A Gift of Mobility for Survivors
Benched Cyclist Gives Torture Survivors the Gift of Mobility
Cynthia McArthur was a bike mechanic and an avid cyclist, until she was stricken by chronic fatigue syndrome. She can’t pedal across Europe the way she once did, but she’s turned her skills to a project that is giving the gift of mobility to dozens of torture survivors.
Writing for Minnesota Public Radio’s online magazine (August 25, 2010), Madeleine Baran reports that McArthur has just been chosen as one of the recipients of a $10,000 McKnight Foundation award, given to Minnesota residents “who have demonstrated an exceptional personal commitment to helping others in their communities but who have received little or no public recognition.”
Working with Minnesota’s Center for Victims of Torture, McArthur has established a volunteer program that donates the bicycles she repairs and reconditions (about fifty a year) to survivors through CVT’s “Bikes for Clients” program. Baran writes that McArthur “grew up with a passion for bicycling and had worked repairing bicycles in the 1970s,” when, as the cyclist says, “it was totally uncool for a girl to be a bike mechanic.”
“I had a lot of things happen to me when I was young that weren’t good,” she said. And I just remember saying, ‘I’ll never treat anybody like I’ve been treated.’ So it’s just been a conduit for me to exercise that value.”
McArthur gets information about individual survivors from CVT, and customizes the donated bikes to the client’s height, weight, and gender – with special attention to refurbishing “cool” bikes for children. Baran writes that one of the bikes McArthur worked on was “for a man who had arrived in Minneapolis penniless and without his family. He had been tortured because of his political beliefs and had spent 12 years in jail.” His social worker at CVT relayed this comment from him:
“When I ride a bike, I can ride north or south, east or west for as long as I want, and when I get tired I can lay in the grass and look at the sky.’”
She paused. “I just went, ‘Wow, okay. Now I know why I do this,’ because isn’t that why all of us ride a bike? … It’s about the independence and the freedom and the control and the desire that you fulfill for yourself.”
(Photo above from the McKnight Foundation.)
“American Torture” Author Turns to Costs of Iraq War
“American Torture” Author Turns to Costs of Iraq War
Jeff Kaye, posting at Fire Dog Lake (July 17, 2010), writes that author Michael Otterman is closing down the American Torture blog, named for his groundbreaking book American Torture: From the Cold War to Abu Ghraib and Beyond. Check out Otterman’s fine, but unfortunately final post, “Looking Backward”…
“George W. Bush did not invent torture…
“Yes — the Bush Administration promoted torture. They expanded its use. Former officials — and Bush himself — still defend torture. But they did not invent it, or introduce it into US foreign policy…
“My message was simple: Torture is counterproductive. It is inhumane. And it is not new…The more people knew these things, I thought, the more torture would lose its appeal. But torture persists within the legal black hole at Bagram. Guantanamo remains open and indefinite detention — even for the guiltless — continues. Torture photos are blocked. Accountability thwarted. And torture is still codified. Obama has continued the policies of his predecessor. Change has not come…
“We owe victims of torture one thing above all else: justice. We should seek out all perpetrators of torture. We must expose them for who they are, and for what they’ve done. There is no statute of limitations on inhumanity.”
American Torture will not be accepting or posting new submissions, but Otterman’s new website has information about his ongoing work, including his new book, Erasing Iraq: The Human Costs of Carnage.
(If ordering books or DVDs discussed in this blog from Amazon, please consider doing so through our website, which will help to support the work of The Refuge Media Project. Click on the cover images at left to be redirected to our site.)
Where Credit’s Due
Where Credit’s Due:
Ken Pope & Common Dreams
When I’m citing an article or commentary in one of my blog posts, I will generally try to link to the original source, so that readers can see the piece in context – and so that the source can be properly credited.
In many cases, though, the item has initially been brought to my attention by psychologist Kenneth S. Pope, PhD, whose invaluable email list provides daily references to important articles on psychology and related topics, including essential coverage of the debate within the American Psychological Association over the involvement of healthcare professionals in interrogations. If interested in joining the list, contact him at ken@kspope.com. Ken’s website also offers articles and other resources on a range of topics including torture and refugees, and detainee interrogation.
Another irreplaceable resource is the progressive news service, Common Dreams whose daily emails frequently alert me to important news reports, analyses, and opinions I might otherwise have missed. So, giving credit where it is abundantly due, I would urge you all to check it out and consider signing up today.
Notes from The Field 8-21-10
ABA Report on Immigration Adjudication
Earlier this year, the American Bar Association’s Commission on Immigration released the results of its comprehensive review of system by which the U.S. immigration adjudication system determines whether non-citizens are allowed to stay in the United States or will be deported or removed. In its report, “Reforming the Immigration System: Proposals to Promote Independence, Fairness, Efficiency and Professionalism in the Adjudication of Removal Cases,” the ABA recommends the creation of an independent immigration court, as well as a number of legal changes necessary to improve the fairness and efficiency of immigration processes. The 78-page Executive Summary of the report is available online.
Confronting Anti-Immigrant Myths
Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services has produced a brief factsheet, Immigration Myths and Facts, confronting some of the myths and misconceptions currently being spread about immigrants and immigration.
For more ideas about what you can do to support immigrants and counter anti-immigrant prejudice, visit the LIRS Action Center. (Photo at left from LIRS.)
Vermont Refugee Assistance
…announces that it is changing its name to Vermont Immigration and Asylum Advocates. Founded in 1987 to support refugees fleeing civil wars in Central America, “this grassroots volunteer nonprofit organization has helped thousands of refugees from all over the world. VRA assists those seeking asylum, who are often detained in Vermont jails, and helps immigrants with legal and other assistance. VRA also seeks to educate U.S. citizens and to increase their participation in regional, national, and international refugee and immigration issues.”
See Ken Picard’s article on the organization, “Out of the Darkness,” in Seven Days: Vermont’s Independent Voice.
Hike to Help Refugees
Recognizing that shelter is often the primary need of refugees, Margaret Hahn and the members of Omaha, Nebraska’s Omaha Yoga School, created the Hike to Help Refugees to support the United Nations Refugee Agency. In its first hike, in May 2003, fourteen supporters hiked the 63-mile Wabash Trace Nature Trail, and raised $4,352 to provide all-season tents for refugees in places like Afghanistan and Darfur. Since its inception the group has raised over $65,000, and this year it held hikes, in Iowa, Wisconsin and Nebraska. (Photo from Hike to Help Refugees.)
California Activists Protest Arizona Law
California Activists Protest Arizona Law
Journalist and photographer David Bacon reports that thousands of demonstrators in San Francisco and Oakland, California, have been protesting Arizona’s SB 1070, which requires local law enforcement to check 
the immigration status of people they suspect might be undocumented. He quotes protest leader Renee Saucedo, an attorney with La Raza Centro Legal, as saying “all the proposals from Washington on immigration reform encourage the same criminalization, racial profiling and discrimination. Immigrant communities are demanding an end to these policies and laws.”
Similar protests have been taking place throughout the country, including a demonstration by the Mississippi Immigrants Rights Alliance inside the state capitol in Jackson, in front of a statue of former Senator Theodore Bilbo. Bacon notes: “In the era in which African-Americans were beaten and even lynched for demanding voting and civil rights, Bilbo was…notorious for attacking African Americans, Jews, immigrants, Catholics and all progressive people.’
“A church choir sang “Listen Mr. Bilbo,” written by Bob and Adrienne Claiborne in 1946 and popularized by Pete Seeger and the Almanac Singers. The song begins with the verse:
Listen, Mr. Bilbo, listen to me
I’ll give you a lesson in history.
Listen and I’ll show you that the foreigners you hate
Are the very same people made America great.
Bacon quotes Bill Chandler, director of the Alliance, asking: ”Is not trying to bring this xenophobic and racist Arizona law into Mississippi playing the Bilbo Card? Is it not their stated intent to intimidate and drive immigrants out of our state, just as their ancestors’ intent was to intimidate, terrorize, and drive out African Americans in the last century? And to enforce inequality on those left behind?”
Some of David Bacon’s work is featured on the Refuge Media Project website. Bacon is the author of several books including Illegal People: How Globalization Creates Migration and Criminalizes Immigrants and Communities without Borders: Images and Voices from the World of Migration. (If ordering books or DVDs discussed in this blog from Amazon, please consider using the links above to do so through our website, which will help to support the work of The Refuge Media Project.)
Asylum for Domestic Abuse
Asylum Granted in Domestic Abuse Case
In a New York Times story datelined August 12, 2010, Julia Preston reports on the political asylum case of a Mexican woman who had been sexually abused and severely battered by her common-law husband. She notes that “The outcome of the case of L.R., 43, brings new clarity to asylum law after almost 15 years of arcane and tangled litigation, when claims from domestic abuse victims were regularly dismissed by immigration judges.”
“Department of Homeland Security officials found that the woman had proved that she could not expect the Mexican authorities to protect her from the violence and murder threats of her attacker, and that she could not safely relocate anywhere in the country to escape him…
“Based on a favorable recommendation from Department of Homeland Security officials, an immigration judge on Aug. 4 approved asylum for the woman, who is known only as L.R., because asylum cases are confidential…
“Homeland Security Department officials said they would proceed cautiously with asylum claims based on sexual abuse. “The department continues to view domestic violence as a possible basis for asylum in the United States,” said Matthew Chandler, an agency spokesman. But he said each case “requires scrutiny of the specific threat the applicant faces.”
Asylum was also granted to the woman’s two now-adult sons. Read the full article at the Times’ website.
Physicians and Torture
Physicians and psychologists participated
in torture. What does that really mean?
Physicians and Torture
In much of the discussion about whether physicians and psychologists were involved in the torture of U.S. detainees during interrogations, those of us who are not healthcare professionals may sometimes have been puzzled about what that actually meant on the ground. Why was their presence – which violates all kinds of international conventions, as well as their own professional standards – so important to the military and CIA?
In her post, “The Professionalization of Torture,” at the Human Rights First blog, Melina Milazzo discusses a new commentary from the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) which helps to explain. A brief quote…
Despite medical ethical standards which prohibit physicians from facilitating torture or being present when torture takes place, medical professionals performed on-site medical evaluations of detainees before and during interrogation. Moreover, even while recognizing that these techniques created serious medical risks (e.g. waterboarding creates risks of drowning, hypothermia, aspiration pneumonia, or laryngospasm; cramped confinement could result in thrombosis; and lengthy exposure to cold water could lead to death), the CIA Office of Medical Services (OMS) approved that these methods did not amount to torture if certain medical limitations were in place.
For example, a detainee could be diapered until evidence of skin loss; exposed to temperatures right up to the development of hypothermia; exposed to noise just under the decibel levels associated with permanent hearing loss; deprived of food up to the point of significant malnutrition; subjected to shackling in upright sitting or horizontal position for 48 hours (longer allowed with medical monitoring); and confined to a box for 8 consecutive hours or 18 hours a day if placed in the larger box…
Read the full blog post here. The complete JAMA commentary, “Roles of CIA Physicians in Enhanced Interrogation and Torture of Detainees,” by Leonard S. Rubenstein, JD and Stephen N. Xenakis, MD, is available from the organization’s website but, unfortunately, by purchase or subscription only. Maybe you have a friend who’s an AMA member…
U.S. Troops & Torture
U.S. Troops and Torture
Guest-blogging for the Washington Post (August 9, 2010), Steven E. Levingston highlights None of Us Were Like This Before: American Soldiers and Torture,a new book by Joshua E.S. Phillips. “The torture took place away from hot spots like Abu Ghraib,” writes Levingston, “and was conducted not by CIA agents or prison guards but by U.S. soldiers who never expected their tour of duty would present them with these unimaginable conditions. The soldiers participated, witnessed or blew the whistle on the abuse – and however they responded they were badly scarred.” There follow some brief quotes from None of Us Were Like This Before. (If ordering books or DVDs discussed in this blog from Amazon, please consider doing so through our website, which will help to support the work of The Refuge Media Project.)
About two years ago I met former Army interrogator, Don Dzagulones, who explained how his involvement in detainee abuse had a more harrowing long-term impact on him than surviving deadly ambushes in Vietnam. “When you’re attacked, you have to respond,” he said. “But other circumstances, like prisoner abuse for example, you have a choice…[and so] you’re probably more affected by wanton acts of violence than responding to violence.”
This kind of wartime trauma remains largely unrecognized and misunderstood by the public. But it isn’t unknown to clinicians.
After four years of research, the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study found that abusive violence — which included “torturing, wounding, or killing hostages or prisoners of war” — had the strongest correlation with PTSD for the 3,000 veterans interviewed for the study.
__________________________________________
Army combat medic Jonathan Millantz contacted me four years ago to tell me about detainee abuse in Iraq, beyond Abu Ghraib. “It’s very tough when you have a conscience that is filled with atrocities [and] you know what you did to people,” said Millantz. “I went to confession, I went to counseling. I still can’t forgive myself for what I did to those poor people.”
__________________________________________
Like Dzagulones, Millantz reconsidered his involvement in prisoner abuse and torture when he returned home, and it drove him to speak out at anti-war events. The distress over wartime experiences lingered for him and fellow unit members long after their return: some had violent outbursts, were plagued by depression and sleeplessness, and some engaged in substance abuse and other self-destructive behavior.
9500 Liberty
9500 Liberty
For readers in the Boston area: the film 9500 Liberty, which I wrote about recently, will open at the Coolidge Corner Theater in Boston on September 10, 2010. Producer Chris Rigopulos, and possibly other members of the production team, will lead Q&A sessions at the Friday and Saturday screenings (September 10-11). The cable television and DVD release of this remarkable film are scheduled soon after. For theater openings in other areas check the film’s website.
Notice to our readers
Notice to our Readers:
Faced with having to deal with the elimination of our previous WordPress theme, I decided just to go ahead with a new look. Let me know what you think. If there’s anything missing – or any other problems – please let me know by email: ben@refugemediaproject.org
The masthead photo is of the sun rising through storm clouds over southern Vermont during the recent Kopkind/Center for Independent Documentary “film camp.” I’ll do a post about that soon.
In the News 8-9-2010
In the News 8-9-2010
A couple of recent editorials in the New York Times highlight critical issues regarding refugees and immigration detainees: In Vulnerable Refugees, Losing a Lifeline (August 8, 2010) the editors note that “In less than two months, unless Congress acts quickly, thousands of refugees who fled for their lives from places like Iran, Cuba, Russia, Somalia and Vietnam — and who are now elderly, disabled and poor — are about to learn the cold limits of compassion…The letters are already going out.” At that point roughly 3,800 refugees — the first of many more – will lose the relatively paltry welfare benefits currently available to them.
“…those affected by the looming deadline are not like other immigrants, and are unusually vulnerable. They did not come here for jobs. They are all by definition survivors of persecution, torture or warfare…Many have no relatives here. Some are homebound, and were already past 70 when they arrived, too late to learn English, highly unlikely to complete the years-long path to gaining citizenship. They are all old, ill or disabled, and the country that welcomed them is the only benefactor they have.”
In Detention and the Disabled (July 30, 2010) the paper cites a recent Human Rights Watch/American Civil Liberties Union report on the plight of immigrants with mental disabilities who are currently stuck in DHS’s convoluted and overburdened detention-and-deportation system — a system that, as documented in the report, is “plagued by overcrowding, mistreatment and shocking medical neglect.
“For the mentally ill or disabled, often unable to understand the charges and punishment they face, the experience is even worse, with prolonged detentions and removal without a fair hearing — “deportation by default,” in the report’s words — all too common…
“There is no official count of how many mentally disabled people go through immigration courts or detention, though the report extrapolates from statistics to estimate the number at roughly 57,000 in 2008.”
Read or download the full report, Deportation by Default, at the Human Rights Watch website.
Physicians and Arizona’s Immigration Law
Will Arizona SB-1070 Affect the
Physician Patient Relationship?
A letter to the New England Journal of Medicine (June 2, 2010) questions whether Arizona physicians could be prosecuted for failing to report patients who are in the country illegally. Doctor Lucas Restrepo, MD, of the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, writes that the new Arizona state immigration bill…“will seriously obstruct, if not undermine, the practice of medicine in the state of Arizona.”
“It can be argued that health care providers who neglect to report illegal immigrants under their care will violate the law and be considered criminals. The bill provides physicians with no guidance as to what constitutes “reasonable grounds” to suspect that somebody is in the country illegally, leaving the particulars of such scrutiny to anyone’s imagination…One interpretation is that health care providers in Arizona will need to ask for a passport before seeing certain patients.
“Asking patients to produce immigration documents violates the trust that physicians, nurses, and other health care workers endeavor to earn from them. This bill threatens one of the oldest traditions of medicine: physicians shall protect patients regardless of nationality or race.”
Together with two other physicians, Robert Spetzler and WilliamShapiro, Dr. Restrepo also wrote to The Arizona Republic saying, among other things, “It is unclear whether health-care professionals like ourselves will infringe on the law if we don’t report patients or their families…based on a vague suspicion of illegality…Asking patients to produce a passport violates the trust that we endeavor to earn from them. Realistically, physicians don’t have time for yet another bureaucratic routine…”
Torture or Treatment?
Torture or Treatment:
Would You Participate?
Writing in Psychiatric Times for July 30, 2010, H. Steven Moffic, MD, raises the question, would you ever participate in torture? It may seem that this subject has been argued to death, but he puts it in a rather interesting “real world” context.
First of all, he notes that while the issue of the involvement of mental health professionals in interrogations at Guantanamo and elsewhere have received a great deal of attention, allegations of the use of electric shocks and other aversive techniques in the treatment of adults and children with disabilities living at a Massachusetts residential school (arguably also torture) have received far less attention.
He also points out a number of ambiguities in the anti-torture statements of each of the major organizations of the “helping professions.”
“All of this leaves me a bit–or maybe more than a bit–uneasy. How can a simple position statement do justice to the complexity of these situations? Why all the attention to military torture, as very few of us work in such settings, while the more common residential facilities for adolescents are ignored? What about jails and prisons, where mental health professionals commonly work, and where reports of inmate abuse are common?”
Moffic has served in the military, and also works part time in a prison where, as he notes, “security is clearly the priority over healthcare.” However, he specializes in the treatment of refugees, many of whom suffer from PTSD.
“It is easy to claim the presumed high ethical ground when one is not involved in the real life situation at hand. It is also easy to project and proclaim strong positions in order to cover our own inadequacies and anxiety. So I try to imagine a scenario where I am put in the position of being asked–or ordered–to help out at an interrogation and I think (however erroneously) that my knowledge might help prevent the harm or death of a loved one, colleagues, or many soldiers or citizens. Should I always follow the position statement of the American Psychiatric Association, or justify an exception? What would you do under such circumstances?”
If any of you want to offer your own answers to that question, please send us your comments.
Justice in Cambodia?
Justice in Cambodia?
Following up our thread on the Cambodian War Crimes trials, check out Heather Ryan’s 
thoughtful July 28, 2010, analysis on the Soros Foundation’s Open Society Institute Blog. Her starting point is the reaction of victims to what they see as a light sentence handed out to Kaing Guek Eav (usually called Duch, or Doik), the first of the Khmer Rouge war criminals to be tried and convicted. Duch was the warden of the Tuol Sleng prison camp where more than 12,000 Cambodians were tortured and murdered.
What’s different from most of the coverage I’ve seen, though, is that she takes off from there to analyze what would really constitute appropriate justice in such a case – from the perspectives not only of the victims, but of international judicial precedent. She concludes:
“…the controversy about this trial’s outcome should not overshadow its significance. This was the first public trial against a defendant deeply involved in the crimes of the Khmer Rouge. Close to 30,000 Cambodians attended a portion of the proceedings in person, and millions more Cambodians watched on television. The trial’s most important contribution may not be time Duch spends behind bars, but the catalyzing effect this event has had in generating discussions about justice, impunity, and the history of the Khmer Rouge. Real justice and accountability is never possible in silence.”
The article deserves a close reading, and I would welcome reactions and comments by our readers.
Immigrant Healthcare Questioned
Study Raises Questions About
Quality of Immigrant Healthcare
“Rationing by Inconvenience”
A letter in today’s New England Journal of Medicine raises serious questions about the impact of Massachusetts’ state-subsidized health insurance program on the likelihood that immigrants will receive adequate healthcare.
The authors report that under “Commonwealth Care,” approximately 30,000 legal immigrants were involuntarily transferred last fall from the state program to a new private insurance plan, CeltiCare, at a saving to the state roughly $2,600 per person. These savings, however, were achieved by excluding some of the hospitals and community health centers most frequently used by immigrants, including the authors’ employer, the Cambridge Health Alliance (CHA).
The study identified 1325 patients who had visited a CHA primary care provider during the year before being moved to CeltiCare. For 73% English was not their primary language. At least 38% had hypertension, diabetes mellitus, and/or a psychiatric disorder. Checking the list of 217 adult primary care providers listed by CeltiCare, within 5 miles of CHA’s ZIP Code, the authors found that “25% could not be reached at the telephone number provided. Of those available by telephone, only 37% were actually accepting new CeltiCare patients, and the average wait for an appointment was 33 days. In all, only 60 providers were accepting new CeltiCare patients, and only 38 could provide service for even one of the three major linguistic minorities.” The authors conclude:
“…we believe that patients who were switched from Commonwealth Care to CeltiCare had inadequate access to primary care three months into this new program. We fear that such “rationing by inconvenience” shuts patients out of care to the detriment of their health but to the benefit of CeltiCare’s bottom line. Policymakers, in Massachusetts and nationally, should reassess the role of profit-driven insurers in the provision of safety-net care.”
Immigrants’ Experience with Publicly Funded Private Health Insurance N Engl J Med 2010; 363:598; August 5, 2010, Ruth Hertzman-Miller MD, MPH; Malgorzata Dawiskiba MD; and Cassie Frank MD
Films to Watch For: 7-30-10
Films to Watch For: 7-30-10
9500 Liberty
I had the privilege of seeing an advance screening of a remarkable documentary last night. 9500 Liberty is being screened to community groups around the country – and especially in Arizona – 
in advance of its theatrical (and hopefully television) release in the fall. It was shown here in Boston, by MIRA: the Massachusetts Immigrant and Refugee Advocacy Coalition.
The showing marked the first day of implementation of Arizona’s draconian SB1070 – appropriate because the film documents the experience of the community of Manassas, Virginia, where the Prince William County Board of Supervisors voted in a very similar law in 2007. The furor that followed is documented in compelling detail by two young filmmakers who clearly didn’t know what they were getting into when they first filmed a street confrontation between Hispanic demonstrators and a white suburbanite.
They knew they were onto something crucial, though, and had the guts and determination to follow it up. Over the following couple of years, they filmed every aspect of the growing community conflict that they could, much of their documentation going directly to YouTube, where it, in turn, became a key part of the community debate.
A sociologist friend who saw the film with me was immediately inspired with the film’s teaching potential. Among the themes it illuminates are the power of elites, opinion leaders, and public servants in local politics; community organizing in the age of the internet; the impact of the blogosphere; and many, many more. If you’re concerned about the way the immigration debate is going in this country, you have to see this film.
The Project’s website has a listing of upcoming venues. If you don’t see one that works for you, get in touch with your local theater and public television station. Much of the material which went into this film can also be seen on the project’s YouTube Channel, but my personal recommendation would be to see the full-length film first. NOTE: See the link for “House Party Campaign” in the upper right corner of the “Screenings” page. The producers are offering to send a copy of the program to anyone willing to organize a showing in their own community.
Enemies of the People
This film received a Special Jury Prize at Sundance, and was picked by Human Rights Watch for its Nestor Almendros Award for Courage in Filmmaking. I haven’t seen it yet, but in light of our recent discussion of the Cambodian war crimes trials, wanted to pass on an alert to our readers. To quote from Stephen Holden’s review in the July 29, 2010, New York Times, From the Killing Fields, on a Mission of Truth:
“Some say that almost two million people died in the killing fields,” declares Thet Sambath, a polite, soft-spoken Cambodian journalist for The Phnom Penh Post, in the opening moments of the documentary “Enemies of the People.” He adds, “Nobody understands why so many people were killed at that time…”
The heart of the film, a collaboration by Mr. Thet Sambath and the British documentarian Rob Lemkin, consists of meticulously cataloged interviews conducted during nearly a decade with perpetrators of the mass execution, many of them rural farmers living in northwest Cambodia. As they open up and matter-of-factly describe horrific acts, the camera scours their weather-beaten faces…
At times, Mr. Thet Sambath suggests a one-man Cambodian Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Instead of affixing blame, he seeks the healing power of confession.
The list of upcoming screenings listed on the film’s website is pretty sparse so far. It’s opening in NYC today, and in LA next week. Again, contact your nearby theater owner or chain. The film is available on Netflix.
Resources 7-28-2010
New Resources
Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights
Series editor Bert Lockwood wrote to alert us to this series from the University of Pennsylvania Press. Check out their catalog.
Still thinking about the news from the war crimes trials in Cambodia — and the responses of some survivors to the guilty verdict for the head of the notorious Tuol Sleng prison 
(see our recent post) — I particularly noticed Behind the Killing Fields: A Khmer Rouge Leader and One of His Victims, by Gina Chon, a Wall Street Journal reporter, and Sambath Thet, a survivor who now writes for the Phnom Penh Post.
“Based on more than 1,000 hours of interviews with the top surviving Khmer Rouge leader, Nuon Chea, Behind the Killing Fields follows the journey of a man who began as a dedicated freedom fighter and wound up accused of crimes against humanity….Chea was Pol Pot’s top lieutenant. He is now in prison, facing prosecution in a United Nations-Cambodian tribunal…The book traces how the seeds of the Killing Fields were sown and what led one man to believe that mass killing was necessary for the greater good.
“Coauthor Sambath Thet, a Khmer Rouge survivor, shares his personal perspectives on the murderous regime and how some victims have managed to rebuild their lives. The stories of Nuon Chea and Sambath Thet collide when the two meet.”
Human Rights in Troubled Honduras: Web Resources
The Refuge Media Project’s former Associate Producer, Roz Dzelzitis, has a long-standing and very comprehensive website titled May I Speak Freely, reporting on human rights and other issues in Honduras, both currently and with a long-term historical perspective.
Our friend, radio journalist Sofia Jarrin-Thomas, who is now based in Ecuador, has slso recently launched a blog reporting on human rights violations in Honduras, which includes a number of entries on occurrences of torture. You should also check out Sofia’s terrific oral history project on El Salvador, El Salvador: Stories of War and Peace.
A Tough Road Home: Uprooted
Iraqis in Jordan, Syria and Iraq
A new report from the International Rescue Committee regarding the status of displaced 
Iraqi refugees (their third since 2008) concludes that “millions of Iraqi civilians remain uprooted and desperate, but ongoing strife and persecution, occupied and ruined homes and lack of vital services in their communities of origin preclude most from returning home safely.”
There are hundreds of Iraqi refugees living in extremely difficult conditions in Syria, Jordan, and other countries throughout the Middle East, while estimates of “internally displaced persons” inside Iraq range from 1.5 million to well over 2 million. Despite some reports to the contrary, according to the IRC, “only a tiny fraction” of displaced Iraqis have been able to return to their homes, while aid from the international community is declining. “With no end to their suffering in sight, hopelessness and frustration are pervasive,” the IRC report states, and it expresses grave concern about a “lost generation” of Iraqi youth. View the IRC’s Press Release on the study, or download the full report.
Two Rooms a Physician Should Never Enter
Ronald Pies, MD, Editor in Chief of Psychiatric Times, draws parallels between the controversial issues of physician involvement in capital punishment cases and in interrogation of suspected terrorists, in his provocative January 26, 2010, editorial.
Rutgers Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights
This academic center “seeks to enhance our understanding of mass human rights violations and the principles and mechanisms meant to prevent them, protect the vulnerable, and help victims recover. ..The Center promotes cutting-edge research and scholarship, educational initiatives, workshops and seminars, outreach and commemorative programs, and international collaborations related to genocide and human rights.
Khmer Rouge Torturer Found Guilty
Head of Khmer Rouge
Torture Camp Found Guilty
30 years after the end of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge regime, the head of the notorious Tuol Sleng prison, or S-21, has been found guilty of crimes against humanity and war crimes. In the first trial of a leading Khmer Rouge figure, the United Nations-
backed tribunal found that Kaing Guek Eay, usually called Duch, was responsible for the torture and murder of more than 14,000 prisoners. It sentenced him to 35 years in prison (including 16 years already served.) Cambodia has no death penalty.
Although Duch (pronounced Doik) admitted to most of the charges against him, his defense argued that he was simply part of a larger killing machine which he was powerless to oppose. Seth Mydans, in the New York Times of July 26, 2010, quotes him as saying, “I am accountable to the entire Cambodian population for the souls that perished,” but adding: “I ended up serving a criminal organization. I could not withdraw from it. I was like a cog in a machine. I regret and humbly apologize to the dead souls.”
Mydans quotes historian David Chandler, author of a book about Tuol Sleng, as saying that Duch was the only one of five defendants to admit guilt: “’He’s a guy who’s thought about it, faced up to some stuff,” said Mr. Chandler, “Duch is the only human on trial. The others are monsters.” Check out Mydans’ article for further details, and our prior post on this case for some insight on the mind of this mass torturer.
Despite the historic significance of the trial, Mydans notes that “Over the years, Cambodia has moved on, with new generations, new concerns and new horizons. Many young people know little about the Khmer Rouge era, and many older people have chosen to forget.”
…but Survivors Protest Sentence
Mydans’ followup story the following day notes that “some survivors were distraught over what they saw as a lenient sentence, one that could possibly allow the defendant…to walk free one day.
“I am not satisfied!” cried one of the few survivors, Chum Mey, 79, who had testified in excruciating detail about his 12 days of torture. “We are victims two times, once in the Khmer Rouge time and now once again…His prison is comfortable, with air-conditioning, food three times a day, fans and everything,” he said. “I sat on the floor with filth and excrement all around.”
Bou Meng, 69, another survivor who testified at the trial about his torture and humiliation, said he had waited for this day to quiet the ghosts he said continued to torment him. “I felt it was like a slap in the face,” he said of the verdict.
But Huy Vannak, a television news director, said it was enough simply to have justice in a court, 30 years after the killing stopped. No sentence could measure up to the atrocities Duch committed, he added. “Even if we chop him up into two million pieces it will not bring our family members back,” he said. “We have to move on now.”
(Tuol Sleng photos by Inbal Goldstein)
Newspapers Helped Redefine Torture
Student Journalists Document the Pandering
of Major Media to the Bush Administration:
Newspapers Collaborated
in Redefining Torture
“On the one hand, waterboarding is torture. On the other hand….
I’m sorry – there is no other hand. Waterboarding is torture, period. It’s been that way for decades…”
That’s the compelling lead of Will Bunch’s July 1, 2010, post on Media Matters for America. It’s titled “Torture” Study Reveals Appalling Cowardice of America’s Newspapers and it goes on:
“…it was torture when we went after Japanese war criminals who used the ancient and inhumane interrogation tactic, it was torture when Pol Pot and some of the worst dictators known to mankind used it against their own people, and it was torture to the U.S. military which once punished soldiers who adopted the grim practice.
“And waterboarding was described as “torture,” almost without fail, in America’s newspapers. Until 2004, after the arrival of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and their criminal notions of “enhanced interrogations.”
Please note that Bunch’s article includes sourcing for each of the above assertions, if you have any doubts about their accuracy.
He’s reacting to a devastating new study from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Torture at Times: Waterboarding in the Media. The study documents the fact that, since the 1930’s, America’s major newspapers had almost invariably referred to waterboarding as torture, or implied that it was torture, (The New York Times in 81.5% of its articles mentioning the subject; The Los Angeles Times in 96.3% of its articles.) Yet, after the controversy over the Bush administation’s use of the practice hit the news the same papers almost never referred to waterboarding as torture (The New York Times, 1.4% of articles; The Los Angeles Times, 4.8%.)
Credit Where it’s Due:
“Never before in my adult life,” says Bunch, “have I been so ashamed of my profession, journalism.” Yet neither he nor any of the other journalists whose commentaries I’ve seen has done anything more than mention the fact that the study was authored not by professional journalists, but by students. It’s both remarkable and disturbing that, while a host of professional writers have taken anecdotal note of the mainstream media’s acquiescence in administration “newspeak,” we had to wait on a group of students to come up with the hard evidence.
So, I want to at least take this opportunity to give much deserved credit to the student authors: Torture at Times: Waterboarding in the Media was done at Harvard’s Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy by law student Neal Desai and students Andre Pineda, Majken Runquist and Mark Fusunyan. The research team also included students Katy Glenn, Gabrielle Gould, Michelle Katz, Henry Lichtblau, Maggie Morgan, Sophia Wen and Sandy Wong.
Let’s hope we’ll see some of those names showing up as bylines in the major media not too long from now – and let’s hope they manage to hang onto their commitment to getting the facts.
Other online coverage of the Report include Bunch’s comments on the NY Times’ initial response to the study, Glenn Greenwald, at Salon.com, Adam Serwer, at American Prospect, and no doubt many others.
Psychologists and Torture
Will U.S. Psychologists Ever Be
Called to Account for Torture
No United States official has ever been held accountable for the undeniably cruel treatment of detainees at Guantánamo and elsewhere. In the absence of government action, there are at least three efforts underway to sanction psychologists, who were involved in torture, through their professional licensing boards.
Ohio Board Urged to Investigate
Gitmo Psychologist Larry James
On July 8, 2010, Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic announced it has called on Ohio’s Psychology Board to investigate the conduct of Larry C. James, who was Chief Psychologist at Guantánamo Bay Naval Station, Cuba. According to the Clinic, “despite the prison’s record of torture during his tenure, Dr. James obtained an Ohio psychology license in 2008 and currently holds the influential post of Dean at Wright State University’s School of Professional Psychology in Dayton.” The complaint was filed in conjunction with an Ohio attorney, and on behalf of four Ohio residents.
“We rely on psychologists to follow the ethics of their profession, and to do no harm,” said complainant Josephine Setzler. “If a psychologist uses his professional training to facilitate suffering, then should he really be licensed to treat patients in Ohio?”
James was the senior psychologist on Guantánamo’s BSCT (Behavioral Science Consultation Team – mental health professionals whose job was to advise on and participate in interrogations.) The complaint argues that during his tenure, ”boys and men were threatened with rape and death for themselves and their family members; sexually, culturally, and religiously humiliated; forced naked; deprived of sleep; subjected to sensory deprivation, over-stimulation, and extreme isolation; short-shackled into stress positions for hours; and physically assaulted. The evidence indicates that abuse of this kind was systemic, that BSCT health professionals played an integral role in its planning and practice, and that Dr. James, in his position of authority, at minimum knew or should have known it was being inflicted.”
The complaint also argues that James “failed to fulfill his duty to report abuse, including abuse he personally witnessed.” Some of the evidence presented is revealed in James’ own recently-published book, Fixing Hell: An Army Psychologist Confronts Abu Ghraib.
For information about the International Human Rights Clinic, part of Harvard Law School’s Human Rights Program, contact Cara Solomon.
CENTER FOR JUSTICE & ACCOUNTABILITY
TARGETS N.Y. PSYCHOLOGIST JOHN LESO
On July 7, 2010, the San Francisco-based Center for Justice and Accountability called on the New York State Office of Professions to investigate Dr. John Francis Leso for his participation in abusive interrogation and torture at the U.S. detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, and to revoke his N.Y. license as a psychologist. Leso was Larry James’ predecessor on the Guantánamo Behavioral Science Consultation Team.
The complaint was filed on behalf of Dr. Steven Reisner, a New York psychologist, teacher, and trauma expert recently honored for his work against torture. “If the government isn’t going to hold these doctors legally accountable for the torture, at least their fellow health professionals can hold them ethically accountable for violating our time-honored principles,” says Dr. Reisner, according to CJA.
The CJA complaint alleges that Leso violated professional standards for New York psychologists when he recommended a series of escalating physically and psychologically abusive interrogation tactics to be used on detainees, personally supervised interrogations where his tactics were used, and actually participated in the application of these tactics. (Read more about the complaint in Reisner v. Leso, or download the full complaint.)
NORTHWESTERN U. JUSTICE CENTER TARGETS
TEXAS PSYCHOLOGIST JAMES MITCHELL
The MacArthur Justice Center at Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago has filed a complaint against Texas psychologist James Mitchell, a CIA-contractor accused of torturing prisoners in the agency’s secret prison program.
The Center’s site reprints a June 25, 2010, column by Andy Worthington for The Public Record, Abu Zubaydah and the Case Against Torture Architect James Mitchell. Worthington writes that “a new front in the search for accountability opened up,” when the Center, together with a Texas psychologist and an attorney, “filed a complaint to the Texas State Board of Examiners of Psychologists regarding another architect of the torture program, James Elmer Mitchell. The complaint…accuses Mitchell of numerous grave violations of his duties as a practicing psychologist.”
As consultants to the CIA, Mitchell and his colleague John Bruce Jessen took a program originally designed to prepare U.S. troops to resist torture (the Air Force’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape program, or SERE), and “re-engineered” it into one for the administration of torture. In the case of prisoner Abu Zubaydah, according to Worthington, the complaint states that Mitchell “ordered that Zubaydah be chained to a chair for weeks on end; that he be whipped by the neck into concrete walls; that he be stuffed into a small, black box and left for hours; that he be hung naked from the ceiling; that he be kept awake for eleven consecutive days, and sprayed with cold water if he dozed. But the torture designed by Dr. Mitchell was about to pass to another level…”
The other level was waterboarding: allegedly 83 times in August, 2002, alone. Worthington’s article is worth reading in full, as is the complaint filed by the MacArthur Center.
WHAT ABOUT THE AMERICAN
PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION?
Since evidence of the torture of prisoners held by the U.S. first arose, the American Psychological Association has been alone among the major professional organizations in refusing to take an unequivocal stance against involvement by its members. Even after a membership referendum forced it to take a stronger position, it has still not as yet incorporated that position into its official code of ethics, and no APA member has ever been disciplined for participating in abuse of detainees.
It seems remarkable, then, that APA has now come out in support of the MacArthur Justice Centers complain against Mitchell. AP writer Andrew Welsh-Huggins reports on Huffington Post that the Association “has taken the unprecedented step of supporting an attempt to strip the license of a 
psychologist accused of overseeing the torture of a CIA detainee.” He quotes Leah Farberman of the APA as saying “The allegations put forward in the complaint and those that are on the public record about Dr. Mitchell are simply so serious, and if true, such a gross violation of his professional ethics, that we felt it necessary to act.” If any psychologist who was a member of the APA were found to have committed such acts, Faberman said, “he or she would be expelled from APA membership.”
Maybe not so remarkable after all…Virtually all of the allegations against Mitchell, James, and Leso have been public record for years, yet the APA has not chosen to act until now, when the actions of the three are about to be aired in public proceedings – and only against Mitchell, who is not a member of APA. The Association reportedly has no plans to back the efforts against James and Leso, who are APA members.
Despite the appearance of finally taking a principled position, the organization will maintain its record of never having taken disciplinary action against any of its members for involvement in torture, no matter how clear the evidence.
For another report on these cases, and the role of the APA, see Daniel Schulman in Mother Jones. Sometime in the next few weeks I’ll be posting additional background on the APA story.
