Sign Petition to Repatriate Chagossians Expelled for US Base at Diego Garcia

Yesterday, SPEAK Human Rights and Environmental Initiative announced a petition campaign to provide redress for the former residents of the coral atolls of the Chagos Archipelago, expelled from their homeland by the British and the US governments, after the island of Diego Garcia, part of the Chagos Archipelago, was leased by Britain to the United States. Diego Garcia had the deep-water port in the Indian Ocean the US Navy desired. What did it mean that many hundreds of people would be kicked off their land?

As Andy Worthington noted, in an article a few years ago, following upon revelations in Time Magazine that Diego Garcia had been used for rendition flights to torture, and held a black site, secret interrogation prison for "war on terror" detainees: "A British sovereign territory — albeit one that was leased to the United States nearly 40 years ago, when the islanders were shamefully discarded by the British government and exiled to face destitution and death by misery in Mauritius — Diego Garcia has long been a source of shame to opponents of modern colonial activity."

Worthington explained the revelations about Diego Garcia:

Having spoken to senior CIA officers during his research, [Swiss Senator Dick] Marty told the European Parliament, “We have received concurring confirmations that United States agencies have used Diego Garcia, which is the international legal responsibility of the UK, in the ‘processing’ of high-value detainees,” and Manfred Novak [then the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Torture] explained to the Observer that “he had received credible evidence from well-placed sources familiar with the situation on the island that detainees were held on Diego Garcia between 2002 and 2003.” The penultimate piece of the jigsaw puzzle came in May, when El Pais broke the story that “ghost prisoner” Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, whose current whereabouts are unknown, was imprisoned on the island in 2005, shortly after his capture in Pakistan — although the English-speaking press failed to notice.

As for the Chagossians, the British High Court restored their right to return to their homeland, but the UK government has never enforced that right. SPEAK has advocated for the Chagossians' case before the British Courts, the European Court of Human Rights, and the International Court of Justice.

Sign the Petition for the United States to Redress Wrongs Committed Against the Chagos Islanders
http://wh.gov/Xbb

WASHINGTON, D.C., MARCH 5, 2012—Today, SPEAK Human Rights & Environmental Initiative and the UNROW Human Rights Impact Litigation Clinic of American University launched a petition, calling on the U.S. government to provide redress to the Chagos Islanders, an indigenous population expelled from their homeland in the Chagos Archipelago more than forty years ago.

The Chagossians continue to fight for the right to return to their homeland. They were expelled when the U.K. and the U.S. governments decided that the United States would build a U.S. military base on the Archipelago’s main island, Diego Garcia. Since their expulsion, the Chagossians have lived as a marginalized community on the island nations of Mauritius and Seychelles. The recent passing of Lisette Talate, the oldest living survivor of the forced exile, underscores the urgent need for action by the U.S. and U.K. governments to redress the wrongs against the Chagossians. Ms. Talate’s dying wish was to see her homeland again before her death. We cannot let other Chagossians die without some form of redress: employment opportunities, compensation, and the opportunity to return home. Noam Chomsky, a signatory to this petition, has observed, "If people knew, they would do something about it . . .” Please do something today by signing the petition and sharing the link with friends.

We call on President Obama to respect the human rights of the Chagossians. The Obama administration will respond to petitions that receive 25,000 signatures in 30 days. The petition closes on April 3, 2012.

Please join the effort to bring this important issue before the Obama administration.

Sign the petition now at http://wh.gov/Xbb

As Christian Nauvel wrote in a legal paper (PDF) on the "Chagossians and their struggle", "The right to remain in one’s own country is a basic human right that has existed in one form or another since the times of King John and the Magna Carta."

Before the arrival of the B-52s and aircraft carriers, the Chagos was a peaceful cluster of islands whose inhabitants (known as the “Chagos Islanders” or “Chagossians”) lived on Diego Garcia and two other atolls: Peros Banhos and Salomon. The exact number of Chagossians who resided there is still disputed to this day, but estimates range from 800 to 1500. They lived simple lives, dividing their time between fishing and working on the coconut plantations where copra was produced. Though none of them owned any land, they had been in the Chagos for two, three or even four generations. It therefore came as a shock to most Chagossians when, on an otherwise normal morning in 1971, they were suddenly informed that they would be required to permanently leave their homes in order to make way for the U.S. military base. The majority of those living on Diego Garcia were shipped to Mauritius against their will, within days of receiving the news. By 1973, even the islands of Peros Banhos and Solomon had been completely evacuated.

But just as the US has eviscerated that other great right dating from the Magna Carta, the right of habeas corpus, they show little inclination to preserve these other rights in their headlong rush to control the world under the auspices of a never-ending "war on terror."

There may be little we can do to support the Chagossians, but one very simple way would be to sign the petition described above, and to support organizations like SPEAK, who are speaking up for some of the most powerless people on earth.

For more information on the plight of the Chagossians and the work SPEAK Human Rights and Environmental Initiative has done on their behalf, click here.

Repeal Proposition 8! For the Right to Marry Who You Choose!

CourageCampaign.org has released a video to fight for the repeal of California's Proposition 8, which took away the right of gays in that state to get married. Today, the California Supreme Court upheld the Prop. 8 initiative.

The video here speaks to the issue of allowing intolerance and denial of basic human rights to be a matter for popular vote. Either human rights are inalienable -- including by "popular" vote -- or they are not. While some are arguing the California Supreme Court's decision is much narrower than pro-Prop 8 supporters could hope for, making it a Pyrrhic victory of sorts for them, the fact that some 10% of the population does not have the same rights as the other 90% is horribly wrong, and must be rectified.



H/T Eugene

Sign Petition to Free Leonard Peltier

1851treaty.com is sponsoring a petition asking incoming president Barack Obama to pardon long-time political prisoner, Native American activist Leonard Peltier. (H/T Winter Rabbit)

Another petition is online asking for clemency for Mr. Peltier, who recently was transferred to yet another prison facility, farther away from his ancestral homeland.

From the second petition linked above:

Mr. Peltier was convicted for the June 26, 1975 murders of 2 FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. There were 4 defendants originally charged before the Grand Jury. Two of the defendants were tried before the court and found Not Guilty by reason of self-defense.

Charges were dropped on the 3rd defendant. Mr. Peltier was tried after a change of venue to North Dakota. In this trial Mr. Peltier wasn't able to put up a self-defense argument. Any evidence that could have proven Mr. Palters' innocence was not allowed in his trial or if it was allowed it was not allowed in front of the jury. Witness testimony wildly diverged between Grand Jury testimony and trial testimony; further, several of the witnesses recanted their testimony after the trial, claiming perjured testimony because of threats from the FBI. Despite testimony, prosecuting attorneys have stated on several occasions that they don't know who shot the agents that day....

A few FBI officials and/or agents have launched campaigns to publicly proclaim the guilt of Mr. Peltier. Thus propitiating the original cover up through dissemination of misinformation in editorials, web sites and full page newspaper ads in what is seen as an effort to discredit the common sense and creditability of many national leaders and their organizations. These leaders have studied the case in-depth for over twenty-three years since the reign of terror on the Pine Ridge reservation and areas supposedly under the protection of this county.

Mr. President and elected officials of all people, we ask that you no longer ignore the voices of the 10's of millions of signatures and letters of the last twenty three years, and the results of the most recent polls in favor of his immediate release.

And from a recent letter from Mr. Peltier to his supporters:

They have at times called me a thug and a cold blooded murderer, but I know historically they called Geronimo a cold blooded murderer and savage, they called Crazy Horse a cold blooded murderer and savage, they called Captain Jack of the Modocs a cold blooded murderer and savage, they called Black Hawk of the Sauk a cold blooded murderer and savage, they called Tecumseh a cold blooded murderer and savage, they called Sitting Bull a cold blooded murderer and savage - and the list goes on and on.

The one thing all these men have in common is they were all imprisoned or killed by this government; they were all patriots in their own land, trying to stop the illegal immoral taking of their people's land and resources. They didn't call the men who murdered our people at Wounded Knee thugs and savages, they didn't call the snipers who shot Frank Clearwater at Wounded Knee in 73 a murderer, they didn't call the ones who shot Buddy Lamont a cold blooded murderer, they didn't call the ones who shot Joe Stuntz a cold blooded murderer, they didn't call the sniper who shot that young woman and baby in 1992 at Ruby Ridge Idaho in a cold blooded murder, they didn't call the ones who burned the men, women and children to death at Waco, Texas in 1993 in cold blooded murderers. I assume cold blooded means you have no sense of right or wrong or something of that nature when you take a life. And if that is so, then this country is full of cold blooded murderers and thugs because by proxy they have killed thousands of innocent men women and children in Iraq and most recently in Afghanistan, I've seen them on TV. I've seen the pictures of children's bodies piled on top of each other. And right now the US funds Israel's war machine as they kill hundreds of innocent men, women and children....

If I sound angry or hurt or disappointed or a multitude of other emotions you would probably be correct. I remember once upon a time, in my naïve belief that sooner or later I would be free and justice would be served. In my case after 33 years of illegal imprisonment justice will never be served, it will be up to the Creator to bring about a reaction that may in some future time balance the scales. But for me and the others like me, whether they are among other prisoners in the US prison system or dead in the streets of Iraq, Afghanistan, Gaza Strip or South America or some reservation road or some ghetto street, justice is not being served at this time.

If there is anything further I could say that would affect you in some way it would be to encourage you to take a few minutes out of your life and quietly sit and reflect and maybe just maybe you can hear the mothers crying for their lost children and the men crying for their lost wives and daughters and the grandfathers crying for their lost sons and I could say more but perhaps you may have grown tired of my commentary. Thank you for your time, thank you for reading this, and don't let evil triumph. Say something.

Invictus Honored as One of Top 50 Human Rights Blogs

I was flattered when the relatively new website, e-Justice, included this blog in a list of "the top 50 Human Rights blogs" posted earlier today. Included in their list are blogs dedicated to Civil Liberties (ACLU Blog of Rights, the Committee to Protect Journalists Blog, Progressive Liberty Blog, etc.), and eight other categories, including Capital Punishment, Child-Focused Blogs, International Outreach, General Ideology, Religion, Whistleblowers, Politics, and Miscellaneous.

I'm honored to have my blog included in e-Justice's compilation. For a full list of all the human rights blogs, go to their website.

But the lists don't stop there. e-Justice has compiled other lists of important sites and links, including 50 Ways to Protect Your Anonymity Online and Off, 100 Free DIY Legal Resources on the Web, and Top 50 Homeland Security Blogs.

Each listing in their compilations contains a capsule description of what the blogs offer. Happy hunting, surfers! And best of luck to the folks at e-Justice in their new enterprise.

PHR to Obama on the 60th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Physicians for Human Rights has written a powerful letter to President-elect Obama, calling on "the incoming Obama administration to commit to fulfilling the promise of the entire Declaration and its expansive understanding of universal human rights." The letter notes that Obama's election represented a "triumph over prejudice and... a great stride in the long
march toward equality and dignity."

PHR's letter contains many important points on reestablishing human rights norms and recommitting to investing in global health, especially "women’s rights and health, and the health workforce needs of disease-burdened countries." But I was especially impressed on their section on torture, reprinted below:

Ensure that the prohibition against torture will be unambiguously enforced and that health professionals are no longer involved in interrogations.

Your administration should establish through an executive order a uniform standard that acknowledges international law prohibiting torture, namely Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention and the UN Convention Against Torture. Such a standard should govern all U.S. agencies responsible for interrogating detainees, and must prohibit torture and all abusive techniques. The new standard should eliminate all loopholes that might allow torture, including the use of isolation, sleep deprivation, and sensory deprivation as contained in Appendix M of the 2006 U.S. Army Field Manual on Human Intelligence Collection (Army Field Manual 2-22.3). The U.S. must immediately disclose to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) the identity and whereabouts of all prisoners who either are or have been in U.S. custody since September 11, 2001. All detention sites must be made available for unscheduled and unrestricted monitoring by the ICRC.

Your administration should also establish an appropriate accountability mechanism, such as a non-partisan commission equipped with subpoena power, to expose and investigate evidence of torture and cruel treatment, and make recommendations on prosecutions for any crimes committed. The commission should have a specific subgroup to address abuses against detainees that involved participation of health professionals and violations of professional ethics. Detainees released from U.S. custody at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere must no longer be transferred to countries where, according to the State Department Human Rights Report, severe human rights abuses may occur.

Your administration should work with the American Psychological Association to implement its September 2008 referendum prohibiting the involvement of psychologists in illegal interrogations. The government must never engage health professionals to undertake interrogation-related activities that violate individuals’ human rights or professional ethics.

Administration officials must also ensure that those who experienced torture and cruel treatment while in U.S. custody have access to reparations, including an official apology, compensation, and appropriate care, including psycho-social services. Your administration should adopt a new policy for responding to hunger strikers at detention centers that complies with international standards of medical ethics, thereby abandoning the current policy of forcefeeding.

We urge your administration to return to the previous standard for detainee medical treatment, in place in prior to 2003, ensuring that their healthcare is parallel to that provided to U.S. soldiers.

I've highlighted the section on Appendix M of the Army Field Manual, as its inclusion dooms the document as any kind of satisfying or legitimate replacement for the CIA's torture techniques, even if does ban some of the more egregious SERE-like tortures, like waterboarding and stress positions.

The entire subject has taken on ominous overtones with the statements of House Intelligence Committee Chairman, Rep. Silvestre Reyes of Texas. As reported by Glenn Greenwald today, quoting GovernmentExecutive.com:

The House Intelligence Committee's top Democrat [Rep. Silvestre Reyes of Texas] said Tuesday he has recommended that President-elect Barack Obama keep the country's current national intelligence director and CIA chief in place for some time to ensure continuity in U.S. intelligence programs during the transition to a new administration. . . .

In an interview, Reyes said he believes that Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell and CIA Director Michael Hayden should be kept in their posts. Reyes believes they should stay for at least six months, but said the time frame is ultimately a decision Obama must make....

Reyes, D-Texas, said he also recommended to Obama's transition team that some parts of the CIA's controversial alternative interrogation program should be allowed to continue. He declined to say what he specifically recommended, however. . . .

"There are those that believe that this particular issue has to be dealt with very carefully because there are beliefs that there are some options that need to be available," Reyes said.

So far there is very little to seem positive about when it comes to fundamentally changing U.S. torture policy. All the trial balloons are floating in the wrong direction, and things are being set up to turn to the supposedly moderate Army Field Manual as the "reasonable" substitute, the "best we can do." Except it includes techniques that are right out of Guantanamo, and constitute violations of international law, if not the U.S. War Crimes Act. The Pentagon, the DIA, the CIA, I don't know... someone is gaming the system on this, and no doubt hope the populace is so afraid about the crumbling economy that hardly anyone will notice.

PHR has long taken the front-line position in exposing the corrupted parts of the AFM, but once a meme gets established, it's difficult to change it. Other human rights and civil liberties groups are going to have to step up and put the pressure on. The military and intelligence agencies are twisting arms in D.C. If we don't fight back, and show public interest, then things will not change.

Hat-tips to jhutson and truong son traveler of Daily Kos

Four Recommended Articles

A lot of good work is being done by numerous bloggers these days, especially in the field of human rights. The controversy over what a President Obama's administration if and when Guantanamo is closed (which Obama promised to do in the first days of his term) has brought forth some important analyses, especially in the light of a recent New York Times article suggesting that some on Obama's transition team are pushing for a post-Guantanamo "preventive detention" law for "terrorists."

Smintheus has a good analysis of the arguments around "preventive detention in his article, "The 'debate' about Gitmo," at Unbossed.com.

Interwoven into this shameless assault on accountability and the rule of law are several preposterous (and therefore unstated) assumptions. In particular we're supposed to accept that certain prisoners are indescribably dangerous...more dangerous than the attack on our legal tradition...and that the Bush administration has lots of reliable information that "someone is a threat" though it can't be proved in court. An essential corollary is the assumption that these somebodies are critical operatives in the machinery of terrorism. Their release, we're to suppose, would lead inevitably to further acts of terror, whereas their continued detention prevents terrorism....

In any event, a single reason for rejecting that assumption is sufficiently devastating that there's little point in dwelling upon any others. And that is this: The Bush administration has shown again and again that it does not truly believe the inflated allegations it directs against Gitmo prisoners.

For example, obscured in the 'debate' thus far concerning what to do about Guantanamo is the Seton Hall study delivered in August to the Senate Judiciary Committee. That's a huge omission. This meticulous study (PDF) documents how many former prisoners have been released to their home countries, and how little correlation there has been between the rate and speed of their release, on the one hand, and the gravity of the Bush administration's allegations against them on the other.

Meanwhile, Scott Horton has a thought-provoking article over at Harper's, responding to the AP article suggesting that Obama's incoming administration is favoring investigations of the Bush administration over prosecutions.

The Obama transition team is enormous and it is peopled, appropriately enough, with a number of figures who have direct experience in the Bush Administration’s war on terror. No problem with that–in fact, Obama would be remiss if he failed to build such experience into his team. But there are a number of names in play right now who have troubling connections to the “dark side” of the intelligence community’s war on terror and who have pressing reasons to lobby against any investigation of any sort. Why? Because their own judgment-calls might come under unpleasant scrutiny. Just some for-instances:

John Brennan, who regularly surfaces as a key Obama advisor on intelligence issues and is supposedly in the running for a key intelligence community post. Brennan has a completely ambiguous record on the torture issue, depending on whether he speaks from the agency, as a commentator or on behalf of President-Elect Obama.

Jamie Miscik, another intelligence community careerist who was very close to the WMD in Iraq imbroglio and more recently was a key player at Lehman–and now understandably needs a new roof–is another figure who would clearly rather avoid a probe of the torture issue.

And finally Jamie Gorelick, a former key Clinton Justice Department official who, according to intelligence community sources, took a whopping retainer from the CIA to counsel and protect the psychologists who crafted the guts of the Bush torture program. [Horton in an article last January specifically named the clients as Bruce Jessen and James Mitchell, SERE psychologists working under contract to the CIA.] Gorelick, a Hillary Clinton partisan, is also a name in play for a senior intelligence post.

While the battle over Guantanamo rages, Stephen Soldz has written an article for activists in the health professions, and particularly psychology, over what course an anti-torture campaign should take (big PDF file).

Activist psychologists have achieved an amazing feat in transforming APA policy. In the process we have created a broad, decentralized movement. We brought together many individuals and organizations that collectively were able successfully to challenge the largest mental health organization in the world. This movement shines as a beacon to other activists, showing what a democratic participatory polity can accomplish. It has been noticed by many around the world who are trying to shake off the despair generated by the "global war on terror." It encourages those struggling to transform violent, authoritarian institutions and cultures in the U.S. and elsewhere....

However, our task is far from over. I will end with a cautionary note. In the wider society, the fight against torture and human-rights abuses is never-ending. With luck, we will soon put an end to the Bush Administration's experiment with legalized torture in national security interrogations. But U.S. support for torture likely will not totally end. Intelligence work, by its nature, occurs in the shadows, away from public oversight. Further, as the scholar Darius Rejali revealed in his magisterial work Torture and Democracy, modern forms of torture, including psychological torture, through their lack of clear, tell-tale signs, were designed precisely to avoid democratic oversight.

Only continual vigilance, combined with cultural change, can remove our nation from the list of those conducting or condoning torture.

Finally, I want to highlight a recent report on a talk by former Rhode Island Chief Justice and now Chief Judge of the Court of Military Commission Review at Guantanamo, Frank J. Williams. The interview is by Annie, an intrepid blogger on human rights, posted online last September at Home of the Brave. Though a few months old now, the article is a telling look into the psychology of those who are actually running the U.S.'s detention and torture machine, and to the psychology of fear they expound:

He cited Lincoln’s declaration of the president deriving power from the consent of the governed.

But he then went on to state that Lincoln did what he had to do by whatever [means] it took. That’s when I got ready for the fear mongering, and just as expected, he let it fly.

“Even the liberals who abhor Bush acknowledge the danger.”

He conflates abhorring the harm to the Constitution with abhorring the man.

He self-justified the military commissions by repeatedly declaring that the US is in a national crisis of being terrorized. He referred to the Global War on Terror as a military war instead of as an ideology, and I do not believe that he realized that he is conflating terms and their implications.

He believed that Lincoln felt he had to act in suspending habeas corpus in the interest of the nation’s self preservation, and he expressed his great fear of a nuclear attack on Americans, with harm to millions.

That's four very interesting articles, a selection out of many that are available during this period of heightened political awareness and activism, in the dwindling twilight of the Bush regime's rule.

The Forgotten Men: New UC Report on "Guantanamo and its Aftermath"

Last summer, Physicians for Human Rights and Human Rights First released Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by the U.S. The study looked at medical and psychological evidence of the costs of torture by eleven men who endured such abuse by US personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay.

Now, University of California, Berkeley's Human Rights Center, in conjunction with the International Human Rights Law Clinic and Center for Constitutional Rights, has released a report on the medical and psychological condition of 62 detainees released over the years from Guantanamo. According to a press release by the university:

The report, "Guantanamo and Its Aftermath: U.S. Detention and Interrogation Practices and Their Impact on Detainees," based on a two-year study, reveals in graphic detail the cumulative effect of Bush Administration policies on the lives of 62 released detainees. Many of the prisoners were sold into captivity and subjected to brutal treatment in U.S. prison camps in Afghanistan. Once in Guantanamo, prisoners were denied access to civilian courts to challenge the legality of their detention. Almost two-thirds of the former detainees interviewed reported having psychological problems since leaving Guantanamo....

Researchers conducted interviews with released detainees in nine countries. The comprehensive study also includes in-depth interviews with key government officials, military experts, former guards, interrogators and other camp personnel.

As the Bush Administration winds down into it ignominious end, President-elect Obama has made clear -- most recently in a 60 Minutes interview last night -- he will very early on use his executive power to close Guantanamo and put an end to torture. It's not clear yet what will happen to the over 200 detainees still held prisoner at Guantanamo, or whether other prisons will be closed, or even whether any executive order will pertain to CIA activities. When Laurence Tribe, an Obama legal advisor and his former law professor argued the other day that perhaps a new federal judiciary system was needed to deal with the Guantanamo prisoners, the idea was quickly scotched (at least for now) by Obama's spokepeople.

"I've Lost My Will"

Almost 800 prisoners have been dragged through the torture chambers of Guantanamo. Reams of words have been written, and scores of legal cases filed in an effort to either end or excuse the mistreatment wrought there. Reporting in today's San Francisco Chronicle, Bob Egelko, describes some of the stories from the HRC report:

"I've lost my property. I've lost my job. I've lost my will," said an Afghan man, one of 62 former inmates in nine countries interviewed anonymously by UC Berkeley researchers for a newly released report.

Another man, jobless and destitute, said his family kicked him out after he returned, and his wife went to live with her relatives. "I have a plastic bag holding my belongings that I carry with me all the time," he said. "And I sleep every night in a different mosque."

UC Berkeley's press release quotes the HRC study as documenting the use at Guantanamo of "being subjected to short shackling, stress positions, prolonged solitary confinement, and exposure to extreme temperatures, loud music, and strobe lights for extended periods -- often simultaneously." Some detainees reported even worse abuse at the U.S. detention center at Baghram, Afghanistan, where prisoners were threatened with dogs, regularly beaten, and suspended by their arms for hours on end.

And yet:

Most detainees interviewed for the study were not vengeful toward America, but simply expressed a desire for justice and an opportunity to clear their names.

The suffering of these detainees is heart-breaking. Their wish to recover a normal life should be at the top of the list for a country with so many broken promises and difficult crises dropped into its lap in the wake of one of the most sinister and criminal administrations to ever rule this or any other ostensibly democratic country.

A Terrible Moral Failure

The role of doctors, psychiatrists and psychologists at these torture centers is not left unmentioned. As the report describes it:

... since late 2002, military psychologists and psychiatrists serving on Behavioral Science Consultation Teams (BSCTs) have played an active role in developing and implementing interrogation strategies at Guantánamo....

Interrogation policies and standards at Guantánamo changed over time, but the data demonstrate that some practices remained consistent throughout the period when the study respondents were held there (January 2002 to January 2007). While more needs to be revealed about the specific interrogation techniques used at Guantánamo, it appears that many of the methods which detainees complained about most bitterly -- cold rooms and short shackling, in conjunction with prolonged isolation -- were permitted under the U.S. military’s interrogation guidelines in force from April 2003 to September 2006... These practices contravene the Geneva Conventions of 1949, which the United States ratified in 1955....

To date, no independent, comprehensive investigation has been conducted to determine the role that camp personnel as well as officials farther up the civilian and military chains of command played in the design and implementation of interrogation
techniques at Guantánamo. No broad investigation has yet addressed whether or not these officials should be held accountable for any crimes they or their subordinates may have committed.

Elsewhere in the report, the authors describe the function of the BSCT teams:

A principal BSCT function was to engineer the camp experiences of “priority” detainees to make interrogation more productive. BSCT personnel coached interrogators on how to stress, coerce, and offer incentives to secure information from detainees. BSCT personnel “prepared psychological profiles [of detainees] for use by interrogators; they also sat in on some interrogations, observed others from behind one-way mirrors, and offered feedback to interrogators"... Army medical personnel also provided medical information to interrogators... In a confidential report, the International Committee for the Red Cross called the participation of doctors in designing interrogation plans a “flagrant violation of medical ethics"... In 2006, in response to publicity about the clinical participation in coercive interrogations at Guantánamo, the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association endorsed more stringent guidelines for military doctors and psychiatrists who are asked to participate in interrogations... In 2008, after several years of often acrimonious debate, members of the American Psychological Association voted to prohibit consultation by its members in the interrogations of detainees held at Guantánamo or so-called “black sites” operated by the CIA overseas.

A Call for Justice

The Human Rights Center and their partners are insistent that the crimes committed by the United States around torture cannot and should not go without further investigation. Hundreds of detainees remains incarcerated without ever being accused of any crime. Evidence of torture and abuse is overwhelming, the deleterious personal, medical and psychological consequences for those caught in this torture web and then released is also strongly convincing. Per Egelko's article:

"We cannot sweep this dark chapter in our nation's history under the rug by simply closing the Guantanamo prison camp," said Eric Stover, director of UC Berkeley's Human Rights Center. "The new administration must investigate what went wrong and who should be held accountable."

The news is so dark every day, with thousands thrown out of their jobs seemingly every day, and millions more fearing they will lose theirs. The wreck that is American society has so many vital issues facing it, that it seems easy to let the sufferings of "only" a few hundred or thousand go unanswered. The latest leaks around Obama's plans to investigate or prosecute Bush officials for war crimes indicate an Obama administration will lean towards some investigation, and steer away from prosecutions. (See recent stories by Mark Benjamin at Salon, and Lara Jakes Jordan at Associate Press.) Meanwhile, Bush is said to be considering a massive blanket pardon for those involved in his interrogation policies. Some argue that such a pardon could facilitate a "truth and reconciliation" investigation.

In the end, no one knows yet what Obama will do, or what Bush will do (although I'm betting he will issue the pardons). What is clear is that among all the other crucial issues facing the U.S. at this point in time, we must solve a huge moral dilemma: what do we do when the government blatantly and recklessly disregards human rights or lives, when it kills or tortures? Do we stand back and let it pass, in the name of political expediency? What shame and moral rot will we have to endure? How can we rise from the muck of this terrible period in our history if we do not both witness and pay out with justice the ineffable suffering of the innocent made in our name, and now forever etched with acid on the soul of the country?

Update: Interested readers will want to read Scott Horton's latest piece at Harper's (subscription required) on the rationale and possibilities around prosecuting Bush Administration figures for torture and war crimes. A nice summary of Horton's article was also made by Compound F at Docudharma (no subscription required).

Big Victory: APA Informs Bush -- No Psychologists at Military Interrogations

Readers of this blog know that dissident psychologists, along with human rights and anti-torture organizations and individuals have been working for years now to get the American Psychological Association to change its policy of supporting the use of psychologists in interrogations at Guantanamo, CIA black-site prisons, and other governmental sites involved in Bush's Global War on Terror.

Last month, a referendum that called for banning such participation was passed by a large majority of voting APA members. At first, APA bureaucrats mumbled something about instituting this new policy come August 2009! But large scale protest by the membership seems to have caused them to back down, and today, APA has released a letter to George W. Bush informing the head of the U.S. executive branch and commander-in-chief of U.S. armed forces of the new change in APA policy.

The letter was drafted collaboratively between APA staff and the primary authors of the referendum petition that led to the change in policy. Similar letters reportedly will be sent to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, CIA Director Michael Hayden, and to key congressional committees, including the Armed Services, Judiciary, and Intelligence committees.

What follows is the press release by APA on the change, and announcing the letter to Bush. The actual text of the letter can be found here.

The announcement by APA represents a major turnaround in their long-standing policy of backing the presence of psychologists at interrogations, and a victory for all who have fought to change that policy and fight back against U.S. torture.

APA LETTER TO BUSH: NEW POLICY LIMITS PSYCHOLOGIST INVOLVEMENT IN INTERROGATIONS

Prohibits psychologist participation in interrogations at unlawful detention sites

WASHINGTON—The American Psychological Association sent a letter today to President Bush, informing him of a significant change in the association's policy that limits the roles of psychologists in certain unlawful detention settings where the human rights of detainees are violated, such as has occurred at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at so-called CIA black sites around the world.

“The effect of this new policy is to prohibit psychologists from any involvement in interrogations or any other operational procedures at detention sites that are in violation of the U.S. Constitution or international law (e.g., the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture),” says the letter, from APA President Alan E. Kazdin, PhD. “In such unlawful detention settings, persons are deprived of basic human rights and legal protections, including the right to independent judicial review of their detention.”

The roles of psychologists at such sites would now be limited to working directly for the people being detained or for an independent third party working to protect human rights, or to providing treatment to military personnel. The new policy was voted on by APA members and is in the process of being implemented.

For the past 20 years, APA policy has unequivocally condemned torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, which can arise from interrogation procedures or conditions of confinement. APA's previous policies had expressed grave concerns about settings where people are deprived of human rights and had offered support to psychologists who refused to work in such settings.

Noting that there have been credible reports of torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees during Bush's presidency, APA called on the administration to investigate these alleged abuses. “We further call on you to establish policies and procedures to ensure the independent judicial review of these detentions and to afford the persons being detained all rights guaranteed to them under the Geneva Conventions and the U.N. Convention Against Torture,” Kazdin wrote.

A copy of the full letter may be viewed at: http://www.apa.org/releases/kazdin-to-bush1008.pdf

Whither APA
While this is a big victory, it doesn't mean torture will end at Guantanamo, CIA prisons, or elsewhere. Most psychologists working at such facilities, similarly to doctors, nurses, interrogators, etc., work under the chain of command and answer to the leadership of the military and the executive branch. But the new policy does explode a central pillar of the government's rationale for such abuse, i.e., that psychologists are present at such sites as "safety officers" to stop "behavioral drift" or abuse from taking place.

Now the APA has rejected this premise, and is lending its prestige to the withdrawal of behavioral health professionals from the CIA and the Pentagon's program of coercive interrogation.

Yet, the APA still widely collaborates with the national security apparatus. Their work on "deception", which I've written about here, is only one aspect of this far-reaching connectivity between U.S. behavioral science and the military. Nor should we believe that the APA apparatus, staffed by the same people who tried for years to make psychologists hand-servants for the worst aspects of military abuse, is suddenly composed of pacifists and anti-militarists. For instance, APA has not, to date, seen fit as an organization to call for the closure of Guantanamo Bay Naval prison.

It's clear that struggles around the interactions of the health professions, academia, and major scientific institutions with the organs of national security and the program of a militarist state, remain ahead of us. Furthermore, the cynic in me wonders if this turnaround by APA isn't too convenient, as it potentially cuts the ground out from under anti-torture activist Steven Reisner's campaign for APA president, with the election coming later this month.

One prominent APA activist noted on a listserv earlier today that Kazdin's letter fails to call for an immediate removal of psychologists from interrogations at Guantanamo (for instance). The policy wherein Behavioral Science Consulting Teams, including psychologists, assist in interrogation planning and procedures is supposedly about due for review. It is time to ratchet up the pressure on the government to shut down Guantanamo, to decommission (if that is the word) the BSCTs.

A big question remains around the use of torture and the participation of same at CIA sites. CIA "enhanced interrogation" techniques remain supposedly approved by the President. No one knows exactly how the CIA's prisons work, who is there, or what goes on. APA should call for an immediate withdrawal of all psychologists from such secret prisons. While they are at it, to show they are serious, they could stop taking advertisements for CIA employment in their journals and publications.

[Update: I want to add here some important comments from the CEO of Physicians for Human Rights, Frank Donaghue on APA's letter:

"While today is a proud day for the APA and its membership, the APA must now act to permanently prohibit direct participation by psychologists in interrogations and to ensure those psychologists who engaged in abuse and torture are held to account," said Donaghue. "The APA has taken a tremendous step forward but has not yet reached the ethical standards of the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association, organizations which have banned direct participation by physicians in all interrogations. Also, the APA has not yet specified what rights abuses would render a detention facility illegal under its new policy."]

Despite all caveats, it is time to savor the victory, and spread the word. Congratulations to everyone who worked to win this battle. Tops among them must be the folks who pushed the referendum, when it looked like a long-shot, and the hard working members of Psychologists for an Ethical APA, withholdapadues.com, etc.

Bravo, my friends and colleagues. Good work!

"Sonnet on Chillon"

Written by George Gordon, Lord Byron in 1816, the poem was inspired by a visit to the castle at Chillon, on the shores of Lake Geneva, where Charles III, Duke of Savoy had imprisoned the monk and political prisoner, François Bonivard, underground for six years. The sonnet was written as a preface to a longer poem, "The Prisoner of Chillon."

Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind!
Brightest in dungeons, Liberty! thou art,
For there in thy habitation is the heart
The heart which love of thee alone can bind;
And when thy sons to fetters are consign'd -
To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom
Their country conquers with their martyrdom,
And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind.
Chillon! thy prison is a holy place,
And thy sad floor an altar - for t'was trod
Until his very steps have left a trace
Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod
By Bonnivard! May none those marks efface!
For they appeal from tyranny to God.