With the apparent suicide of three detainees in Guantanamo, torture and extraordinary US security practices are again in the public eye, reports Emad Mekay The question posed by a new anti-torture group in an advertisement that appeared in The New York Times Tuesday perhaps best captures the moral dilemma facing the United States, once the world champion of human rights, in how it deals with its Muslim prisoners of war. The advertisement, signed by 27 leaders of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, asked: "What does it signify if torture is condemned in word but allowed in deed?" The newly-established anti-torture group, whose membership includes such heavyweights as Cardinal Theodor E McCarick of Washington, Sayed Said, secretary-general of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and former President Jimmy Carter, says it formed to work against alleged abuses by the United States at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and other locations. On its web site, the group implies that recently reported cruelty and abuse cases indicate that torture is now the norm, not the exception, in how the United States treats prisoners of war. Several human rights groups and legal experts charge that the United States has created the conditions and psychological setting in which its officials, and some US media outlets, have come to accept torture as a way of dealing with much-vilified Islamic suspected terrorists. For example, Washington has passed legislation that effectively permits evidence obtained through torture to be used in court, while military tribunals trying some terrorist suspects are now explicitly permitted to consider evidence obtained under coercive interrogation techniques, including degrading and inhumane techniques and torture. Further, Washington has made use of the practice of extraordinary rendition, whereby suspects are arrested and flown to countries such as Egypt, Jordan and Syria that use torture as a means of interrogation. Recently, the New York-based Human Rights Watch accused the US military of holding three dozen or more detainees in long-term incommunicado at undisclosed prisons in other countries -- a clear violation of international law. Such practices indicate a profound shift in moral probity within the US military and government structure. This week, human rights advocates were visibly shocked by statements to the effect that three inmates at Guantanamo Bay who allegedly took their own lives over the weekend were actually engaged in a public relations stunt against the United States. In 2003 already, the Pentagon renamed suicide attempts "self-injurious behaviour" to deflect criticism of the treatment of prisoners and cast such desperate acts as crafty challenges to US policy. Rear Admiral Harry B Harris Jr, commander of the Joint Task Force at Guantanamo, stated: "They are smart. They are creative. They are committed. They have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us." Colleen Graffy, deputy assistant secretary of state for public diplomacy, told BBC's Newshour on Sunday: "Taking their own lives was not necessary, but it certainly is a good PR move." Many analysts say such statements indicate how far the Bush administration has departed from the moral high ground. "For this administration to now claim that these suicides were acts of war by men who have no regard for human life is powerful evidence that the Bush administration itself has no conception of the desperation they have caused," said Bill Goodman of the New York-based Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR), a law office that monitors Guantanamo Bay. Rights advocates point to how Washington has methodically and deliberately denied Muslim prisoners their most basic rights, choking off all outside contact, communication and information, and thereby hope. Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani, Mana Shaman Allabardi Al-Otaibi and Ahmed Abdullah, the three Muslim men who allegedly committed suicide at the highly fortified prison, were among hundreds who have spent the past four years behind bars and in appalling conditions, without criminal charge or a court appearance. Jumana Musa, Amnesty International USA's advocacy director, said the three deaths "should serve as a wake up call to President Bush and his administration that Guantanamo is not just a public relations problem, but instead an indictment on its deteriorating human rights record." The group called on President Bush to either "charge detainees with a recognisable criminal offence and give them a fair trial, or release them unconditionally." In documents released Monday, the CCR outlined numerous attempts made by it and other organisations to force the Department of Defense to provide adequate medical and psychological care for detainees at Guantanamo. The usual response is lip service paid to the rights of detainees and little action. "Many Guantanamo prisoners have resorted to hunger strikes and suicide attempts as the only means available to protest or 'escape' the dehumanising conditions of the prison camp, so it should be no surprise that three killed themselves over the weekend," said Lisa Hajjar who teaches law at the University of California-Santa Barbara. "Terming the three suicides acts of 'asymmetrical war' is another Defense Department deception. As lawyers who represent Guantanamo prisoners have told me, and many others have attested, their conditions are inhumane and suicide is a predictable response to hopelessness," Hajjar added. Rights organisations have long asked for independent access to and monitoring of US military prison facilities -- particularly Guantanamo -- on an ongoing basis. They demand that any monitoring include the medical treatment of detainees, especially those who have chosen to hunger strike as a way to draw attention to their plight and conditions of confinement. Meanwhile, in May, a survey by the University of Maryland Program on International Policy Attitudes found that two out of three Americans want the United States to change how it treats Guantanamo Bay detainees, as prescribed by the outgoing UN Commission on Human Rights. Yet even amidst warnings that the abuse of prisoners in Guantanamo and other locations is fast eroding what remains of shattered US global credibility, calls for a policy reassessment have so far fallen on deaf ears. "The US-controlled detention facility in Guantanamo Bay has undercut America's moral authority," said Anthony D Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the country's largest civil liberties organisation. "The core underlying injustices of the Guantanamo Bay facility need to be remedied before other lives are lost. The conditions are the antithesis of the America we hold in our hearts and our minds," he added.
