MetaFilter posts tagged with torture and humanrights

Torture; to investigate or not to investigate.

adamvasco — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 06:29:18 -0800

Scott Horton discusses the latest reports about the pending appointment of a torture special prosecutor with Keith Olbermann. Last week, British judges revealed that the British Secret Services fed questions to the CIA in the full knowledge that the Agency was systematically using torture in interrogations; a clear violation of international law. Meanwhile BBC Newsweek airs "Confessions of an Uzbek KGB officer". Shortly after 11.00 mins in the video Yakobov refuses to comment more on Secret Rendition claiming his life could be in endangered. In a Sept. interview Yakubov's most interesting evidence is that he accompanied a CIA man to an interrogation, and that the CIA man was actually in the room during the torture of a detainee.
bradblog attempts to unravel the web of deceipt.

A School for Torture

saulgoodman — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 10:19:30 -0800

An amendment to the Defense Authorization Act currently under consideration in congress would force the notorious School of the Americas (currently known as "WHINSEC") to "release to the public the names, ranks, countries of origin, courses taken and dates of attendance of all the students and instructors at the institute." Originally established in Panama in 1946, and now located at Fort Benning, Georgia, the school has variously been dubbed "School of Assassins" and "The Ultimate Union Buster" by human rights watchers and labor organizations. According to the advocacy group School of Americas Watch (SOA Watch), the training center "has trained over 60,000 Latin American soldiers in counterinsurgency techniques, sniper training, commando and psychological warfare, military intelligence and interrogation tactics." Putting it more pointedly, SOA Watch asserts: "Hundreds of thousands of Latin Americans have been tortured, raped, assassinated, 'disappeared,' massacred, and forced into refugee by those trained at the School of Assassins." The school remains in operation today, under a new name, despite the lobbying efforts of organizations like SOA Watch to close the program, on the basis of human rights abuses stemming from the school's role in the so-called Argentinian Dirty War and other internal Latin American conflicts. In the US, the School of the Americas/WHINSEC has more recently come under renewed scrutiny for its possible role in shaping interrogation policies that led to the torture of prisoners held at Abu Ghraib. In 1996, the US Defense Department acknowledged that between 1982 and 1991, the School taught torture techniques and other tactics such as blackmail, beatings and executions determined to be inconsistent with US and international standards of human rights, making the school's training manuals from that period available to the public for the first time. [Related Previously: 1, 2]

You Voted for Change?

adamvasco — Fri, 22 May 2009 09:01:09 -0800

Meet the IRF A Thug Squad is still Brutalizing Prisoners at Guantanamo.

When you start pulling at a piece of thread......

adamvasco — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 03:56:37 -0800

Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage: -

"They Tortured" "Maybe I should have Resigned".

It is not certain whether this interview will be aired in the US because cable and satellite providers have declined to work with Al Jazeera English.
The interview was conducted by Avi Lewis for his program "Fault Lines".

Blowback

adamvasco — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 11:27:01 -0800

A high-level Spanish court has taken the first steps toward opening a criminal investigation against six former Bush administration officials, on whether they violated international law. The officials named in this present case include the most senior legal minds in the Bush administration. They are: Alberto Gonzales, a former White House counsel and attorney general; David Addington, former vice-president Dick Cheney’s chief of staff; Douglas Feith, who was under-secretary of defence; William Haynes, formerly the Pentagon’s general counsel; and John Yoo and Jay Bybee, who were both senior justice department legal advisers. If America won’t have a Truth Commission maybe someone else will have to kick start it for them.

Cross-cultural psychiatry

homunculus — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 00:34:35 -0800

West treats East. "To help traumatized Tibetan monks, doctors in Boston turn to cross-cultural medicine." [Via]

It hasn't ended yet.

adamvasco — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 13:09:23 -0800

Binyam Mohamed will shortly be released from Guantanamo, where hunger strikes and beatings still continue.
TPM attempts to assesses the level of President Obama's apparent commitment to transparency, accountability for Bush administration officials who may have committed crimes, and adhering to the rule of law. It highlights Glenn Greenwald's recent article:
There is simply no way to argue that our leaders should be immunized from criminal investigations for torture and other war crimes without believing that (a) the U.S. is and should be immune from the principles we've long demanded other nations obey and (b) we are free to ignore our treaty obligations any time it suits us.

Supermax Nation

Law Talkin' Guy — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 16:54:31 -0800

Awakening on a mattress atop a wooden slab, the bare walls of your 7' x 12' cell come into focus, illuminated by the constant glare of an overhead light. Through the narrow window in the back of your cell, you can peer out into the prison yard. In the window in the reinforced steel door, you can catch an occasional glimpse of a prison guard as they bring your meals, usually the only interruption of the silence and isolation that pervade your living conditions. Those walls are the boundaries of your world for 23 hours a day in the Departmental Disciplinary Unit-- the supermax prison maintained in Walpole, Massachusetts, one of dozens of such institutions currently operated in the United States, in spite of growing outcry based on human rights violations. Since 1790, prolonged solitary confinement has been criticized as inhumane. The tendency of prolonged isolation to lead to severe psychological damage is well-documented, but the stories of inmate abuse associated with supermax confinement are too numerous to comprehensively recount. Significant examples include Vaughn Dortch, who was forced into a bathtub filled with scalding hot water and held there until the skin burned off his legs, Timothy Souders, who died of dehyrdation after being shackled to his bed and abandoned by prison guards during a psychotic episode, and Bobby Delello, who contracted Hepatitis C after being shackled with bloody handcuffs that had been used on another inmate. The use of supermax prisons persists despite evidence that they are not effective at reducing inmate violence, are not cost effective, increase rates of inmate recidivism, cause significant psychological symptoms in most inmates, and lead to disproportionately high rates of inmate suicide. When this thread was posted, 220,000 people were confined to supermax facilities in the United States. For further reading, see supermaxed.

A Guardian interview with Lynndie England

nthdegx — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 06:26:57 -0800

A Guardian interview with Lynndie England (of Abu Ghraib notoriety).

Torturing Democracy

homunculus — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 01:00:19 -0800

"Torturing Democracy" is a new documentary which details how the government set aside the rule of law in its pursuit of harsh interrogations of suspected terrorists. You can watch it online or on some PBS affiliates, but PBS won't run it nationally until January 21, 2009. Scott Horton suspects that may be because PBS is afraid of political retaliation. [Via]

Human Rights

homunculus — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 11:08:29 -0800

Dueling Human Rights Reports: The United States vs. China.

YouTube Disables Wael Abbas's Account

homunculus — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 23:40:59 -0800

Wael Abbas is an Egyptian blogger and anti-torture activist who recently won a journalism award for his documenting police brutality in Egypt, which led to the conviction of two police officers. In Egypt, blogging can get you arrested, and Abbas has taken enormous risks. But now YouTube has removed his videos and suspended his account after receiving complaints (possibly from the Egyptian government) about their graphic content, and Yahoo has disabled his email account. Evidently YouTube is not the ally human rights advocates had hoped it would be.

unite against human rights abuse in the war on terror.

allkindsoftime — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 05:37:59 -0800

unsubscribe-me.org is not what you might first think it is from the name. (SL-non-YTP)

Burma

homunculus — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 20:05:35 -0800

Risking all: the Burmese jokers who laugh in the face of danger. In Burma (Myanmar), comedians are targets in the junta's war on words. [Via BB.] The Moustache Brothers have a website, but it doesn't look like it's been updated for some time. Htein Lin, the artist mentioned in the fifth link, was the subject of this post.

WWII Interogators

homunculus — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 16:26:14 -0800

Fort Hunt's Quiet Men Break Silence on WWII. After 60 years of silence, the World War II veterans who interrogated Nazi prisoners of war at Fort Hunt are telling their story. [Via The Reality-Based Community.]

"We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture," said Henry Kolm, 90, an MIT physicist who had been assigned to play chess in Germany with Hitler's deputy, Rudolf Hess. "During the many interrogations, I never laid hands on anyone," said George Frenkel, 87, of Kensington. "We extracted information in a battle of the wits. I'm proud to say I never compromised my humanity."

"K.S.M. can say he killed Jesus--he has nothing to lose."

kirkaracha — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 07:57:52 -0800

The Black Sites. "A rare look inside the C.I.A.’s secret interrogation program."

Shave, shock and humiliate a man’s genitals in three seconds flat

homunculus — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 22:32:13 -0800

Torboto: The Robot That Tortures People.

Prison Rape and the War on Drugs

homunculus — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 20:23:50 -0800

Stories from Inside: Prisoner Rape and the War on Drugs (PDF). A new report by the human rights group Stop Prisoner Rape. [Via Drug WarRant.]

JUMAH AL-DOSSARI is a 33-year-old citizen of Bahrain.

rxrfrx — Fri, 12 Jan 2007 08:44:09 -0800

If I die, please remember that there was a human being named Jumah at Guantanamo

The United States does not torture -- GWB, 11/05

digaman — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 12:59:07 -0800

Abu Ghraib, continued. A new cache of disturbing images and videos from the original interrogations, with commentary from Salon. [Definitely NSFW, or for Earth, for that matter.]

Harold Pinter at 75: "Voices"

matteo — Fri, 07 Oct 2005 09:03:33 -0800

Harold Pinter at 75. In One for the Road, the protagonist is Nicolas, a whisky-sodden interrogator who has brought in a family for questioning (and, it is implied, raping and torturing). In the short, sharp shock of The New World Order, we eavesdrop on a conversation between two torturers, held over the top of their mute, blindfolded victim's head ("We haven't even finished with him. We haven't begun."). In Ashes to Ashes, the interrogation of Rebecca by Devlin takes a sinister turn as we learn that her ex-lover participated in state-sponsored violence. In Mountain Language, a sadistic guard plays power games with a group of mountain dwellers, who are forbidden from speaking in anything but the language of the state. In Party Time, Pinter lampoons the smug security of the middle classes, portraying an insufferably élite party which carries on regardless of the violence and terror on the streets outside.
Now, for Pinter's 75th birthday, some of the tormentors and the tormented so potently etched in his later plays are assembled together in a new dramatic work with a musical setting by the composer James Clarke.

Emerging Epidemic?

longsleeves — Fri, 22 Jul 2005 18:59:36 -0800

http://www.ritualabusetorture.org/ Personal stories and cartoon self-help tools. "maps" link to adobe bbs

Teenage Detainees at Gitmo

digaman — Mon, 13 Jun 2005 09:55:19 -0800

"One lawyer said that his client... has told him that he was beaten regularly in his early days at Guantánamo, hanged by his wrists for hours at a time and that an interrogator pressed a burning cigarette into his arm." The age of this "client" when he was detained? 14 years old. The reply of the camp's public affairs officer: "They don't come with birth certificates."

Truth?

livii — Thu, 31 Mar 2005 09:52:21 -0800

Rape, Torture, and Lies An ongoing Canadian saga has a sad new twist today: photojournalist Ziba Zahra Kazemi was likely brutally tortured and raped before her death in Iran in 2003. Arrested after a demonstration, the official Iranian line has been that her death was an accident due to injuries from a fall. The ER doctor who treated her has now spoken out, after being granted refugee status in Canada. Wikipedia has an excellent outline of the entire story.

From The Never Ending Story - The Torture Papers

y2karl — Mon, 14 Mar 2005 09:55:00 -0800

While the proverbial road to hell is paved with good intentions, the internal government memos collected in this publication demonstrate that the path to the purgatory that is Guantanamo Bay, or Abu Ghraib, has been paved with decidedly bad intentions. The policies that resulted in rampant abuse of detainees first in Afghanistan, then at Guantanamo Bay, and later in Iraq, were product of three pernicious purposes designed to facilitate the unilateral and unfettered detention, interrogation, abuse, judgment, and punishment of prisoners: (1) the desire to place the detainees beyond the reach of any court or law; (2) the desire to abrogate the Geneva Convention with respect to the treatment of persons seized in the context of armed hostilities; and (3) the desire to absolve those implementing the policies of any liability for war crimes under U.S. and international law.

Regarding the Torture Papers, which detail Torture's Paper Trail, and, then there's Hungry for Air: Learning The Language Of Torture, and, of course, there's ( more inside)