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Etching from Le Carceri d’invenzione (The Imaginary Prisons) series by Italian artist Giovanni Battista Piranesi
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Locally: Learn more, take action.
Hear knowledgeable speakers: Captain James Yee, the former Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo, and Majorie Cohn, past president of the National Lawyers’ Guild coming to Minneapolis to speak, in addition to St. Thomas Peace and Justice Professor Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer and Ellen Kennedy of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University of Minnesota who will also speak. There are several other educational opportunities and a vigil you can join to raise public awareness of the continued use of torture by the U.S.
More education and action
Center for Constitutional Rights: Dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Founded in 1966 by attorneys who represented civil rights movements in the South, CCR is a non-profit legal and educational organization committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change. Info on cases involving U.S. domestic and U.S./foreign human-rights violations: extraordinary rendition, unlawful detention, torture. www.ccrjustice.org
Amnesty International’s Counter Terror with Injustice Campaign: “Government responses to the threat of terrorist attacks have led to a weakening of the framework of international human rights. States are resorting to practices which have long been prohibited by international law, and have sought to justify them in the name of national security.” Call for governments to stop torture and end impunity in the context of counter terrorism. www.amnesty.org/en/campaigns/counter-terror-with-justice
National Religious Campaign Against Torture: Ask Congress to Give the Red Cross Access to Detainees: “Please contact your Members of Congress and ask them to support legislation to make permanent the policy of allowing the International Committee of the Red Cross access to all detainees.” www.ncrat.org
Spread the Word: Torture is Ongoing Around the World. “On Thursday, April 29, 2010, a ‘Teach-In on Capitol Hill,’ was held in Room 2168 of the Rayburn House Building, in Washington, D.C., dealing with the question of what the U.S. Congress must do to end the U.S. Wars and secure a peaceful Middle East. One of the five panelists at the event was Jeremy Scahill, an investigative reporter and the author of the best-selling book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. During the Q&A period, he addressed a query dealing with torture. Mr. Scahill said: ‘Torture is ongoing under the [President Barack] Obama administration...at Guantanamo and…around the world.’ He described in detail one of the gruesome torture techniques still currently in use today. Shades of the Spanish Inquisition!” www.vimeo.com/11363123
Spread the Word: Torture is Used Within the U.S., Too: Coerced confessions have been exported from Vietnam to Chicago. In 2006, the UN Committee Against Torture heard reports of police torturing 135 African-Americans in Chicago jails in the seventies and eighties. The same techniques that had been used to coerce confessions from P.O.W.s in Vietnam were used on detainees to force confessions from many innocent people here. The news program, DemocracyNow featured interviews with some of the victims and reports on justice for them, now being sought in the courts. Reports of torture at various prisons throughout the United States continue to surface. Private control of prisons is a source of deep concern. African-Americans, other minorities, immigrants and the poor are particularly vulnerable; women and juveniles, as well as men, are vulnerable to rape while in prison. |
