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''And
spend of your substance in the cause of Allah, and do not make
your own hands contribute to your destruction; but do good; for
Allah loves those who do good.'' {2: 195 Al Qur'an}
Lately
I have noticed an alarming trend. There are individuals in
positions of power and influence who are attempting to justify
the use of torture under certain special conditions.
 Their
argument goes something like this: These are extreme and
dangerous times and they require extreme measures. If a known
terrorist was to fall into our hands, and we were 90% certain
that he had information which could save hundreds, or perhaps,
thousands of lives; in these dire circumstances we cannot allow
ourselves to be handcuffed by the traditional niceties of interrogation.
But we should be able to use any means, fair or foul, to extract
the necessary information, including torture. After all, these
are not normal times. Our country is under attack by enemies
from within and from without. This is war.
However,
Article 17 of the Third Geneva Convention {an article ratified
by the United States} does not agree with their contention, but
instead states very clearly:
''No
physical or mental torture nor any other form of coercion, may
be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of
any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be
threatened, insulted, or exposed to unpleasant or
disadvantageous
treatment of any kind.''
Unlawful
Combatants
 President
George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defence
Donald Rumsfield, and U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft have
deviously tried to circumvent this Article by claiming that
terrorists, and those that aid them, are not prisoners of war
but ''unlawful combatants'' and thus fall outside of the
rules pertaining to the treatment of prisoners of
war. Yet this is not so. The international laws that prohibit
the use of torture apply to all prisoners regardless of any
arbitrary label placed upon them by anyone. In short, if they
are human beings they are included.
Upon
closer scrutiny, President Bush's statements pertaining to
so-called terrorist suspects are contradictory and hypocritical.
On the one hand he claims that America is at war, yet on
the other hand he maintains that individuals apprehended and
imprisoned as a result of this ''war'' are not prisoners of war
and thus not eligible for protection under the Articles of the
Geneva Convention.
Mr.
Bush has concocted the term ''unlawful combatants'' with
which he seeks to dodge the requirements of the Geneva
Convention. Yet Article 2 of the Third Geneva Convention
Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War states:
''In
addition to the provisions which shall be implemented in peace
time, present convention shall apply to all cases of declared war or
of other
armed conflict which may arise between two or more of the High
Contracting Parties, even if the state of war is not recognized
by one of them.''
 United
States military interrogators claim that their prisoners can be
lied to, screamed at, stripped naked, forcibly shaved, and deprived of
religious
articles and toiletries, and the Washington Post reports that
terrorist suspects
and detainees held in C.I.A. interrogation facilities at Bagram
air force base in Afghanistan, are forced to stand or kneel for
hours shackled in awkward painful positions. Some prisoners are
also being shipped to countries that are known to routinely
inflict torture. This practice is a flagrant violation of
international law. Article 3 of the Convention Against Torture
states that:
''No State Party
shall expel, return, or extradite a person to another State
where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would
be in
danger of being subjected to torture.''
There
is another document that negates the inflicting of torture and
cruelty on human beings. This document is The United States
Constitution.
In
the 8th Amendment of the U.S. Bill of Rights it declares that:
''Excessive
bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor
cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.''
Furthermore,
there is no provision qualifying these amendments solely for the
benefit of U.S. citizens. They are applicable to everyone who is
in the control of U.S. authorities and under U.S. jurisdiction.
There
is another fundamental document of this country, The Declaration
of Independence, which declares in part:
''We
hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
unalienable Rights, that
among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,--''
Also
in The Declaration of Independence we find that many of the
grievances of its framers mirror the concerns we have today:
''For
depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trail by Jury.''
''For
transporting us beyond {over} seas to be tried for pretended
offences.''
''He
is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries
to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already
begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely
paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy of
the Head of a civilized nation.''
Despite
such noble and universal documents as;
The Articles of the Geneva Convention,
The Articles of The Convention Against Torture,
The U.S. Bill of Rights and The
Declaration of Independence;
the American government is involved in actions and in the
establishment of policies that run quite contrary to its stated
ideals. Some of them are:
The
U.S. refused to join the International Criminal Court, and
embarked on a fierce lobbying campaign against it. And it seeks
exemption for U.S. nationals overseas should they fall under the
court's jurisdiction.
Landmines
The
U.S. won't sign a treaty banning land mines. The U.S. Campaign
to Ban Landmines urged President Bush in December 2002 not to
allow U.S. forces to deploy anti-personnel landmines in Iraq and
to work toward U.S. accession to the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty. A
group of 130 nations including every member of NATO except the
U.S., has embraced the treaty. The U.S. used a total of 11,634
land mines in the first Gulf War, including 27,967 anti
personnel mines.
The
U.S. used cluster bombs, most notably in the former Yugoslavia,
where
one quarter of the civilian deaths were due to the use of
cluster bombs in areas
where they became what activists called ''indiscriminate
weapons.''
Guantamano
Bay
Verifiable
eyewitness accounts of torture techniques used on prisoners held
in U.S. facilities such as Diego Garcia, Bagram{ the U.S. air base
in Afghanistan}and in Guantamano Bay off the coast of Cuba.
Methods
of torture include sensory deprivation, being tied or shackled
in
painful positions for hours, sleep deprivation, and bombardment
with bright light.
U.S.
aid has tended to flow disproportionately to Latin American
governments
which tortures their citizens.
According
to reporter Stefan Steinberg in the documentary film'
Massacre in Mazar'
by Irish director Jamie Doran; '' a series of witnesses
appear and testify that American military forces participated in
the armed assault and killing of several hundred
Taliban prisoners in the Qalo-i-Janghi fortress. Witnesses also
allege that following
the events at Qalo-i-Janghi, the American army command was
complicit in the killing
and disposal of a further 3,000 prisoners out of a total of
8,000 who surrendered after the battle of Konduz.''
American Agents: The C.I.A
 American
agents, especially the C.I.A., have a disturbing record of
complicity in
he use of torture in many countries specifically Chile, Bolivia,
Nicaragua, and more
recently, Jordan, Pakistan, Egypt ,and Saudi Arabia.
The
practice of torture is not new to America. Throughout its
history there have been countless incidents of incredible acts
of cruelty perpetuated on one group of human beings by another.
Like
today, there were those who sought to excuse and to justify
torture with rational, intellectual discourses and arguments.
Yet, regardless of how adroit the justifier, torture always
strikes a chord of horror and revulsion in the human soul and
sensitivity. Perhaps the following descriptions will help us to
look at torture and see it for what it is - a grotesque,
fiendish
practice that should never be permitted for any reason or under
any circumstances.
'Worse Than Slavery, Parchman Farm and The Ordeal Of Jim Crow
Justice'
In
the book, 'Worse Than Slavery, Parchman Farm and The Ordeal
Of Jim Crow Justice,' we
get a chilling account:
''The
following year[1904] a Black sharecropper named Luther Holbert
was
suspected of murdering a white plantation owner near the
Sunflower country
town of Doddsville. Holbert tried to escape with his wife, but
the two were
captured by a posse and tied to a tree. More than a thousand
spectators were on hand, eating hard boiled eggs, sipping lemonade, and swigging
whiskey, as the Holberts were subjected to fiendish tortures before being burned
alive.
They
were forced to hold out their hands while one finger at a time
was chopped
off and distributed as souvenirs. Their ears were cut off.
Holbert was beaten severely, his skull was fractured, and one of his eyes, knocked with a
stick, hung by a shred from the socket...The most excruciating form of
punishment consisted in the use of a large corkscrew in the hands of some of the mob. This instrument
was bored into the flesh of the man and woman, in the arms, legs, and body, and
then pulled out, the spirals tearing out big pieces of raw quivering flesh, every time
it was withdrawn.''
And:
''Prisoners
were whipped for failure to meet their daily quotas and tortured
for various infractions, a practice that would continue well
into the Twentieth Century. They were hung from makeshift crucifixes, stretched on wooden racks, and
placed in coffin-sized
sweatboxes for hours at a time. 'Generally made of wood or tin'
explained a student
of the Alabama prisons, the sweatbox is 'completely closed
except for a small hole at
nose level'. When placed under the blistering southern sun the
temperature inside
becomes unbearable. In a few hours a man's body swells and
occasionally bleeds.''
'The History of the British Colonies in the West Indies'
In'
The History of the British Colonies in the West Indies'{1793},
Bryan Edwards quotes an
eyewitness account:
''I
once beheld four or five principal Indians roasted alive at a
slow fire, and as the miserable victims poured forth dreadful screams, which disturbed
the commanding
officer in his afternoon slumbers, he sent word that they should
be strangled, but the
officer guard...would not suffer it; but causing their mouths to
be gagged, that cries
might not be heard, he stirred up the fire with his own hands,
and roasted them deliberately till they all expired...''
'Buccaneers of
America'
Another
harrowing incident of torture is portrayed in John
Esquemelings's 'Buccaneers of
America' {1684}:
''Not
being able to extort any other confession out of him, they first
put him upon
the rack, wherewith they inhumanely disjointed his arms. After
this, they twisted a
cord about his forehead, which they wrung so hard that his eyes
appeared as big as eggs and were ready to fall out of his skull. But neither with
these torments could they obtain any positive answer to their demands. Whereupon they
soon after hung him by the testicles, giving him infinite blows and stripes
while he was under
that intolerable pain and posture of body. Afterwards they cut
off his nose and ears, and singed his face with burning straw, till he could speak nor
lament his misery no
longer.''
Torture
is not only banned by domestic and international law, but is
also morally reprehensible. It runs counter to every noble and unique quality that
makes us human beings.
Dr Martin Luther King Jr
Dr
Martin Luther King Jr is recorded to have said that ''injustice
anywhere, affects justice
everywhere.'' Whenever a person, any person, is tortured;
whether on a military base, in a private
home, on a prison, or in the cellar of some far-away dungeon;
the act strips away the humanity {of not only the individuals involved} but of all of us, and
casts a monstrous shadow across
our collective human consciousness.
Imam
Ali ('a)
On
the death
bed of Amirul Momineen Ali, Commander of the Faithful
('a), he ('a) is quoted as having said to his sons Imams
Hassan and Hussain ('a):
"If I die of this stroke of his, kill him with one similar stroke. Do
not mutilate him! I have heard the Prophet, peace be upon him, say:
"Mutilate not even a rabid dog."
(Source: Nahjul Balagha)
References:
''The
Qur'an'' Yusuf Ali translation. Ayat 195, Surah 2
Innes,
B.{1998}, ''Torture in England and the Colonies. The
History of Torture.''
St.
Martins Press. New York, p.p. 102,103
Oshinsky,
D M.{1996}, ''Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and The
Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice''
The
Free Press p.p.101,102
Doran,
Jamie {2001}. ''Masacre in Mazar'' [Documentary Film]
Goldberg,
S. {2002, December}. ''CIA Accused of Torture at Bagram
Base''
Retrieved
March 24, 2003, from http:www.guardian.co.uk/alqaida/story/0,12469,865311,oo.html
Ridgeway,
J. {2003 April}. ''The US Often Flouts Geneva Treaties'',
Retrieved
March 31, 2003, from http://villagevoice.com/issues/0314/mondo2.php
Steinberg,
S. {2003, June}. ''Afghan War Documentary Charges U.S.
with Mass Killings of POW's''
Retrieved
March 24, 2003, from www.wsws.org/articles/2002/afgh-j17.shtml
White,
J. {2001, November}. ''U.S. Atrocity Against Taliban
POW's''
Retrieved
March 24, 2003, from www.wsws.org/articles/2001/nov2001/afgh-n28.shtml
Washington
Post {2002, December 25}. ''U.S. Decries Abuse but
Defends
Interrogators''
Retrieved
January 3, 2003, from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A37943-2002Dec25.html
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