Sixty Years Ago

Sixty years ago the United Nations, with the United States taking the lead under the direction of former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, passed the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Sixty years ago, December 10th, 1948.

Sixty years ago, again because of efforts by the United States, the Convention on Genocide was adopted, December 9th, 1948.

Yet it was the United States, under the failed leadership of George Bush and Dick Cheney, that created a "war on terror" expanding the power of the executive branch through secrecy and fear to nullify the Geneva Conventions, the Conventions Against Torture, and the Declaration of Human Rights. In calling these acts of violence a war, Bush and Cheney avoided the due process requirements of a criminal prosecution against the perpetrators.

Not coincidentally, but very intentionally, a report has been issued in November 2008 "Guantanamo and its Aftermath: US Detention and Interrogation Practices and Their Impact on Former Detainees." Both an executive summary and the entire report are available on the website of the International Human Rights Law Clinic at UC Berkeley Law School. The primary researchers are law professors Laurel E. Fletcher and Eric Stover.

The Report is based on two years of interviews with 62 former detainees, 50 base personnel including interrogators, and 18 lawyers who represented detainees held at Guantanamo and other "dark" sites. For review, there were a total of 780 detainees at Guantanamo; 520 have been released, 250 remain. The Report tells the very personal, although anonymous stories of how damaged, stigmatized, plagued by debt, doubt, and depression these men are. It is believed that a third of the men picked up were picked up because of bounties. At least half of the men who ended up in Guantanamo should never have been sent anywhere becaue they were picked up because someone else was paid to capture anyone.

In addition to shackling, beating, sleep deprivation, overstimulation with music, humiliation, and nudity, most of the detainees suffered from isolation and solitary confinement. The cumulative effects have been devastating: an inability to return to living normal lives once they have returned to their countries of origin.

We must hear these stories. The International Center for Transitional Justice has outlined just how the US can inquire into human rights abuses in the "war on terror." Go to this webpage and scroll down to "policy work." Download the document and read it. Take action. Write to President-elect Obama and to your Senators and Congressperson and demand nonpartisan inquiries into how the war on terror destroyed American values and people's lives. Our credibility as a nation depends on accountability. Our legacy to the world does, too.