Secret torture camps have become the symbol and order of the US politics in international arena. The US has set up labour camps to try, torture and kill the so-called suspected terrorists not only in Europe with the connivance of the respective governments, it has also done the same in other continents as well. One such revelation has come to light when the several countries including the UN chief strongly protested against the continuance of secret torture camps at Guantanamo in Cuba, a country that fights against the US hegemony tooth and nail.
The US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, set in picturesque location, is now five years old. Tony Blair calls it an anomaly, but the evidence as reported in media for existence of torture camps is overwhelming. The torture camp Delta, which houses 470 men never convicted of any crime, has captured the attention of the global
media.
The US led forces fight terrorism with equally terrorist methods and thereby the USA negates values of liberty and freedom. That should be the starting point of any debate about what is acceptable in the west's fight with Islamist extremists. More than 750 men have passed through the camp, with nearly half being released. Many prisoners, past and present, have given consistent and repeated testimony of serious abuses and ill treatment. There is also significant evidence from US officials and government documents of widespread abuse at the camp.
The British detainees known as the Tipton Three allege they were also repeatedly beaten shackled in painful positions for long periods and subjected to sleep deprivation. They were also subjected to strobe lighting, loud music and extremes of hot and cold -- all meant to break them psychologically.
Other detainees have suffered beatings, sexual assaults and death threats. At least one man has been 'water boarded' -- tied to a board and placed under water so that he had the sensation of drowning. The regime at Guantanamo causes psychological suffering that has driven inmates mad, with scores of suicide attempts and three inmates killing themselves last year.
As is known now, Guantanamo is not the only US torture camp. Bagram in Afghanistan has been dogged by stories of abuse, and there are secret US prisons around the world where it is widely feared new horrors are occurring. One of the US's founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, had once stated that any one who trades liberty for security deserves neither and will lose both.
One does not know, if the Bush administration would decide to trade in these tortured detainees in secret
camps all over the world as the hero of Russian novel by N.Gogol "The Dead Souls", written in the 19th century, did it by registering the dead serfs who died under landlords.
Interestingly enough, even US officials are even “shocked” that an inmate's head had been wrapped in tape for quoting from the Holy Qur'an. Another was humiliated for his religious belief and 'baptised' by a soldier posing as a Catholic priest. One official investigation found an inmate had been sexually humiliated and forced to perform dog tricks on a leash. Perhaps Mr. Justice Collins of UK is right when he declared on Guantanamo that America's idea of what is torture is not the same as UK's.
The USA, reeling under the heavy lashes of mischievous ideas floated by the neo-conservatives about imposing a new world order on the rest of the world, has no apologies either for such
secret torture camps being run by its various state funded agencies like CIA the world over or for its “war on terror” actually targeting the so-called Islamic fundamentalists.
As a country fighting for liberal values, democracy and rule of law elsewhere, particularly in oil rich West Asia, the USA should have been prudent in devising anti-terror torture camps and not to behave like a rogue state. Would President Bush, the assumed commander-in-chief of all such inhuman global operations against innocent people, think of considering alternatives available for advancing the US interests globally and also give up the terrorism plank increasingly used for domestic as well as foreign policy purposes?
Dr.Abdul Ruff Colachal
JNU, New Delhi