA.

Read whole article here

Obama Commits to Close Guantanamo Bay and Ban Torture on 60 Minutes

2008-11-17T10:48:00.000-08:00

Did you see 60 Minutes last night? Obama made a commitment to close Guantanamo Bay and ban torture in order to, "regain America's moral stature in the world."

Click here to watch video

We Still Need Help With the Phone Bank on Wednesday Nov. 19th

2008-11-13T09:31:00.000-08:00

We still have slots to fill for our phone bank on Wednesday Nov. 19th from 5pm-8pm. If you are interested in helping out please contact Sara at svaz@notorture.org

Interesting Article:

Obama's plans for probing Bush torture
President Bush could pardon officials involved in brutal interrogations -- but he may also face a sweeping investigation under the new president.
By Mark Benjamin

Nov. 13, 2008 WASHINGTON -- With growing talk in Washington that President Bush may be considering an unprecedented "blanket pardon" for people involved in his administration's brutal interrogation policies, advisors to Barack Obama are pressing ahead with plans for a nonpartisan commission to investigate alleged abuses under Bush.
The Obama plan, first revealed by Salon in August, would emphasize fact-finding investigation over prosecution. It is gaining currency in Washington as Obama advisors begin to coordinate with Democrats in Congress on the proposal. The plan would not rule out future prosecutions, but would delay a decision on that matter until all essential facts can be unearthed. Between the time necessary for the investigative process and the daunting array of policy problems Obama will face upon taking office, any decision on prosecutions probably would not come until a second Obama presidential term, should there be one.

Read whole article here

STILL TIME TO SIGN UP FOR PHONE BANK NOV. 17-21

2008-11-11T09:32:00.000-08:00

Email Sara at svaz@notorture.org to sign up for the fundrasing phone bank next week. We need your help!

Campaign against torture gears up to lobby Obama
Mercer professor instrumental in organizing effort
By CHRISTOPHER QUINN
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
An extensive network of religious leaders, including an Atlanta Baptist leader, will begin a lobbying campaign to get President-elect Barack Obama to issue an executive order banning torture as one of his first acts Wednesday.

Read whole artcile here

Sign up for our Fundraising Phonebank Nov. 17-21

2008-11-10T09:44:00.000-08:00

Please sign up for our fundraising phone bank. We will be calling all of our supporters the week of Nov. 17-21 from 5pm-8pm nightly. If you are interested in helping please email Sara at svaz@notorture.org

Interesting Article:

Obama Plans Guantanamo Close, US Trials
MATT APUZZO and LARA JAKES JORDAN November 10, 2008 12:13 PM EST

WASHINGTON — President-elect Obama's advisers are quietly crafting a proposal to ship dozens, if not hundreds, of imprisoned terrorism suspects to the United States to face criminal trials, a plan that would make good on his promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison but could require creation of a controversial new system of justice.
During his campaign, Obama described Guantanamo as a "sad chapter in American history" and has said generally that the U.S. legal system is equipped to handle the detainees. But he has offered few details on what he planned to do once the facility is closed.
Under plans being put together in Obama's camp, some detainees would be released and many others would be prosecuted in U.S. criminal courts.

Read whole article here

Volunteer Orientation Wednesday Nov. 12th at 6:00pm

2008-11-07T15:38:00.001-08:00

Volunteer Orientation Wednesday Nov. 12th at 6:00pm

To sign up please email Sara at svaz@notorture.org

Interesting article:

Rodrigo Abd / AP
The Guantanamo Bay facility presents a number of headaches for the incoming administration.
THE ROAD TO THE INAUGURATION
The Gitmo Dilemma
Four reasons Obama won't close the controversial prison soon
By Dan Ephron NEWSWEEK
Published Nov 7, 2008

The detention center at and the flawed justice system created to try terrorist suspects held there are among the most complicated legacies of the Bush administration. They're 's problem now. The president elect has said he will shutter Gitmo and put some of the detainees on trial in American criminal courts or military courts martial (his campaign did not return calls seeking comment. But the prisoner mess created by Bush with the stroke of a pen in November, 2001, and made messier over seven years, will take time and resourcefulness to clean up. Here are four reasons the controversial facility will probably still be open for business a year from now.

Read whole article here

What are the Presidential Candidates Records on Torture-related Issues?

2008-10-31T10:08:00.000-07:00

The following scorecard is based on records of Senators’ actions on major pieces of torture-related legislation in the 109th and 110th Congresses (2005 – 2008).

If you would like to see the full scorecard click here

Please get out there and VOTE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Join us at the Pledge to Vote Event Sunday Nov. 2nd

2008-10-30T15:00:00.000-07:00

Join us at the Pledge to Vote Event on Sunday November 2nd!
Time: 12-7
Place: Legacy Plaza in Liberty Station- 2801 Rosecrans
Let's make sure we demand our next President bans torture from Day 1!

Check out this article:

Ex-Liberian president's son convicted of torture

(CNN) -- Federal jurors convicted the son of former Liberian president Charles Taylor Sr. of torture and conspiracy charges Thursday, said a spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney's office in the southern district of Florida.

Former Liberian President Charles Taylor's son, Charles McArthur Emmanuel, is shown during his trial.

Charles "Chuckie" Taylor Jr., also known as Charles McArthur Emmanuel, was found guilty on one count of torture, one count of conspiracy to commit torture and one count of possession of a firearm during the commission of a violent crime, said Alicia Valle, special counsel to the U.S. attorney.

Taylor's case, tried in Miami, Florida, was the first brought under a 1994 United States law saying those accused of committing torturous acts overseas can be tried in a U.S. federal court.

Read whole article here

LAST CHANCE TO SIGN UP FOR VOLUNTEER ORIENTATION ON WEDNESDAY!

2008-10-27T09:52:00.000-07:00

LAST CHANCE TO SIGN UP FOR VOLUNTEER ORIENTATION ON WEDNESDAY!

Please email svaz@notorture.org if you are interested in attending the Volunteer Orientation on Wednesday October 29th. We only have a few more seats available so please RSVP as soon as possible! You will learn all the ways you can help get involved with SURVIVORS during this orientation.

Check out this article:

"UN torture sleuth awaits new US government on Iraq"
By Patrick Worsnip UNITED NATIONS, Oct 24 (Reuters) - The U.N.

The U.N. investigator on torture said on Friday he was waiting to see whether a new U.S. administration would change Washington's policy of not allowing him into its prisons in Iraq.The United States has turned down two requests by Manfred Nowak to visit facilities where it holds thousands of Iraqis suspected of involvement in attacks against its troops."They were very clear in saying at the moment we won't change. Might change under a new administration," Nowak, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture, told reporters.Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama face off in a Nov. 4 U.S. presidential election. The winner takes office on Jan. 20.

Read whole article here

2nd Volunteer Orientation Added on October 29th at 6:00pm

2008-10-20T10:29:00.000-07:00

We have added a 2nd Volunteer Orientation because of the overwhelming response to the 1st one. The Orientation will be held on Wednesday, October 29th, at 6:00pm. Please email svaz@notorture.org for more information.

This is a very interesting article and something to really consider:

John Feffer
Posted October 20, 2008 09:20 AM (EST)

The Art of Torture

Reposted from Foreign Policy In Focus
The pictures from Abu Ghraib have achieved iconic status. The hooded man on the box, his arms outstretched, has superceded the image of the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue. The Bush administration will forever be remembered as "the administration that tortured."
Iconic images have a concentrated power. The Abu Ghraib pictures convey, in visual shorthand, a range of messages - the sufferings of all Iraqis under U.S. occupation, the double standards of U.S. human rights policy, the failures of "democracy promotion." They are pictures that are worth a thousand protests. The enduring images from the Vietnam War - the young girl running naked down the street to escape her napalmed village, the bullet-to-the-head execution of a Vietcong officer - acquired the same power of concentration.
But iconic images have their disadvantages, too. Victims of violent crimes frequently talk of feeling victimized all over again when they recount their traumas. Even as we use the images to decry U.S. policy in Iraq, do we continue to torture the detainees from Abu Ghraib when we reproduce the images of their prison abuses?

Read whole article here

Join us at the Social Ministry Fair at St. Andrew's Lutheran Church

2008-10-17T15:15:00.000-07:00

Join us at the Social Ministry Fair at St. Andrew's Lutheran Church
8350 Lake Murray Blvd
San Diego, Ca 92119
Saturday October 18th after the 5:30pm service
Sunday Octiber 18th after the 8:00am 9:30am and 10:45am services

Interesting Editorial from the Orlando Sentinel:

We think: The next president needs to restore U.S. moral authority
October 17, 2008
Republican John McCain fired off the most memorable line of this week's presidential debate when he told Democrat Barack Obama, "I am not President Bush. If you wanted to run against President Bush, you should have run four years ago."Whichever one of them moves into the White House in January, there's a simple but critical step they could take right away to make a clean break from Mr. Bush: Outlaw, once and for all, the use of torture against prisoners in U.S. custody.Torture isn't just un-American; it's counterproductive. Veteran U.S. interrogators have testified that it doesn't yield reliable intelligence. It encourages enemies to keep fighting rather than surrender and submit to interrogation. It puts captured U.S. troops in greater peril.

Read whole article here

VOLUNTEER ORIENTATION

2008-10-16T13:51:00.000-07:00

Volunteer Orientation
Wednesday, October 22, 2008 at 6:00 p.m.
Please email svaz@notorture.org for details!

Check out this article:

WashPost: Dick Cheney briefed on torture; secret memos detail CIA tactics
There's a healthy Internet buzz today on a Washington Post story saying the CIA endorsed such harsh interrogation techniques as waterboarding against Al Qaeda suspects in 2003 and 2004 -- and eventually got a written endorsement from Bush administration higher-ups.
According to the Post, the existence of two specific memos endorsing the practice had not been disclosed. It said Vice President Dick Cheney and then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice were briefed by the CIA director, who wanted White House "policy approval."

Read whole article here

Amnesty International Walk

2008-10-15T09:25:00.000-07:00

Amnesty International North County Chapter’s 20th Anniversary & Candlelight Walk for Human Rights
Sunday, October 19, 2008 at 5:30pmAt the Oceanside Amphitheater - Next to the Pier(I-5 Exit in Oceanside @ Mission Ave. - West to the end)
Featuring speakers
• REBIYA KADEER: An "adopted" Prisoner of Conscience
• BRIDGET SUHR: International Criminal Court
• PETER SCHEY: Reconciliation Process in South Africa
• Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice will receive the Digna Ochoa Human Rights Defender Award 2008 Find details at the Amnesty International web site

Check out this article:

CIA Tactics Endorsed In Secret Memos
Waterboarding Got White House Nod
By Joby WarrickWashington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, October 15, 2008; Page A01

The Bush administration issued a pair of secret memos to the CIA in 2003 and 2004 that explicitly endorsed the agency's use of interrogation techniques such as waterboarding against al-Qaeda suspects -- documents prompted by worries among intelligence officials about a possible backlash if details of the program became public.
The classified memos, which have not been previously disclosed, were requested by then-CIA Director George J. Tenet more than a year after the start of the secret interrogations, according to four administration and intelligence officials familiar with the documents. Although Justice Department lawyers, beginning in 2002, had signed off on the agency's interrogation methods, senior CIA officials were troubled that White House policymakers had never endorsed the program in writing.

Read whole article here

2008-10-14T09:24:00.000-07:00

"My Guantanamo Diary" event with author Mahvish Rukhsana Khan
Tuesday, October 21, 2008 at 7:00 p.m.
Location: Multipurpose Room in the student services center, UCSD.Address: 9500 Gilman Dr, La Jolla, CA, 92093
Cost: Free

Mahvish Rukhsana Khan's 'My Guantánamo Diary'

My Guantánamo Diary The Detainees and the Stories They Told Me. By Mahvish Rukhsana Khan. Illustrated. 302 pages. $25.95. PublicAffairs.
In 2005, while a law student at the University of Miami, Mahvish Rukhsana Khan decided to volunteer as an interpreter for Afghan detainees at Guantánamo Bay. The American daughter of Afghan immigrants (her parents are Johns Hopkins-educated physicians), Khan thought it unfair that the detainees could not understand their lawyers, who did not speak Pashto, and although she didn't know whether they were guilty, she believed they were entitled to prove their innocence.

Read the whole Article

2008-10-13T13:14:00.000-07:00

Please join us for the Academy Award Winning Documentary Screening of
"Taxi to the Dark Side"
Tuesday, October 21, 2008 at 9:30 a.m.
Location: San Diego City College, Room D121A1313 Park Blvd, San Diego, CA 92101
Cost: Free
This event is co hosted with the Amnesty International Club at City College

In 2002 taxi driver Dilawar was picked up by US forces with his passengers in the desert and taken to Bagram prison in Afghanistan. Five days later he was dead. Injuries to his legs were compared with those he would have sustained if he had been run over by a truck – had he lived it was likely that his legs would have had to have been amputated due to the damage. With this as the starting point, this documentary tells the story of the role of "torture" in the war on terror, from Abu Ghraid to Guantanamo

Check out this article on the potential release of Chinese Muslims from Guantanamo Bay:

After nearly 7 years at Guantanamo, Chinese Muslims set to be freed this week are told to wait
By HOPE YEN Associated Press Writer
8:14 AM EDT, October 9, 2008
WASHINGTON (AP) _ A group of Chinese Muslims set to be freed into the U.S. this week from Guantanamo Bay found their freedom stymied yet again after a simple government plea: What's a couple more weeks or so in jail after nearly seven years?That in essence was the Bush administration's argument to a federal appeals court in a 19-page emergency request that maintained there would be only "minimal harms" if the detainees were to stay at Guantanamo a while longer.Late Wednesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit agreed, halting the 17 men's release for at least another week to give the government more time to make arguments in the case.

Read the whole article

2008-09-10T15:38:00.000-07:00

A “little death penalty” case: One refugee’s story of seeking protection in the United States.

A fascinating interview from inthefray.org about the story of a Kenyan farmer who, after being tortured for organizing a protest, applied for asylum in the United States .

David Kenney was a political activist in his native Kenya in the early 1990s. He didn’t choose to become a political activist; he was a peasant farmer trying to grow tea and making a living. By doing so he discovered he couldn’t make a living growing tea because the price the government was paying was so low that it was causing him to lose money to grow tea. And yet the contract he had signed with the government monopoly prevented him from growing any other crops on his land.

So he organized a farmers’ boycott and protest to try to get the government to justify its policy or change it. And as a result, he was put in jail [and] nearly executed at gunpoint in a forest. He was saved at the last minute because the security forces of Kenya thought he could be more useful to the regime alive than dead. So they tortured him for a week, putting him in a water-filled cell in which he was in constant threat of being killed by drowning, and eventually put in solitary confinement for eight months.

...

He ended up coming to the United States on a basketball scholarship. He got a U.S. college degree, and when his education was over, Daniel arap Moi, who was in charge of Kenya when he was jailed and tortured, was still in power. So he applied for asylum. The book tells the story of his four-year struggle with our immigration services, in which he was constantly denied asylum by one bureaucracy after another, and eventually forced to go back to Africa, where he was nearly killed once again.

Read the whole article

2008-09-03T09:41:00.000-07:00

Lawyers for Detainee Assert Coercion

A brief article from The New York Times relating an account by Salim Hamdan, Osama Bin Laden's driver and the first detainee tried for war crimes, of sexual humiliation and coercion at Guantanamo.

A secret government document submitted at the trial of the first detainee to face a war crimes trial confirms the detainee’s account of having been sexually humiliated while interrogated by a female government agent, defense lawyers said at the tribunal here on Wednesday.
The lawyers described the document as an account by the unidentified agent and said it bolstered their claim that their client, Salim Hamdan, was subjected to measures at Guantánamo including late-night interrogations that amounted to coercion.
One of the lawyers, Harry H. Schneider Jr., said in the courtroom that Mr. Hamdan was “right on the money” in his description of a female interrogator’s physical contact with him in a way that a Muslim man would find nearly unbearable.

read the brief article

2008-08-27T15:27:00.000-07:00

California Becomes First State to Condemn Use of Torture in ‘War on Terror’

An encouraging article from California Progress Report about the State of California's strong stance against torture and initiative in challenging the interrogation policies of the federal government.

On Thursday, the California Legislature adopted SJR 19, a resolution to prevent the state’s licensed health professionals from engaging in torture.

As a result of SJR 19, state medical boards will inform health professionals of their obligations under both domestic and international law regarding treatment of prisoners and detainees. They will be warned that if they participate in interrogations that do not conform to these standards, they risk future prosecution. The state will also request the Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency to remove California doctors and psychologists from settings that fall short of international standards of treatment.

The myth that the U.S. does not torture is coming apart at the seams. Every week there are new revelations of misconduct. The abuses are not the result of “a few bad apples,” but rather stem from a short-sighted and reckless policy that has damaged the lives of countless people held in U.S. custody, attacked the emotional and spiritual well-being of American soldiers who have witnessed it and undermined the moral authority of America in the world community.

Read the entire article

2008-08-20T12:44:00.000-07:00

Two Women Sentenced to ‘Re-education’ in China

An interesting and revealing article in The New York Times about disturbing human rights violations and the suppression of freedom of speech in China.

Two elderly Chinese women have been sentenced to a year of “re-education
through labor” after they repeatedly sought a permit to demonstrate in one of
the official Olympic protest areas, according to family members and human rights
advocates.

The women, Wu Dianyuan, 79, and Wang Xiuying, 77, had made five visits to
the police this month in an effort to get permission to protest what they
contended was inadequate compensation for the demolition of their homes in
Beijing.

read the whole article

2008-08-19T15:03:00.000-07:00

Nobel nominee in torture ban call

Brief blurb in the BBC about a call for an international ban on torture during the 12th World Congress on Pain.

A several-time nominee for the Nobel Peace Prize has led calls at a
conference in Glasgow, for an international ban on torture.
Dr Inge Genefke
urged more than 45 countries to sign the United Nations Convention Against
Torture.
The Danish activist was speaking at the 12th World Congress on Pain
on Tuesday.
About 5,000 delegates are expected to attend between 17 and 22
August. The congress will also discuss the latest research and treatment of
pain.

link to article here

2008-08-15T10:13:00.000-07:00

Detainee Death

The New York Times has created an excellent video relating the story of Boubacar Bah who died in the at an Immigration Detention Center:

Word spread quickly inside the windowless walls of the Elizabeth Detention Center, an immigration jail in New Jersey: A detainee had fallen, injured his head and become incoherent. Guards had put him in solitary confinement, and late that night, an ambulance had taken him away more dead than alive.

But outside, for five days, no official notified the family of the detainee, Boubacar Bah, a 52-year-old tailor from Guinea who had overstayed a tourist visa. When frantic relatives located him at University Hospital in Newark on Feb. 5, 2007, he was in a coma after emergency surgery for a skull fracture and multiple brain hemorrhages. He died there four months later without ever waking up, leaving family members on two continents trying to find out why.
Mr. Bah’s name is one of 66 on a government list of deaths that occurred in immigration custody from January 2004 to November 2007, when nearly a million people passed through.

Watch the video.

2008-08-13T15:41:00.000-07:00

Ill and in Pain, Detainee Dies in U.S. Hands

This New York Times article describes some of the inadequate care and shameful neglect that detainees often suffer in detention facilities throughout the United States. Diseases are left undiagnosed and detainees often endure great pain without any relief or concern shown to them.

But when Mr. Ng, who had overstayed a visa years earlier, went to immigration headquarters in Manhattan last summer for his final interview for a green card, he was swept into immigration detention and shuttled through jails and detention centers in three New England states.
In April, Mr. Ng began complaining of excruciating back pain. By mid-July, he could no longer walk or stand. And last Wednesday, two days after his 34th birthday, he died in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in a Rhode Island hospital, his spine fractured and his body riddled with cancer that had gone undiagnosed and untreated for months.
...

In federal court affidavits, Mr. Ng’s lawyers contend that when he complained of severe pain that did not respond to analgesics, and grew too weak to walk or even stand to call his family from a detention pay phone, officials accused him of faking his condition. They denied him a wheelchair and refused pleas for an independent medical evaluation.
Instead, the affidavits say, guards at the Donald W. Wyatt Detention Facility in Central Falls, R.I., dragged him from his bed on July 30, carried him in shackles to a car, bruising his arms and legs, and drove him two hours to a federal lockup in Hartford, where an immigration officer pressured him to withdraw all pending appeals of his case and accept deportation.
“For this desperately sick, vulnerable person, this was torture,” said Theodore N. Cox, one of Mr. Ng’s lawyers, adding that they want to see a videotape of the transport made by guards.

Read the whole article

2008-08-12T14:26:00.000-07:00

Detention at Guantanamo

The BBC recently published an informative article that deals with the legality of the detainees at Guantanamo and the various processes that defendants are subjected to.

What about evidence obtained by torture or coercion?
Evidence obtained under torture will not be permitted, but evidence obtained by coercion could be.
One problem is that "waterboarding" is not classified as torture by the Bush administration.
If evidence was obtained before 30 December 2005 (that is, the date when the Detainee Treatment Act came into force, outlawing "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment"), the military judge can allow the evidence if "the totality of the circumstances renders the statement reliable" and "the interests of justice would best be served".
This suggests that some evidence obtained in the so-called "secret prisons" operated by the CIA might be admissible. If it was obtained after 30 December 2005, then the judge would also have to be satisfied that no "cruel, degrading or inhumane treatment" had been used.

Read the whole article

2008-08-05T10:57:00.000-07:00

American Purgatory

A new project has been launched to take a detailed look at the political asylum system since 9/11. This website offers commentary from all sides, an audio of interviews, and a list of credible resources:

American Purgatory is a rare look into the asylum process from start to finish through the eyes of an asylum applicant. The documentary takes listeners into the process of applying for asylum through the eyes of "H", an asylum seeker from a former Soviet country who came to New York in 2005.

H was represented by lawyers from a large New York law firm that took on his case pro bono (free of charge). Very few asylum seekers are lucky enough to have lawyers. H goes through the process with their help, but throughout, he struggles to pay his rent and support himself without financial assistance or the legal right to work.

H's journey is surrounded by stories from others who have been through the asylum process—some without lawyers, some who were in detention—along with people involved in the system, including asylum officers, lawyers, advocates and critics, as well as the US immigration service and Homeland Security.

Through the voices of asylum seekers, asylum advocates and those responsible for enforcing U.S. asylum laws, American Purgatory explores the contradictions of a process that is there to protect people in distress, but also has to vet fraudulent applications and infiltration by terrorists.

Visit the website.

2008-08-04T09:26:00.001-07:00

Activist Sentenced to Egyptian Prison

The Jurist is reporting that a dual US and Egyptian professor is accused of defaming Egypt:

A judge in an Egyptian court Saturday convicted a prominent human rights activist and outspoken critic of President Hosni Mubarak in absentia of defaming Egypt and sentenced him to two years in prison. Saad Eddin Ibrahim [profile], a dual US and Egyptian citizen who is a professor of sociology at the American University in Cairo and who founded the Ibn Khaldoun Centre for Development Studies [academic websites] in Egypt, had been accused of defaming Egypt by criticizing its human rights practices and politics. Following the accusations, he decided to leave Egypt in 2007, writing [text] in the Washington Post:
Sadly, this regime has strayed so far from the rule of law that, for my own safety, I have been warned not to return to Egypt. Regime insiders and those in Cairo's diplomatic circles have said that I will be arrested or worse. My family is worried, knowing that Egypt's jails contain some 80,000 political prisoners and that disappearances are routinely ignored or chalked up to accidents. My fear is that these abuses will spread if Egypt's allies and friends continue to stand by silently while this regime suppresses the country's democratic reformers.
Ibrahim reportedly agreed to return to Egypt if he received assurances that he would not be immediately arrested. The judge Saturday said that Ibrahim could pay 10,000 Egyptian pounds ($1,890 USD) for bail, and that he would have the opportunity to appeal. Reuters has more. AFP has additional coverage.

Read the whole article

2008-07-29T08:55:00.000-07:00

Guantanamo Bay Trials Begin

The New York Times reports the beginning of the Guantanamo Bay trails. The report concludes that this is not only a trial for Salim Hamdan but also a trial for these tribunals:

Mr. Hamdan’s trial is, in a sense, two trials. Mr. Hamdan is being tried on accusations of conspiracy and material support of terrorism. And the Bush administration’s military commission system itself is on trial. After years of debate, protest and litigation, the legal standing of the tribunal system at Guantánamo remains a question for American courts and officials around the world.
The chief Guantánamo prosecutor, Col. Lawrence J. Morris of the Army, said this first Guantánamo tribunal was “the most just war crimes trial that anybody has ever seen.”
Matt Pollard, a legal adviser for Amnesty International who is an observer here, sees it differently. He said he was struck by a sense that the proceedings were more of a replica of a trial than a real one.
“We are within a frame of a beautiful picture,” created by the Pentagon, Mr. Pollard said. “When you’re inside that frame, everything looks nice.”
The Guantánamo legal system was intended to try “unlawful enemy combatants” caught on the post-Sept. 11 battlefield. Prosecutors say there is little room for the usual legal restrictions in interrogations intended to prevent a terrorist attack. The administration’s strategy in using the Guantánamo naval station was based on its belief that the Constitution would not apply here.
Legal challenges to that assertion are among a number of factors that have delayed the government’s efforts to conduct trials here for years.

Read the whole report.

2008-07-25T09:13:00.000-07:00

More Visas for Iraqis

The New York Times reports that the United States has expanded its Visa program ten fold for those Iraqis employed by the American government in Baghdad:

Although the program was established by law in January, it has become a practical reality just in the last two to three weeks as guidelines have been finalized and the embassy has brought in staff members and started processing applications.
The decision is the latest step in the administration’s attempt to answer sharp criticism over its failure to help even those Iraqis who have made the American presence in Iraq possible by serving as translators and supervisors on embassy projects, for the American military and for the Agency for International Development. But critics in the refugee relief community noted that the State Department had promised several times that it would try to speed up the process, and that it had not come through.
State Department officials attribute the gap between words and deeds to a cumbersome refugee resettlement system that includes fingerprinting, job checks, name checks and interviews.
The program will allow 5,000 Iraqis to go to the United States for each of the next five years. Each person can take immediate family members, who include spouses and children. More distant relatives, including siblings, parents and grandchildren, can apply under another program. So the actual numbers emigrating will probably be considerably higher. The average Iraqi household is estimated to have about six people, according to officials from the International Organization for Migration.

2008-07-22T10:44:00.000-07:00

Radovan Karadzic Captured

Bosnian Serb war criminal Radovan Karadzic was captured this week in Belgrade. The BBC has created an intense and thorough report on the rise and fall of Karadzic:

The former Bosnian Serb leader was arrested on Monday near Belgrade after more than a decade on the run.
He has been indicted by the UN tribunal for war crimes and genocide relating to the war in Bosnia in the mid-1990s.
The UN says Mr Karadzic's forces killed up to 8,000 Bosniak men and boys from Srebrenica in July 1995 as part of a campaign to "terrorise and demoralise the Bosnian Muslim and Bosnian Croat population".
He has also been charged over the shelling of Sarajevo, and the use of 284 UN peacekeepers as human shields in May and June 1995.

Go here to read the full report.

2008-07-15T09:51:00.000-07:00

ICC Warrant for President Omar Hassan al-Bashir

According to the New York Times:

The prosecutor at the International Criminal Court formally requested an arrest warrant on Monday for Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the past five years of bloodshed in the Darfur region of his country.

The prosecutor’s pursuit of Mr. Bashir introduced new volatility to the already chaotic situation in Darfur. While some diplomats and analysts worried that the move would undermine efforts to negotiate peace and provide aid to the millions displaced by violence, others said it offered new leverage to pressure the Sudanese government to end the conflict in Darfur.

Read the whole report.

2008-07-11T09:37:00.000-07:00

"My Guantanamo Diary"

Mahvish Khan is recent law graduate who took more than thirty trips to Guantanamo Bay to act as an interpreter for the detainees and their lawyers. She has now written book:

During our meeting, Nusrat's emotions range from anger to despair. In his desperation, he begins to promise Peter that he will make him famous if he helps him get home. "Everyone in Afghanistan will know your name," he says. "You will be a great, famous lawyer."
As I interpret, I feel a lump growing in my throat. Suddenly, I can't speak. Peter and Nusrat pause as the tears flood down my face and drip onto my shawl.
The old man looks at me. "You are a daughter to me," he says. "Think of me as a father." I nod, aligning and realigning pistachio shells on the table as I interpret.
As the meeting ends and we collect our things to go, the old man opens his arms to me and I embrace him. For several moments, he prays for me as Peter watches: "Insha'allah, God willing, you will find a home that makes you happy. Insha'allah, you will be a mother one day. . . . "
He lets me go and asks me to say dawa, prayers, for him. "Of course," I promise. "Every day."
And until the next time I see him, I will.

Read Mahvish's Washington Post Article.

2008-07-07T11:10:00.000-07:00

Is Waterboarding Torture?

The discussion continues as Gasper Tringale reports on his experience in Vanity Fair:

What more can be added to the debate over U.S. interrogation methods, and whether waterboarding is torture? Try firsthand experience. The author undergoes the controversial drowning technique, at the hands of men who once trained American soldiers to resist—not inflict—it.

Tringale voluntarily underwent waterboarding. He describes the effect of waterboarding:

Also, in case it’s of interest, I have since woken up trying to push the bedcovers off my face, and if I do anything that makes me short of breath I find myself clawing at the air with a horrible sensation of smothering and claustrophobia.

Read about his experience.

2008-07-03T13:42:00.000-07:00

Governor Schwarzenegger June 26 Proclamation

June 26, 2008, as "Day in Support of Survivors of Torture"

PROCLAMATION

by the

Governor of the State of California

Sadly, far too many people around the world suffer from torture every day. These tragedies are horrifying and unacceptable, and California joins with others across the world in demanding change and offering support for these victims.

It is estimated that around a quarter of the refugees in the United States have experienced some form of torture, and many of those refugees live in California. It is crucial that we assist them in their efforts to rebound and build happier, healthier lives. Our Golden State has a proud legacy of offering kindness and safety to torture victims, and I urge all those who have been persecuted to take advantage of the many resources available to them.

Additionally, I thank all those who have opened their hearts to help others recover from these difficult experiences. Torture victims have experienced unimaginable pain and grief, and by providing counseling, health care services, housing and food, compassionate individuals and organizations are rekindling hope and the belief in a brighter future.

On this day and all others, I encourage all Californians to help end persecution and take a stand to eliminate torture world-wide.

NOW, THEREFORE, I, ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER, Governor of the State of California, do hereby proclaim June 26, 2008, as "Day in Support of Survivors of Torture."

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Great Seal of the State of California to be affixed this 2nd day of June 2008.

ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER
Governor of California

ATTEST:

DEBRA BOWEN
Secretary of State

2008-07-02T08:52:00.000-07:00

Abu Ghraib Inmates Sue For Torture

The AFP reports that four former Abu Ghraib prisoners are suing a U.S. firm for torture:

Their lawsuit is against private security contractor CACI International and two of its interrogators, Daniel Johnson and Tim Dugan, and the translation agency L-3 (formerly Titan Corp) and its interpreter, Abel Nakhla, lawyer William Gould told AFP in Istanbul on Monday.
One of the current plaintiffs, Suhail Najim Abdullah Al-Shimari, 49, was taken from his Bagdad home in November 2003 and spent more than a year at Abu Ghraib, where he claims to have been subjected to electroshock and night-long cold showers in the winter.
"We think there will be people there in the United States who will want to give us back our dignity... by bringing these people to justice," he told AFP via an interpreter.
Sa'adon Ali Hameed Al-Ogaidi, 39, said he was repeatedly beaten at Abu Ghraib and tied to door handles.
"At times, it seemed they were torturing people to have fun," said the former prisoner, who claims to have witnessed guards sodomising prisoners.
Taxi driver Mohammed Abdwihed Towfek Al-Taee, 39, was taken to Abu Ghraib in 2003.
He has scars on his leg and head that he said came from beatings with an iron rod. He also said he was forced to drink litres of water while his penis was tied to prevent him from urinating.
"I wish I would be the last person to be detained and to be tortured," he said.

2008-06-30T11:18:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-06-25T09:57:00.000-07:00

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)

2008-06-23T09:47:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-06-20T09:32:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-06-19T09:15:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-06-18T09:24:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-06-17T09:00:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-06-16T09:56:00.000-07:00

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".

2008-06-12T09:10:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-06-11T09:00:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-09T10:19:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-06-04T09:13:00.000-07:00

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

2008-06-02T10:22:00.000-07:00

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.

2008-05-21T14:02:00.000-07:00

SURVIVORS on YouTube

It is official, we have arrived. Survivors of Torture, International agency video (see previous post) is now posted on YouTube on its own non-profit channel.

Check it out!

2008-05-19T12:01:00.000-07:00

Anti- Immigrant Attacks

The New York Times reported anti-immigrant violence is sweeping across Johannesberg:

Violence against immigrants, like some windswept fire, spread across one neighborhood after another here in one of South Africa’s main cities this weekend, and the police said the mayhem left at least 12 people dead — beaten by mobs, shot, stabbed or burned alive.

Thousands of panicked foreigners — many of them Zimbabweans who have fled their own country’s economic collapse — have now deserted their ramshackle dwellings and tin-walled squatter hovels to take refuge in churches and police stations.

2008-05-16T09:25:00.000-07:00

Survivors of Torture, International Agency Video

Survivors of Torture, International Agency Video

2008-05-15T08:57:00.000-07:00

Careless Detention Series

The Washington Post's Dana Priest and Amy Goldstein presented an in-depth look at immigration detention in the U.S. The report is thorough and the information is presented through pictures, stories, and video.

I highly encourage you to take a look at the 4 part series. Because of our location, at an international land crossing, many of our clients go through the process of detentions. This report confirms their stories of their time in U.S. detention facilities.

The last part of the series focused on deportation:

The U.S. government has injected hundreds of foreigners it has deported with dangerous psychotropic drugs against their will to keep them sedated during the trip back to their home country, according to medical records, internal documents and interviews with people who have been drugged.

The government's forced use of antipsychotic drugs, in people who have no history of mental illness, includes dozens of cases in which the "pre-flight cocktail," as a document calls it, had such a potent effect that federal guards needed a wheelchair to move the slumped deportee onto an airplane.

Read the whole story here.

2008-05-14T09:27:00.000-07:00

Torture on T.V.

A part of our mission is to educate the public about torture and torture treatment. When we first began our work we found that not many people even thought about torture or had any concept that it existed.

Yet in the fast 5 years we have seen a large increase in torture scenes on prime time television. Shows like 24 or Lost often have torture scenes in which torture yields valuable information.

We know that torture does not work. Often a prisoner will say whatever their torturer wants to hear. Torture is not an interrogation tactic it is a human rights violation and crime.

Human Rights First has created an excellent film entitled Prime Time Torture, showing us how the media portrays torture and the realities of this horrific crime.

Here is what you can do.

2008-05-12T11:37:00.000-07:00

60 Minutes Looks at Immigration Detention

2008-05-09T08:46:00.000-07:00

Immigration Detention Challenged

The New York Times reports that immigrants held in detention while fighting deportation filed a federal suit against the Department of Homeland Security demanding regulations be applied to the facilities, here is the whole story:

Immigrants who spent time in detention while fighting deportation filed a federal suit on Wednesday against Michael Chertoff, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, demanding that the agency issue legally enforceable regulations for its detention centers.
No enforceable standards now exist for the immigrant detention system, a rapidly growing conglomeration of county jails, federal centers and privately run prisons across the country.
The lawsuit, filed by the immigrants and their advocates in United States District Court in Manhattan, contends that the lack of such regulations puts hundreds of thousands of people a year in substandard and inconsistent conditions while the government decides whether to deport them, leaving them subject to inadequate medical care and abuse.
The suit is based on the Administrative Procedures Act, which allows courts to force agencies to respond to rulemaking petitions. In January 2007, the plaintiffs filed a petition requesting that Homeland Security make its detention standards enforceable, but have received no response.
Homeland Security is one of the largest jailers in the world, “but it behaves like a lawless local sheriff,” said Paromita Shah, associate director of the National Immigration Project of the National Lawyers Guild, one of the plaintiffs in the suit.
Other plaintiffs include Families for Freedom, a New York-based advocacy group for immigrant detainees; Rafiu Abimbola, a Nigerian who was detained for more than six years while seeking asylum; and Camal Marchabeyoglu, now a legal permanent resident living in Corona, Calif.
“The refusal to adopt comprehensive, binding regulations has contributed to a system in which thousands of immigration detainees are routinely denied necessary medical care, visitation, legal materials or functioning telephones,” Ms. Shah said.
Charles S. Miller, a spokesman for the Department of Justice, said the agency had not yet seen the lawsuit and could not comment.
In the past, officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which oversees immigration detention within Homeland Security, said the system was held to general detention standards adopted in 1998 and 2000, through provisions in contracts with counties, private companies and other detention providers, and through annual inspections.
The agency “is fully committed to providing safe, secure and human conditions for individuals in our custody,” said Michael Keegan, a spokesman.
The lawsuit contends that those standards are incomplete, do not apply to detained immigrants in all facilities and are not enforceable when they do apply. It cites the findings of Homeland Security’s own inspector general after an audit of five detention centers in 2006, including one in San Diego run by Corrections Corporation of America; the Passaic County and Hudson County jails in New Jersey; the federal government’s Krome center in Miami; and the Berks County Prison in Leesport, Pa.
The audit found all five out of compliance with general standards on health care, disciplinary procedures and access to legal materials. But all five had been rated “acceptable” in the immigration enforcement agency’s annual reviews.

2008-05-08T09:58:00.001-07:00

Official brought to trail for involvement in Rwandan genocide

The BBC reports that Callixte Kalimanzira has been brought before the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) for involvement in the massacre of thousands of ethnic Tutsis:

Christine Graham, representing the prosecution at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), said Mr Kalimanzira had played a "key role" in the massacre of Tutsis.
Ms Graham said that in 1994 thousands of Tutsi refugees had approached Mr Kalimanzira - who was then caretaker interior minister - seeking his help.
Instead, she alleged, the accused had participated in their massacre.
Ms Graham said the killings were carried out over several days by soldiers and militia on a hill at Kibuye, in southern Rwanda.
The ICTR was set up by the UN in the Tanzanian town of Arusha, in 1997, to try the most high-profile genocide cases.
Those tried so far include government ministers, members of parliament, and military officers.

Read the whole story.

2008-05-01T08:59:00.000-07:00

Google Earth teams with the U.N.

According to the Washington Post the United Nations is teaming with Google Earth to create an interactive map to illustrate the plight of certain populations:

Click on the United Nations' "visit a camp" button in Google Earth, for example, and an online depiction of the globe spins and zeroes in on a satellite view of a refugee camp in Chad. There, visitors learn about the refugees who have fled to that country from western Sudan's Darfur region. Click on a button and users can find out how much money it costs to install, say, a new water source at the camp. Click again and users can donate that amount.

"The great thing about Google Earth is it gives you that ability to be there," said Tim Irwin, a spokesman for the U.N. refugee organization. "We're hoping to take something that might be a little abstract for some people and make it very real."

2008-04-30T09:11:00.000-07:00

The Morality of Torture

Andrew Sullivan posted an insightful and thought provoking piece on the slippery slope to the justification of torture:

The manner in which free societies lose their moral compass is always incremental. Step by step by step, certain core values are whittled away. There is rarely a moment at which a government stands up, and asks its people if they wish to abandon such "quaint" notions as the Geneva Conventions, the rule of law, humane interrogation or habeas corpus. These things are abandoned incrementally or secretly, slice by slice, euphemism by euphemism, the chronology always clearer in retrospect than at the time. And each incremental step is always portrayed as a small but essential temporary sacrifice for the sake of security in a time of great and imminent peril.
And so defenders of torture have long argued that is is essential to make torture legal - but only in the ticking time bomb scenario. And yet, such a scenario has not yet happened and the United States has still indisputably abused and dehumanized thousands of prisoners in its custody, "disappeared" and tortured hundreds, and seen more than a dozen die in "interrogation". We now know, moreover, the following undisputed facts: the president of the United States and his closest advisers devised, orchestrated and monitored interrogation methods banned by the Geneva Conventions at Guantanamo Bay and subsequently in every theater of combat; these techniques were used not only in the extra-legal no-man's land of Guantanamo Bay but also at the prison at Abu Ghraib where photographic evidence of many of the actual techniques explicitly authorized by the president - stress positions, hoods, mock-executions, etc. - was incontrovertible. We now know that those techniques that the president expressed "shock" at were already explicitly authorized for use by other agents by him long before Abu Ghraib was exposed.

It is worth a read.

2008-04-29T10:16:00.000-07:00

"Dirty War" suspect arrested

The JURIST reports that a former police chief and mayor Luis Aberlardo Patti, wanted for torturing and killing several people during Argentina's "Dirty War", has been arrested:

Argentina has recently stepped up investigations into hundreds of human rights cases stemming from the "Dirty War," during which at least 9,000 Argentinians were tortured and "disappeared" by the Argentinean military government in an attempt to silence leftist criticism of the military regime. Some human rights groups say the death toll was closer to 30,000. In 2006, a key witness testifying against "Dirty War" suspects disappeared [IPS/GIN report] after implicating Patti with torturing him in the 70's. The testimony by Luis Gerez contributed to the delay to Patti taking up his Congressional seat. Gerez was the second of two "Dirty War" witnesses to disappear around the end of 2006, but he reappeared [BBC report] three days after his disappearance.

Read the story here.

2008-04-28T10:10:00.000-07:00

International Coalition urges for Sudanese arrest

The BBC reports that an international coalition of 29 human rights group is calling for the arrest of 2 suspects for alleged war crimes. The coalition is asking for U.N. and E.U. pressure to bring a Sudanese government minister and a Janjaweed militia leader to trial:

Justice for Darfur, which includes groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, called on the UN Security Council to pass a resolution calling on Sudan to co-operate fully with the ICC.

Some 300,000 people are thought to have died in Darfur's five-year conflict, the UN says.
Mr Haroun was a minister responsible for the Darfur portfolio in 2003 and 2004.
According to the ICC he was responsible for organising and funding the Arab militia known as the Janjaweed.
Ali Kushayb is accused of ordering the murder, torture and mass rape of innocent civilians during attacks on villages near Kodoom, Bindisi Mukjar and Arawala in west Darfur.
In February 2007, the two men were named by the ICC as suspects in a total of 51 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity including the murder, rape, torture and persecution of civilians in Darfur.

2008-04-24T09:16:00.000-07:00

"The Visitor"

Last night we had the privilege of attending an advanced screening of "The Visitor", a new movie written and directed by Tom McCarthy ("The Station Agent").

The film focuses on Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins), a 60's something widower professor, who seemed to be totally unconnected with life and others. That is until he takes a trip to New York City to find two undocumented immigrants living in his apartment, Tarek (Haaz Sleiman), a drummer from Syria, and Zainab (Danai Gurira), his Senegalese girlfriend.

It is in this meeting that Walter's life is changed. Tarek begins to teach him the drum and Walter seems to have found joy again. That is until Tarek is arrested in the subway and taken to a detention center.

And this begins the sad story of detention centers in the U.S. "The Visitor" does an excellent job of showing the realities of our immigration system and the long and painful process many asylum seekers endure to come to America.

This film does an incredible job of revealing to us the importance of the global community. The lyrical beauty of the films script and character development make it a pleasure to watch.
If I have not convinced you to see this excellent movie, here are some people that agree with me.
The New York Times Review

The Salon Review

Watch the Preview

To find out more about immigrant detention centers in America, please visit our friends the Detention Watch Network.

2008-04-23T10:58:00.000-07:00

Letters to the Editor

The New York Times published some interesting letters in response to the ABC report in which it was revealed that top government officials where intimately involved in the creation of "enhanced interrogation techniques."

Here is one letter that was published from Human Rights First President, Michale Posner:

Re “The Torture Sessions” (editorial, April 20):
You say that it will take a new president and Congress to finally see accountability on torture. With America’s global leadership and moral authority on the line, nine months is too long to wait.
Fortunately, the remaining presidential candidates are all on record opposing torture and official cruelty. Anyone who followed the early presidential debates — when many of the candidates sought to outdo one another on who was more in favor of abusive interrogation — knows that this outcome was not a given.
Human Rights First has had the privilege over the last few years of working with a growing number of retired senior military leaders to share their messages with candidates and the public. They believe, as we do, that human rights and national security are mutually reinforcing, and that resort to torture and cruel treatment is wrong and counterproductive.
The presidential candidates seem to have gotten the message. But ultimately, it is up to the American people to keep the pressure on all of our current and future elected officials to demand an end to torture and abuse.
Michael Posner
President, Human Rights First
New York, April 21, 2008

Read all the letters here.

2008-04-23T09:16:00.000-07:00

The Pope calls for Human Rights

According to the Jurist, Pope Benedict XVI gave a speech to the United National general assembly in New York. The Pope highlighted the need for human rights all over the world:

Experience shows that legality often prevails over justice when the insistence upon rights makes them appear as the exclusive result of legislative enactments or normative decisions taken by the various agencies of those in power. When presented purely in terms of legality, rights risk becoming weak propositions divorced from the ethical and rational dimension which is their foundation and their goal. The Universal Declaration, rather, has reinforced the conviction that respect for human rights is principally rooted in unchanging justice, on which the binding force of international proclamations is also based. This aspect is often overlooked when the attempt is made to deprive rights of their true function in the name of a narrowly utilitarian perspective. Since rights and the resulting duties follow naturally from human interaction, it is easy to forget that they are the fruit of a commonly held sense of justice built primarily upon solidarity among the members of society, and hence valid at all times and for all peoples. This intuition was expressed as early as the fifth century by Augustine of Hippo, one of the masters of our intellectual heritage. He taught that the saying: Do not do to others what you would not want done to you "cannot in any way vary according to the different understandings that have arisen in the world" (De Doctrina Christiana, III, 14). Human rights, then, must be respected as an expression of justice, and not merely because they are enforceable through the will of the legislators.

See the article here.

Read the whole speech here.

2008-04-22T16:14:00.000-07:00

Guantanamo Bay Detainees Allege Drugging

The Washington Post reports that at least 2 dozen former and current detainees claimed they were drugged or witnessed other inmates being drugged against their will:

"I'd fall asleep" after the shot, Nusairi, a former Saudi policeman captured by U.S. forces in Afghanistan in 2002, recalled in an interview with his attorney at the military prison in Cuba, according to notes. After being roused, Nusairi eventually did talk, giving U.S. officials what he later described as a made-up confession to buy some peace.

Read the whole article.

2008-04-18T09:10:00.000-07:00

Former Pinochet General sentenced to 15 years

The Jurist reports that Chilean ex-general Manuel Contreras, who commanded Pinochet's secret police has been found guilty of kidnapping:

A Chilean court Thursday sentenced a retired general to 15 years in prison for his role in the 1974 disappearance of a political dissident. General Manuel Contreras [TrialWatch profile], the secret police chief under former dictator Augusto Pinochet [JURIST news archive], is already serving a cumulative prison sentence of 57 years for several other convictions.

You can read the Jurist Report

Or the AP Report

Also more is at Trial Watch

2008-04-17T09:12:00.000-07:00

Peru upholds prison sentence for former President.

The AFP has reported that Peru's Supreme Court has upheld the 6 year prison sentence for former President Fujimori. The charge is for ordering an illegal entry into a private home. Fujimori is also on trial for human rights abuses.

Besides the six-year prison sentence, the Supreme Court also upheld a 135,000-dollar fine against Fujimori for civil rights violations during the home invasion. He is also barred from holding public office for two years.
Tuesday's high court ruling was welcomed by prosectors in the death-squad killings case, because it "demolishes" Fujimori's lawyers' argument that, while in power, he had no authority over active-duty military officers.
"Fujimori gave an order to a lieutenant colonel to have him impersonate a prosecutor in an illegal operation aimed at recovering some videos implicating him in corruption," said prosecutor Avelino Guillen.
Prosecutors are trying to prove Fujimori was part of the chain of command that ordered atrocities during his rule, including two massacres blamed on an army hit squad known as the Colina Group.

2008-04-16T09:01:00.000-07:00

Philippines pledged to sign a UN protocol that aims to prevent torture

According to the Associated Press, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has promised to sign the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and other Crule, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. This protocol would allow for international inspections of detention facilities.

Human rights groups have urged the UN to take the Philippines to task for allegedly failing to prosecute soldiers suspected of involvement in a series of extrajudicial killings of left-wing activists.
Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita says President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo will soon order officials to take steps to formalize her government's accession to the United Nations' Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture and Cruel and Unusual Punishment.

The Jurist reminds us that the United States, Australia, China, and Israel are among the countries that have not signed this protocol.

Read the AP story

Read the Jurist story.

2008-04-15T09:26:00.001-07:00

Obama Answers the Torture Question

2008-04-14T09:33:00.000-07:00

The Compassion Forum

Last night CNN aired the Compassion Forum, a bipartisan presidential candidate forum where subjects such as faith, abortion, HIV/AIDS in Africa, and torture where discussed. Both Clinton and Obama attended.

Although Senator Clinton did not get posed a question on torture, Obama did. Here is what he said:

DAVID P. GUSHEE, MERCER UNIVERSITY: Senator Obama, recently yet another disturbing memo emerged from the Justice Department. This one said that not even interrogation methods that, quote, "shock the conscience" would be considered torture nor would they be considered illegal if they had been authorized by the president.

Senator Obama, this kind of reasoning shocks the conscience of many millions of Americans and many millions of people of faith here and around the world. Is there justification for policies on the part of our nation that permit physical and mental cruelty toward those who are in our custody?

OBAMA: We have to be clear and unequivocal. We do not torture, period. We don't torture.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: Our government does not torture. That should be our position. That should be our position. That will be my position as president. That includes, by the way, renditions. We don't farm out torture. We don't subcontract torture.

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: And the reason this is important is not only because torture does not end up yielding good information -- most intelligence officers agree with that. I met with a group -- a distinguished group of former generals who have made it their mission to travel around and talk to presidential candidates and to talk in forums about how this degrades the discipline and the ethos of our military.

It is very hard for us when kids, you know, 19, 20, 21, 22 are in Iraq having to make difficult decisions, life or death decisions every day, and are being asked essentially to restrain themselves and operate within the law.

And then to find out that our own government is not abiding by these same laws that we are asking them to defend? That is not acceptable. And so my position is going to be absolutely clear.

And it is also important for our long-term security to send a message to the world that we will lead not just with our military might but we are going to lead with our values and our ideals.

That we are not a nation...

(APPLAUSE)

OBAMA: ... that gives away our civil liberties simply because we're scared. And we're always at our worst when we're fearful. And one of the things that my religious faith allows me to do, hopefully, is not to operate out of fear.

Fear is a bad counsel and I want to operate out of hope and out of faith.

To watch Obama's response to torture go here.

To read the transcript of the forum go here.

2008-04-11T09:30:00.000-07:00

White House Officials Torture Talks

The Washington Post, Dan Froomkin, responds to the ABC report which revealed that top government officials were intimately involved in orchestrating the interrogation techniques of the CIA operatives:

Top Bush aides, including Vice President Cheney, micromanaged the torture of terrorist suspects from the White House basement, according to an ABC News report aired last night.

Discussions were so detailed, ABC's sources said, that some interrogation sessions were virtually choreographed by a White House advisory group. In addition to Cheney, the group included then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, then-secretary of state Colin Powell, then-CIA director George Tenet and then-attorney general John Ashcroft.

At least one member of the club had some qualms. ABC reports that Ashcroft "was troubled by the discussions. He agreed with the general policy decision to allow aggressive tactics and had repeatedly advised that they were legal. But he argued that senior White House advisers should not be involved in the grim details of interrogations, sources said.

"According to a top official, Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: 'Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly.'"

Read the whole article.

Watch the ABC Video.

2008-04-10T09:39:00.000-07:00

Jolie Highlights the Plight of Iraqi Refugee Children

Voice of America reports that actress Angelina Jolie is speaking out about Iraqi refugee children:

Jolie again used her star power to speak out for children in war zones, on the day the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus testified before congressional committees.

Jolie has spent time with Iraqi refugee families and is concerned with the lack of assistance that is being offered for these families:

"I would think even [General David] Petraeus would agree that a surge does not just mean it works if you get numbers of violence down," she said. "It works if humanitarian aid is tarting to increase and changes are able to be made."

Half of the four million Iraqis forced out of their homes are internally displaced. Tens of thousands have fled to Syria and Jordan, and much smaller numbers of Iraqi refugees are in Egypt and Lebanon.

In addition to the trauma of being a refugee Jolie pointed out the fact that many of these refugees have also survived torture:

Jolie said the vast majority of Iraqi children have been traumatized by the horrors of war and now have special needs.

"These children are also traumatized," she said. "One in every five Iraqi registered in Syria is registered as a victim of torture or extreme violence. There was also a study done, that not surprisingly, 92 percent of the children in Iraq had learning impediments, due to a climate of fear."

Jolie said there are no easy solutions to improve access to education in Iraq, but efforts should focus on improving education infrastructure for refugees in host countries, providing books and supplies, recruiting teachers and integrating school dropouts, especially girls.

2008-04-09T08:58:00.000-07:00

Cambodian Artist Remembers the Horrors of the Khmer Rouge

CNN's Christiane Amanpour visited the S-21, Tuol Sleng Prison in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The prison was used for torture by the Khmer Rouge. Famous artist Van Nath was a prisoner at S-21 and after the regime fell created portraits of the horrors of the prison. Water-boarding was a tactic that the Khmer Rouge often used against its "enemies." Van Nath shares with Amanpour his views on the U.S. decision to water board suspects.

One of his paintings shows a prisoner blindfolded and hoisted onto a makeshift scaffold by two guards. He is then lowered head first into a massive barrel of water. Another shows a prisoner with cloth over his face, writhing as an interrogator pours water over his head.
Van Nath still remembers the accompanying screams: "It sounded like when we are really in pain, choking in water," he told me. "The sound was screaming, from the throat. I suppose they could not bear the torture.
"Whenever we heard the noises we were really shocked and scared. We thought one day they will do the same thing to us."
As he talked and showed me around, my mind raced to the debate in the United States over this same tactic used on its prisoners nearly 40 years later. I stared blankly at another of Van Nath's paintings. This time a prisoner is submerged in a life-size box full of water, handcuffed to the side so he cannot escape or raise his head to breathe. His interrogators, arrayed around him, are demanding information.
I asked Van Nath whether he had heard this was once used on America's terrorist suspects. He nodded his head. "It's not right," he said.
But I pressed him: Is it torture? "Yes," he said quietly, "it is severe torture. We could try it and see how we would react if we are choking under water for just two minutes. It is very serious."

Read the whole story here.

2008-04-08T10:23:00.001-07:00

Celebration of Hope and Healing 2008

We want to extend a big thank you to our presenters Carlos Mauricio, the Owl and Panther Poetry Group, and William Aceves. This year's event was a great success and we wanted to share some of our photos with you here on the blog, enjoy!

2008-04-08T08:49:00.000-07:00

Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas takes on torture

The Sacramento Bee reports that Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas has proposed a resolution that would notify California health professionals that they could lose their license and be prosecuted by the state if they are involved in the torture:

"California has the obligation, I believe, to notify its licensees of laws pertaining to torture that may result in prosecution," Ridley-Thomas said.
The senator said physicians have reportedly advised interrogators whether prisoners were fit enough to survive "physical maltreatment, informed interrogators about prisoners' phobias and other psychological vulnerabilities that could be exploited."
Invoking the Hippocratic oath that physicians traditionally take, he said the state can "withdraw its consent to torture by demanding that its health professionals remember their oath to first do no harm."

Yet some professionals do not agree that this is the best strategy in tackling the problem of health professionals involved in torture:

Dr. Vito Imbascini, state surgeon of the California National Guard, said "a few Californians were among the practitioners in the healing arts involved in torture" at U.S. military facilities at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
"But given the tiny number of renegade offenders, we think a more effective approach (than the resolution) would be to target those offenders," said Imbascini, who represented the 35,000-physician California Medical Association at the hearing.

Read the different views here.

2008-04-07T09:38:00.000-07:00

Torture in Egyptian Prisons

The Jerusalem Post writes that Palestinian men from Gaza are reporting to have been tortured by Egyptian General Intelligence:

According to the Palestinians, who returned to the Gaza Strip last week, the torture methods included severe beatings, stripping naked, sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, electric shocks, whippings and verbal abuse.
The Gazans, who were suspected of membership in Hamas, entered Egypt during the 12 days after thousands of Palestinians knocked down the border fence on January 23.
They were detained without trial and without the possibility of seeing a lawyer or family members.

Read the whole story here.

2008-04-04T08:57:00.000-07:00

Chinese Activist Convicted for Speaking out Against Torture

The Jurist reports that Chinese Activist Hu Jai has been convicted for 3 1/2 years for subversion.

[JURIST] Chinese human rights activist Hu Jia [advocacy blog] was sentenced Thursday to 3.5 years in prison on charges of inciting subversion of state power [JURIST news archive]. Hu's trial [HRW case history; JURIST report] began last month; he was formally charged in February after he made public [JURIST reports] letters and recordings from Chinese lawyer Gao Zhisheng alleging that Gao was tortured into confessing to subversion charges. Hu has 10 days to appeal his conviction.

Read the full Jurist Report here.

Read the AP story here.

2008-04-02T08:56:00.000-07:00

Torture Memos Released.

Yesterday the 81-page "Torture Memo" written by John Yoo was publicly released.

The Justice Department sent a legal memorandum to the Pentagon in 2003 asserting that federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes did not apply to military interrogators who questioned al-Qaeda captives because the president's ultimate authority as commander in chief overrode such statutes.

The 81-page memo, which was declassified and released publicly yesterday, argues that poking, slapping or shoving detainees would not give rise to criminal liability. The document also appears to defend the use of mind-altering drugs that do not produce "an extreme effect" calculated to "cause a profound disruption of the senses or personality."

Read the whole story here.

2008-04-01T09:49:00.000-07:00

Murat Kurnaz

60 Minutes interviews Murat Kurnaz, a German citizen who was held at Guantanamo Bay for 3 1/2 years, despite the fact US and German intelligence declared his innocence:

2008-03-28T10:22:00.000-07:00

Britain admits abuse

Brisbane Times reports that the Defense Ministry is admitting that its troops tortured and breached the human rights of nine Iraqi men they detained in 2003. The admission comes after years of legal wrangling in which the family of Baha Musa, an Iraqi who was killed in British custody.

The case was one of the British military's darkest episodes in Iraq. All nine detainees suffered 36 hours of violent interrogation before Musa died with 93 injuries to his body, including a broken nose and ribs.

"I deeply regret the actions of a very small number of troops and I offer my sincere apologies and sympathy to the family of Baha Musa and the eight others," armed forces minister Bob Ainsworth said in a statement issued along with the ministry's admission of its breach of human rights.

"During 2003 and 2004, a very small minority committed acts of abuse and we condemn their actions."

Lawyers for Musa's family and the eight others welcomed the decision but said it was still not clear what compensation would be paid and whether the ministry would issue a formal apology.

Read the full story here.

And more here.

2008-03-27T09:10:00.000-07:00

Banners Against Torture

The National Religious Campaign Against Torture has launched a new campaign called Banners Across America. During the month of June the NRCT is inviting congregations to display banners like the one above in their gathering places.

This is a great way to make a public, clear, and true statement about torture. To order a banner go here.

2008-03-26T09:15:00.000-07:00

New Abu Ghraib Movie.

Through word of mouth and a little google stalking, we have discovered that there is a new documentary focusing on the scandal of Abu Ghraib.

This time award winning director Errol Morris has brought us "Standard Operating Procedure."

From the trailer it looks like the film focuses on the pictures that were taken at Abu Ghraib, why they were taken and what each photo tells us.

The film will be released on April 25th. We will make sure to keep you posted on local showtimes.

2008-03-25T08:52:00.000-07:00

China's Crackdown

The JURIST had a post yesterday concerning the reported 130 deaths of pro-independence protesters in China:

The protests, which began earlier this month, have escalated into violence as protesters attacked police vehicles, non-Tibetans migrants, and businesses and have prompted the Chinese government to block Internet access [JURIST report] to the video-sharing website YouTube after videos of the government crackdown appeared on the site. Rights groups have criticized China for ongoing human rights violations [HRW materials] targeted at Tibetans, and many call for the total independence [advocacy website] of the currently "semi-autonomous" region. The Dalai Lama, who accused China Sunday of committing "cultural genocide" [JURIST report] in Tibet, has encouraged the protests but said he will step down [AFP report] if the violence worsens.

The full report here.

2008-03-24T09:39:00.000-07:00

Rulings on Rwandan Genocide

The New York Times story reports that the United Nations War Crimes Court upheld the ruling of the International Criminal Court in the case of Rev. Athanase Seromba. Seromba sentence was increased to life in prison for his participation in the 1994 Rwandan Genocide:

Rather than seeking to protect his flock, Father Seromba, an ethnic Hutu, had the church leveled by bulldozers and ordered gunmen to shoot any Tutsis who tried to flee the carnage, according to testimony introduced in court. There were no survivors.
“Seromba knew that approximately 1,500 refugees were in the church,” Judge Mohamed Shahabuddeen said, handing down his ruling on the appeal.
“He committed genocide as well as extermination as a crime against humanity by virtue of his role in the destruction of the church. The acts of Seromba are sufficient to constitute direct participation in the crimes.”

2008-03-20T08:56:00.000-07:00

5 Years Later

The Wall Street Journal reports on the current state of Iraq. Their finding is that 5 years after the U.S. led invasion, Iraq is a place full of internally displaced peoples and surrounding countries struggle to carry the burden of the millions of Iraqi refugees:

But far more common still is Ms. Abood's journey from middle-class prosperity to transient poverty, reflecting the life-shattering disappointment that many Iraqis now see as the legacy of the war. An estimated four million Iraqis -- over 14% of the country's population -- have been displaced inside Iraq or to neighboring countries, largely due to the chaotic aftermath of the American-led invasion that began on March 19, 2003.

Read the article here.

At Survivors of Torture, International we have been tracking the refugee crisis knowing that evidently some of these folks will make their way to our door. In January the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees released a study in which 754 Iraqi refugees living in Syria were interviewed. Every single person reported witnessing a traumatic event.

Also one out of five of Iraqi refugees registered with the UNHCR (which is more than 19,000 people) have reported being victims of torture and or violence.

No matter what side of the aisle you are on, or what political opinion you subscribe to, it is safe to say we all agree that the war in Iraq has been a hard and devastating time. In light of this fact we are prepared to welcome these survivors of torture and are anxiously anticipating beginning their journey toward healing.

2008-03-19T09:07:00.000-07:00

Reactions to the Torture Veto

The New York Times posted letters to the editor in response to President Bush's veto on the restrictions of C.I.A. tactics. The director of the Bellevue/N.Y.U. Program for Survivors of Torture, Allen S. Keller, letter was featured:

The president’s veto does not make us or the world safer. To the contrary, it puts civilians living under despotic regimes at greater risk of being tortured, and sends a chilling message to humanity, including to the estimated 400,000 torture survivors now living in the United States.

Read all the letters here.

2008-03-18T08:57:00.000-07:00

In CNN's Behind the Scenes series reporters share personal stories relating to investigations and reporting. In this article Arwa Damon shares the story of Iraqi women living with the consequences of torture.

"You have been beaten, pushed, kicked and blindfolded," Yanar says, describing today's Iraqi woman. "You cannot see, you cannot hear, but you are kicking back. It's not OK to be like that. You kick back and you fight for what you deserve ... you should not be turned into a prisoner."

2008-03-17T10:13:00.000-07:00

The New Yorker posted an amazing article relating to family detention centers in the U.S. The reporter focuses in on immigrant children and the suffering that tougher immigrant policy imposes on them.

This is an incredible article, a must read for all those who are interested in not only immigrant rights but humanity. You can find the entire article here.

2008-01-02T16:26:00.000-08:00

Save the Date

2007-12-19T09:10:00.000-08:00

The Washington Post reveals the myths of torture:

Torture's defenders, including the wannabe tough guys who write Fox's "24," insist that the rough stuff gets results. "It was like flipping a switch," said Kiriakou about Abu Zubaida's response to being waterboarded. But the al-Qaeda operative's confessions -- descriptions of fantastic plots from a man who intelligence analysts were convinced was mentally ill -- probably didn't give the CIA any actionable intelligence. Of course, we may never know the whole truth, since the CIA destroyed the videotapes of Abu Zubaida's interrogation. But here are some other myths that are bound to come up as the debate over torture rages on.

2007-12-17T10:53:00.000-08:00

According to The New York Times ...

For six years, Central Intelligence Agency officers have worried that someday the tide of post-Sept. 11 opinion would turn, and their harsh treatment of prisoners from Al Qaeda would be subjected to hostile scrutiny and possible criminal prosecution.
Now that day may have arrived, after years of shifting legal advice, searing criticism from rights groups — and no new terrorist attacks on American soil.

2007-12-13T09:15:00.000-08:00

BBC News has an excellent story explaining the history of water-boarding. Unfortunately it has a vast and varying history.

The Khmer Rouge were fast workers. In only a few years they managed to kill one
quarter of Cambodia's population with a mixture of execution and starvation.

But like others who butchered in the pursuit of utopia, they borrowed heavily from the past. Water-boarding was not their invention. The Spanish Inquisition used it and called it the toca.
The Dutch East India Company used it in the massacre of Amboyna in 1623.
For much of history, water-boarding has been to torturers what cream is to apple pie. They go hand-in-hand.

Survivors of Torture, International

Ring in the New Year with SURVIVORS

CAN YOU MAKE A DIFFERENCE TODAY?

Wishing You a Wonderful Thanksgiving!

Obama Commits to Close Guantanamo Bay and Ban Torture on 60 Minutes

We Still Need Help With the Phone Bank on Wednesday Nov. 19th

STILL TIME TO SIGN UP FOR PHONE BANK NOV. 17-21

Sign up for our Fundraising Phonebank Nov. 17-21

Volunteer Orientation Wednesday Nov. 12th at 6:00pm

What are the Presidential Candidates Records on Torture-related Issues?

Join us at the Pledge to Vote Event Sunday Nov. 2nd

Ex-Liberian president's son convicted of torture

LAST CHANCE TO SIGN UP FOR VOLUNTEER ORIENTATION ON WEDNESDAY!

2nd Volunteer Orientation Added on October 29th at 6:00pm

Join us at the Social Ministry Fair at St. Andrew's Lutheran Church

VOLUNTEER ORIENTATION

Amnesty International Walk

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

About the writer:

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