They are artists of torture,
They are artists of pain and fatigue,
They are artists of insults and humiliation.
Where is the world to save us from torture?
Where is the world to save us from the fire and sadness?
Where is the world to save the hunger strikers? –
Poem (translated from Arabic to English) written by Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, 5 year prisoner at Guantanamo Bay
I’ve said it many times before, but it bears repeating: Of all the shameful actions of the George W. Bush administration, its
treatment of its prisoners in its “War on Terror” is the most shameful and the most out of line with what the United States of America is supposed to stand for, as proclaimed in its Declaration of Independence and its Constitution.
Thousands of these prisoners waste away today in U.S. prisons scattered throughout the world. They are
stripped of all human rights required by international law and many of them are
subjected to daily torture, yet they are neither convicted nor even charged with a crime.
Much evidence suggests that the vast majority of these prisoners are innocent of any crime and pose no danger to anyone. I’ve discussed that evidence many times (see above links, among others). I think that is an important point to make, even though the Bush administration’s treatment of its prisoners would still be illegal and immoral even if they were all guilty and dangerous. I have to admit that it troubles me a lot more knowing that the vast majority are innocent than it would if I accepted the Bush administration’s line that their prisoners are evil and dangerous men – and boys.
But that is not the point of this post. The point of this post is to talk about the collection of 22 poems written by 17 of George Bush’s prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. These poems came to light because of the efforts of a group of human rights lawyers, and they were recently published in a book called “
Poems from Guantanamo”. The story that this post is based on comes from an article titled “
Verses of Suffering”, recently published in Amnesty International.
Amnesty International, one of the world’s premier human rights organizations, wrote this article in an attempt to give these prisoners a voice and to show the world that they are indeed human. This point seems to be lost on a great many people who think that it’s ok to lock people away for an indefinite period of time with no trial or other human rights of any sort. As noted at the beginning of the article:
Abused, desperate and isolated, Guantanamo prisoners have turned to writing poetry as a way to preserve their humanity. Despite the Pentagon’s vigorous efforts to suppress the poems, a dedicated band of pro bono lawyers for the detainees have published a collection.
What the lawyers learned about the treatment of their clientsLawyers at Amnesty International first learned of the poems when a Guantanamo prisoner, Adnan Farhan Abdul Latif, sent them to his and other lawyers representing prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Latif was first sent to Guantanamo Bay after being picked up in Pakistan and turned over to the United States for a $5,000 bounty (Contrary to George Bush’s
claim that all prisoners “were picked up on battlefields fighting against our troops,
only 5% were picked up on battlefields, and only 8% are classified as al Qaeda fighters.)
During one visit, Latif explained to his lawyer about a recent punishment he had received for stepping over a painted line while receiving some food:
Three days before, he’d been visited by an “Immediate Reaction Force” team (also described in
this post by a former Muslim Army Chaplain at Guantanamo).... A female soldier came in with a big can of pepper spray… She sprayed me. I couldn’t breathe. I fell down… I thought I was dying… I was lying on the bed but they were kicking and hitting me with the shields. They put my head in the toilet…
He also explained how his jailors had dealt with his hunger strike:
Twice a day, the guards immobilize Latif’s head, strap his arms and legs to a special restraint chair, and force-feed him a liquid nutrient by inserting a tube up his nose and into his stomach – a clear violation of international standards. The feeding, Latif says, “is like having a dagger shoved down your throat.
And here is what the lawyers learned about the treatment of prisoners in general at Guantanamo Bay:
During the three years in which they had been held in total isolation, they had been subjected repeatedly to stress positions, sleep deprivation, blaring music, and extremes of heat and cold during endless interrogations… They were denied basic medical care. They were broken down and psychologically tyrannized, kept in extreme isolation, threatened with rendition, interrogated at gunpoint and told that their families would be harmed if they refused to talk. They were also frequently prevented from engaging in their daily prayers…
Dozens of prisoners have attempted suicide… The military, in typically Orwellian fashion, has described these suicide attempts as incidents of “manipulative self-injurious behavior”.
About the writing of the poemsThe lawyers explain that the prisoners wrote the poems “with little expectation of ever reaching an audience beyond a small circle of their fellow prisoners.” As to the reasons that the prisoners write the poems, the lawyers suggest:
Many men at Guantanamo turned to writing poetry as a way to maintain their sanity, to memorialize their suffering and to preserve their humanity through acts of creation. The obstacles the prisoners have faced in composing their poems are profound.
Those obstacles have included infrequent access to writing material, so that the prisoners often resorted to writing on Styrofoam cups with pebbles or toothpaste and then passing the cups around to the other prisoners to read.
After a year the military allowed the prisoners access to writing materials, which made possible the preservation of the poems. A lawyer describes the first of these poems that he saw as “a cry against the injustice of arbitrary detention and at the same time a hymn to the comforts of religious faith”. As the lawyers began talking to each other they came to realize that “Guantanamo was filled with amateur poets”.
Here is a poem from an al-Jazeera reporter who had been confined in various U.S. prisons since 2001 and who was alleged, with no supporting public evidence, to have “assisted al Qaeda”. The title of the poem is “
Humiliated in the Shackles”
When I heard pigeons cooing in the trees,
Hot tears covered my face.
When the lark chirped, my thoughts composed
A message for my son.
Mohammad, I am afflicted.
In my despair, I have no one but Allah for comfort.
The oppressors are playing with me,
As they move freely about the world.
They ask me to spy on my countrymen,
Claiming it would be a good deed.
They offer me money and land,
And freedom to go where I please.
Their temptations seize my attention
Like lightning in the sky.
But their gift is an evil snake,
Carry hypocrisy in its mouth like venom.
They have monuments to liberty
And freedom of opinion, which is well and good.
But I explained to them that
Architecture is not justice.
America, you ride on the backs of orphans,
And terrorize them daily.
Bush, beware.
The world recognizes an arrogant liar.
To Allah I direct my grievance and my tears.
I am homesick and oppressed.
Mohammad, do not forget me.
Support the cause of your father, a God-fearing man.
I was humiliated in the shackles.
How can I now compose verses? How can I now write?
After the shackles and the nights and the suffering and the tears,
How can I write poetry?
My soul is like a roiling sea, stirred by anguish,
Violent with passion.
I am a captive, but the crimes are my captors'.
I am overwhelmed with apprehension.
Lord, unite me with my son Mohammad.
Lord, grant success to the righteous.
The Pentagon responseThe Pentagon was not happy about the publicizing of the poems or the interest of the lawyers in general. At first they wouldn’t even let the lawyers keep the notes that they produced following their talks with the prisoners, claiming that they “revealed interrogation techniques”. Threats of litigation caused it to change its mind about that.
At first the Pentagon wasn’t too concerned about the poems. It wasn’t until it learned that the lawyers were planning on publicizing them that its concern rose, and then it censored hundreds of them by classifying them as secret due to “national security threats”. It was only with great difficulty that they lawyers were able to get any of them published at all (The details of how they did this are not clear to me from reading the article).
Upon publication of the poems, here is what Defense Department spokesman Cmdr. J.D. Gordon (who had not read any of the poems)
had to say about them:
While a few detainees at Guantanamo Bay have made efforts to author what they claim to be poetry, given the nature of their writings they have seemingly not done so for the sake of art. They have attempted to use this medium as merely another tool in their battle of ideas against Western democracies.
Final comment by Amnesty InternationalI find the closing statement in Amnesty's article to be very appropriate to today’s current situation:
As the courts move sluggishly toward granting the prisoners fair and open hearings, and as politicians bicker about whether to extend the protections of the Geneva Conventions to the detainees, the prisoners’ own words may now become part of the dialogue. Perhaps their poems will prick the conscience of a nation.
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