Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Guantanamo Bay Comes to Cardiff

[Note: I might be going over this and making some revisions and / or updates in the coming weeks, but I felt it was important to get a draft out while it was still fairly fresh in my mind.]

It was fittingly ironic that the first thing I read when I returned from the Great Hall was an e-mail from the U.S. Marine Corps. offering me a paid summer internship. Clearly in recognition of the new, more left-leaning Bossman, the text was peppered with references to the "failure of corporate America to police itself" and the faltering economy. My eyes were drawn, as they were, of course, meant to be, to a capitalized segment near the end, PROMISING that I would not be obliged to actively serve, that this wasn't the ROTC.

Had the good Sgt. known where I had come from only moments before...well, he probably still would have sent the damn thing. It's his job, isn't it? Well done, Sarge.

This kind of entry isn't what I typically do, but I'd honestly feel like a fraud and liar if I didn't make some sort of mention of what I attended in the Great Hall at the Cardiff University Students' Union. Along with a few thousand fellow students and citizens, I had the IMMENSE privilege to hear the stories of three men who spent from 1 to 6 years at the Guantanamo detention center. Furthermore, while two were prisoners, one was a 23 year old from Chicago who had joined the National Guard when he was 17 in order to get a college education.

Needless to say, that isn't exactly what ended up happening. Now the irony of that e-mail kicks in.

The first speaker was a British citizen named Moazzam Begg, who was taken from his residence in Pakistan in the middle of the night by U.S. and Pakistani forces. After a period of time, he ended up at the detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Second speaker, whose name I don't recall, was held in Gitmo for 6 years. Both men were tortured, berated and held without formal charges. They were also innocent.

Rather than transposing from memory the detailed content from the panel, which would hardly do it justice, I think it's more apt for me to relate my personal feelings. I was, first and foremost, horrified. Here were three men who suffered through the trials and misfortunes of the alleged "War on Terror" that we read about statistically every day, yet rarely, as citizens, are made to face on any sort of visceral, personal level. In my circles, which are, admittedly, fairly progressive, opposition to the CONCEPT of Guantanamo Bay and other similar facilities - aptly described by Chris Arendt, the American Guardsmen as Concentration Camps - is routine but, ultimately, alien. At Connecticut College, or Kimball Union Academy, or Brooks School, or, to an extent, in Windsor, Vermont, these constructs, as atrocious and terrifying as they may be, remain merely concepts pieced together from bits of secondary information. God willing, neither myself or my loved ones will EVER have to face the realities from which these shadowy ideas are constructed. In hearing firsthand the very real atrocities that are being committed against everyday people BY everyday people, I, as a human being, American citizen and critic, am forced to wonder: "Why not me?"

Chris' situation hit as hard as those of Begg and his fellow detainee. Chris described how, upon hearing that his company was being sent to Guantanamo (he was trained to fire cannons, by the way), he did everything he could to get out of it to no avail. Against his will, he was sent to guard a camp full of abused, innocent people. "It turns out," Chris told us, "that it's easy to run a concentration camp. You just follow orders. You go to work. You do your job." After his tour ended (though he was only at Gitmo for a year) he was terminally angry and is currently homeless. He's one of the lucky ones too, when i think about it. I remember reading not too long ago a New Yorker feature about an ex-Marine who, though zealous and proud of his service, was dirven to suicide after several tours in Iraq. Even this week, I'm reading about how more and more soliders are blowing themselves away every month, just following orders and doing their jobs.

It was not, for the most part, an uplifting night, but there was an air of hope in the presentation. Here were three men who chose to come together to oppose something that they knew was wrong, despite their differences. Begg, like many other former detainees, regularly speaks out against inhumanity, and has founded and organization called Cageprisoners to further this cause. Chris, a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War, came over from Illinois and ended up befriending some of the same men who he had guarded at the camp. Despite the anger that I was feeling at the time, the importance of their common cause was far from lost on me.

I like to think that I learned something from these three men. Atrocity transcends politics. As happy as I may be that many of the people who authorized these forms of torture have been democratically ousted from power in America I am no longer happy to rest on my laurels and take faith that their successors will be able to put an and to it all. Now that the panel's just a memory, I still feel traces of the energy in the overfilled lecture hall. There were some truly dumbass questions posed by a couple of ignorant audience members (one woman sheepishly brought up the holocaust without really posing any sort of question, while another guy tried to deride Begg for making money from his books. He was kidnapped and tortured, for fucks sake! How can you give somebody shit when they've responded by devoting their lives to promoting human rights and going on lecture tours...oh man...), knowing that a few thousand of people in Cardiff, not to mention the thousands upon thousands all across the world, were being informed, getting pissed, and standing in opposition to the inhumanity and detestable actions that have spattered blood all over the first decade of this century left me with a greater sense of purpose. I, like all of the others, can do my own part.

Check out:

Enemy Combatant: The Terrifying True Story of a Briton in Guantanamo by Moazzam Begg
Road to Guantanamo, a film by Michael Winterbottom
The Battle of Algiers, a film by Gillo Pontecorvo

1 comment:

  1. Hi, I was one of the organisers of the meeting, enjoyed reading this report.

    The second speaker was OMAR DEGHAYES, he had a particularly hard time, he has British residency, but the British government used his refugee status (he had fled Libya) to wash their hands of him and refused to represent or advocate for him in anyway.

    I can't really sum up what he said better than another report I read:

    "Omar spoke of the torture itself and the brutal and graphic nature of this concentration camp. He talked of Detainee 725 (all Guantanamo detainees are dehumanised and given numbers as names), who was so brutally beaten that interrogators removed one of his eyes. After his harrowing account it was revealed that Omar himself was Detainee 725. A completely innocent man who has never been charged for any crime."

    Warm regards,

    Adam Johannes
    Secretary
    Cardiff Stop the War Coalition
    www.stopwar.org.uk
    cardifftroopsout@googlemail.com

    PS. We hope to continue organising similar events that explore 'the war on terror' from the perspective of its victims. In the past we have brought to Cardiff the Leader of the Iraqi Federation of Oil Workers Unions to talk about the resistance of Iraqis to both the military and economic occupation of their country, and also Craig Murray, the ex-UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan who was sacked by the British government for speaking out over their support for torture in that country. His book MURDER IN SAMARKAND is worth checking out and his site: http://www.craigmurray.org.uk/

    ReplyDelete