Linguistic trickery, breach of universal law
Editing, excerpting by Carolyn Bennett
Apropos current events
Letter from Guantanamo Bay Prisoner
‘I am dying here every day,
mentally and physically. This is happening to all of us.
‘We have been ignored, locked up in
the middle of the ocean for years.
‘Rather than humiliate myself,
having to beg for water, I would rather hurry up the process that is going to happen
anyway. I would like to die quietly, by myself.
‘I was once 250 pounds. I dropped
to 150 pounds in the first hunger strike.
‘I want to make it easy on
everyone. I want no feeding, no forced tubes, no “help”, no “intensive assisted
feeding”. This is my legal right.
‘The British government refuses to
help me. What is the point of my wife being British? I thought Britain stood
for justice but they abandoned us, people who have lived in Britain for years,
and who have British wives and children. I hold the British government
responsible for my death, as I do the Americans.’
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uthor and journalist Victoria Brittain yesterday on the
Democracy Now program read this letter from a Guantanamo Bay prisoner of 11
years, husband of Zinnira. Brittain said, the 2006 letter “is particularly
poignant” in the light of current hunger strikes by prisoners and force
feedings by authorities at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He wrote the letter in a much earlier hunger strike and sent
it to his wife, Zinnira, who is chapter two of Brittain’s latest book Shadow Lives: The Forgotten Women of the War
on Terror.
Obstruction: trickery of words
While U.S. officials persist in the label “detainee,” Victoria
Brittain said, “We use ‘prisoner.’ If you’ve been in a cage for 11 years, you are
a prisoner. Let’s be quite clear about that,” she said. “The use of words … can
be very effective; you minimize [true meaning] by saying ‘detainee.’”
Straining credulity
“…The most powerful man in the world … Is it really impossible that [President Barack Obama]
could take this one case, which the British are begging him for—the man [who] was
cleared by his own most senior people—and say, ‘Actually, we made a mistake with
this one?’, Brittain asks.
Inflicting far-reaching pain
“Some of the women that I’ve written about are the wives of
Guantánamo prisoners,” Victoria Brittain said. In chapter one of her book is
one of her closest friends, she said. “I kind of lived alongside her and her children
through a very long period when her husband was in Guantánamo and she had
absolutely no information about why he was there, when he might come back, no
contact with him whatsoever.” Another woman’s husband continues to languish in
the prison after eleven years. “He is one of the 86 people who were cleared by
a task force comprised of very senior intelligence and military people, a report
ordered very early on by President Obama.”
Among the 86 people who have been cleared is British
resident, Shaker Aamer. “Having been cleared as innocent,” she said, “everybody
expected him to be released. The British government has asked for him. But
President Obama has not managed to release him.”
Husband of Zinnira
Shaker Aamer was born in Saudi Arabia. He was educated in
the United States of America and, with his British family, lived in the United
Kingdom. When abducted, he was a charity worker living in Afghanistan with his
young family (in the same house as was Moazzam Begg); “they had been building
girls’ schools and digging wells,” Brittain reported.
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The Americans dropped leaflets offering bounties for any
foreigner that Pakistanis or Afghans turned over”; and Shaker Aamer, along with
many people, “was picked up”; he was “sold to the Americans, and then tortured.”
He ended up and has languished at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for eleven years. Though
Shaker Aamer has been cleared of wrongdoing, the Obama government continues to imprison
him.
Despite U.S. government’s persistence in holding people
cleared of wrongdoing, Brittain reports, “Fourteen people have come back to
Britain from Guantánamo Bay, and never has any one of them done any tiny
infraction of any sort.”
Who remembers this plain-speaking Declaration?
“…Prudence … dictate(s)
that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient
causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown, that [human beings] are more
disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by
abolishing the forms to which they are
accustomed.
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But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing
invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism
[I]t is their right,
[I]it is their duty
[T]o throw off such government, and
[T]o provide new guards for their
future security.…
Or this Universal Declaration?
“ … [R]ecognition of the inherent dignity and of the
equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the
foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,
“ … [D]isregard and contempt for human rights have
resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and
the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and
belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest
aspiration of the common people,
“ … [I]t is essential, if man is not to be compelled to
have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression,
that human rights should be protected by the rule of law …
Article 5|
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o one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or
degrading treatment or punishment.
Article 6
Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person
before the law.
Article 7
All are equal before the law and are entitled without any
discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal
protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and
against any incitement to such discrimination.
Article 8
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| American diplomat Eleanor Roosevelt with UDHR 1948 |
Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the
competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted
him by the constitution or by law.
Article 9
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o one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or
exile.
Article 10
Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair, and public
hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his
rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.
Article 11
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. Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be
presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at
which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defense.
2. No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account
of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national
or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier
penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal
offence was committed.”
Sources and notes
Democracy Now! April 29, 2013
“Forgotten Women of the War on Terror: Author Victoria Brittain
on the Wives and
Families Left Behind,” April 29, 2013, http://www.democracynow.org/2013/4/29/forgotten_women_of_the_war_on
http://www.democracynow.org/2013/4/29/a_desperate_situation_at_guantnamo_over
Victoria Brittain is a journalist, author and activist. Her latest
book is Shadow Lives: The Forgotten Women
of the War on Terror. For several
years her research has focused on the impact of conflict on women and her travels
have taken her to the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Cambodia, East
Timor, Rwanda, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Estonia, South Africa, Russia, and other
conflict areas. She has written several books on Southern Africa and the
effects of Western policy during the Cold War.
Brittain has been involved in the Boycott Israel Campaign
and has chaired the London conference on divestment and sanctions against
Israel (2002); she is a former Associate Foreign Editor of the Guardian (and
former member of the editorial committee of the New Left Review). She is author
of Hidden Lives, Hidden Deaths and Death of
Dignity; co-author (with Moazzam Begg) of Enemy Combatant. With South
African born (living in London) novelist, playwright and memoirist Gillian
Slovo, Victoria Brittain compiled the play “Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend
Freedom” that was performed in theaters all over the world.
http://student.cs.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/authors.php?auid=2228
http://www.guardian.co.uk/global/2007/jun/03/victoriabrittain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillian_Slovo
“Declaration of Independence United States”
In Congress, July 4, 1776: Unanimous Declaration of the
Thirteen United States of America excerpt
“Universal Declaration of Human Rights” 1948 excerpt
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Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
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