We’ve moved…
IMPORTANT: Our Blog Has a New Address!
Dear Friends of The Refuge Media Project:
In the process of better integrating this blog, Caring for Survivors of Torture, with our website, it has been necessary to change the blog’s URL. Our new web address is: www.refugemediaproject.org/blog.
Beginning in July, 2011, all articles will be posted to the new location, which will also include all of our prior posts. Click the link above to go to the new site, and be sure to make the change in your address book and elsewhere.
If you have subscribed to receive notifications of new posts by email, you may need to do so again. The link is just below the picture in the right-hand column. If you haven’t subscribed, now would be a good time to do so.
Thanks for your continued support,
Ben Achtenberg, Project Director & Producer
Immigration Focus: June 25, 2011
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Journalist
Reveals He is an Illegal Immigrant
The lead story for this post has got to be Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas’s revelation, in the New York Times Magazine, that he has been an illegal immigrant since arriving here from the Philippines when he was twelve. Some highlights of his story are also included in the short video below, from the group Define American.
“Maintaining a deception for so long distorts your sense of self. You start wondering who you’ve become, and why.”
Vargas’s story is too revealing and too important to try to summarize — please read it — but one of the things that most struck me was the many, many people who encouraged and helped the young student, then reporter, to pursue his education and career despite his status. Many of them have authorized Vargas to use their names in his article (and their images in the video) despite the fact that they themselves might be subject to legal or professional sanctions for doing so.
The most memorable anecdote, to me, was of the high school choir director who cancelled a planned choir trip to Japan and took the group to Hawaii instead, so that Vargas would not need a passport and could be included. It seems to me an apt parable for the kind of welcoming acceptance that Americans are capable of when they are not overcome with anti-immigrant hysteria.
“There are believed to be 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. We’re not always who you think we are. Some pick your strawberries or care for your children. Some are in high school or college. And some, it turns out, write news articles you might read. I grew up here. This is my home. Yet even though I think of myself as an American and consider America my country, my country doesn’t think of me as one of its own.”
Number of Refugees at a 15-Year High
The United Nations High Commission for Refugees reports that “the number of forcibly displaced people around the world has reached a 15-year high.” For 2010, UNHCR estimates an incredible 43.7 million people displaced by war and natural disasters. Even more disturbing, its report indicates that the number of refugees able to return to their homes – only about 200,000 – was the lowest in two decades, and the number in “protracted situations” was the highest in a decade. An estimated seven million people have been living in refugee camps for ten years or more – many of them for as long as thirty years.
Contrary to the perception that wealthy, developed nations bear the main burden of hosting refugees, the UNHCR report indicates exactly the opposite. Roughly 80% of the world’s refugee population find refuge in developing nations, many of them among the world’s poorest, most politically troubled, and least able to cope with the influx. Pakistan hosts the largest number, followed byIran and Syria. Germany ranks fourth and the United States is ninth – but welcomes only 26,000 more refugees than the much smaller United Kingdom, which is in tenth place.
Immigrants Behind Bars: How, Why, and How Much?
This new report from the National Immigration Forum looks at the costs local jurisdictions incur through the often unnecessary detention of immigrants:
“[This] backgrounder provides explanations of the ways that immigrants end up in local custody…In recent years police have increasingly been drawn into immigration enforcement operations, and as a result, local jails are holding increased numbers of immigrants, even those not facing criminal charges. Detaining immigrants in state or local custody creates additional costs and burdens on local law enforcement agencies, and the unnecessary and prolonged detention of immigrants costs local budgets millions of taxpayer dollars per year.”
Visit the Forum’s website for other publications.
Anti-Immigrant Net Snags Citizens as Well
A recent Miami Herald article by Alfonso Chardy documents the arrest of Christopher Zambrano, a U.S. citizen stopped by immigration or Homeland Security officials (in black clothes, in a black SUV) while he was riding his bicycle. Zambrano had no proof of citizenship (he doesn’t own a car, so didn’t even have a driver’s license) so was arrested, handcuffed, and jailed by Miami-Dade police using the excuse of a three-year-old warrant for driving with an expired license.
The article goes on to discuss a number of other Miami-area cases recounted in El Nuevo Herald (the Miami Herald’s Spanish-language sister publication). Chardy notes that, while both the Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials deny racial or ethnic profiling, “the fact remains that all of the citizens who spoke about their cases with El Nuevo Herald are Hispanic, either native-born or naturalized.” Several such cases are described in the article.
Special Visas Available as a
Tool to Protect Trafficking Victims
It appears that a valuable tool which can be used to protect trafficking victims in the United States is not being widely utilized. According to an Associated Press article by Russell Contreras, the Bureau of Citizenship and Immigration Services has initiated a national educational campaign regarding visas which can be offered to illegal immigrants who are victims of human trafficking. 5,000 of the special visas are available, but only 3-500 were issued last year. By contrast, there is another type of special visa available to victims of mental and physical abuse such as domestic violence victims. 10,000 of these are available, and in most years all 10,000 are issued.
Contreras quotes the agency’s Boston director Denis Riordan as saying “It’s not that people are getting denied. They just aren’t applying.” Riordan said that victims are afraid to come forward out of fear of deportation, and that their traffickers exploit that fear to maintain control over them. “A situation…that promotes fear and hopelessness and isolation is unacceptable in this country,” he said. Some information about the special visas is available from these website locations.
T-Visas (for trafficking victims)
U-Visas (for victims of mental & physical abuse)
Note that family members of victims of these crimes
may be eligible to obtain visas as well.
Resources: June 24, 2011
“The discourse on torture
has changed for the worse…”
The International Rehabilitation Center for Torture Victims (IRCT) has released it’s annual report for 2010, the Center’s 25th anniversary year. IRCT is one of the foundational organizations of the anti-torture and torture rehabilitation movements worldwide. It now has 147 member centers in 73 countries on all continents. Yet, as the Report’s introduction says:
“In recent years, the discourse on torture has changed for the worse. While torture has never before been so prominent in the public debate, we’ve witnessed a gradual erosion of the absolute prohibition of torture. We can see some of those formerly or even currently in positions of authority in powerful countries manipulate the public into thinking there is some sort of “torture lite,” that torture is acceptable in some circumstances. In this harsh climate where some, including a former U.S. President, continue to justify the erosion of the most fundamental of rights, it is our duty to continue to remind the world that notions of the acceptability of torture are as odious as they are illegal.
Torture Journal – Latest Issue Now Available
The latest issue of the IRCT’s Torture Journal is now also available online. Lead articles focus on the reconciliation process in Cambodia, mental health care for refugee torture survivors in Hungary, and evaluating the services provided by torture rehabilitation programs around the world.
Do Empathy and Violence Follow the Same Brain Pathways?
Ken Pope passes on an interesting news release from the Spanish Foundation for Science & Technology. A February, 2010, article in Revista de Neurologia suggests that the brain structures and pathways which play a “fundamental role” in empathy, are also those most implicated in regulating aggression and violence. Lead author Luis Moya Albiol told the interviewer: “We all know that encouraging empathy has an inhibiting effect on violence, but this may not only be a social question but also a biological one – stimulation of these neuronal circuits in one direction reduces their activity in the other.”
“Educating people to be empathic could be an education for peace,” he added, “bringing about a reduction in conflict and belligerent acts.” At one level this seems reasonable, maybe even obvious, but how do we square it with the many accounts of loving family men who were concentration camp administrators by day.
The article, Bases neuronales de la empatia, is available online (in Spanish). The other authors are Neus Herrero and M. Consuelo Bernal. There’s a brief summary in English at the end of the article.
A Day to Support Torture Survivors
Sunday, June 26th, a Day to Support Survivors of Torture
Sunday, June 26th, is recognized by the United Nations as an International Day in Support of Torture Survivors. (See Wikipedia for further background on this event.) Though it’s unfortunately not much noticed in the United States, except by those involved in the care and support of immigrant survivors, it’s celebrated by such organizations throughout the world, in an effort to better inform the public about survivors’ needs and concerns.
TASSC, the Torture Abolition and Survivor Support Coalition, one of the organizations the Refuge Media Project has been working with, is hosting a weeklong calendar of events entitled “We Remember the Names and Faces.” TASSC’s annual observance has become well known in the Washington, DC, area and around the country. Another of our partners, the Center for Victims of Torture in Minnesota, holds an annual tree-planting ceremony at its Minneapolis headquarters.
IRCT’s “Micro Film” Competition Winner Announced
For the past several years the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Survivors, based in Denmark, has held a competition for short films to mark the event. The IRCT reports that filmmakers from Kenya to the Netherlands submitted films to its “Micro-Film Competition” this year, and the winner was Tom Erik Douglas Smith, with his short animation, “Overcoming Psychological Torture.”
In its statement announcing the award, the IRCT noted: “Poverty is the theme of our campaign this year. Poverty is a root cause of torture and also an effect of torture on individuals, their families and wider societies. Providing rehabilitation to survivors, as well as working for justice and prevention of torture therefore helps break a cycle of poverty.”
The Refuge Media Project was the winner of the IRCT’s 2009 competition for 30-second public service announcements. My son, filmmaker Jesse Achtenberg, and I put together the winning TV spot using footage shot for the Project’s documentary-in-progress, Refuge: Caring for Survivors of Torture. You can see our award-winning spot on the IRCT website.
Taking Action: When Healers Harm
When Healers Harm
This new campaign is an effort by the respected Center for Constitutional Rights to hold physicians and other health professionals accountable for participation in “enhanced interrogation,” and to call such participation what it really is: torture. The campaign’s website, WhenHealersHarm.org, “will house a growing roster of psychologists and physicians who were complicit in torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. The site will be updated as new information about the torture program and its players are revealed.” The following is from the campaign’s statement of purpose:
“Despite the health professions’ universally recognized duty to do no harm, doctors and psychologists have played a key role in the U.S. government’s policy of torture in its overseas prisons. They crafted and justified torture tactics, inflicted pain, oversaw abuse and enabled, covered up and turned a blind eye to cruel treatment. Yet, in the face of clear evidence, government officials, licensing boards and professional associations defend their failure to take action against these health professionals by claiming that they do not have enough information.”
“The Center for Constitutional Rights disagrees and, through its When Healers Harm campaign, presents compelling evidence that supports the need for ethical, and in some cases criminal investigations of health professionals complicit in torture and other forms of abuse.
“It is time to hold accountable the healers who have harmed…Accountability is vital to survivors of medical torture and to health professionals, most of whom take seriously their commitment to do no harm.”
Pending Legislation: New York’s Anti-Torture Bill
For several years now, I have been interviewing immigrant torture survivors and the professionals who care for them. Over and over again, I’ve been told that as many as 50% of survivors report the presence of a doctor or other healthcare professional during their torture. Wouldn’t it be comforting if we could hang onto the belief that the doctors, med techs, nurses, and psychologists on “our side” would never be guilty of such behavior? Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo, and the still-unacknowledged “black sites” have robbed us of our innocence on that issue.
One of the pitifully few concrete campaigns to do actually do something about this issue is underway right now, and needs your support. Healthcare professionals and their organizations, along with activists and concerned citizens in New York State, have persuaded their legislators to introduce legislation “to ensure accountability for torture and to prevent such atrocities from happening again.” Bills A. 5891 in the New York State Assembly and S. 4495-A in the Senate:
- Confirm that NY-licensed health professionals’ duty to do no harm applies to their professional relationships with all patients and under all employers;
- Reaffirm that health professionals licensed inNew Yorkare prohibited from involvement in torture or other abuse of prisoners, wherever that abuse takes place;
- Remove NY-licensed health professionals from interrogations; and
- Help NY-licensed health professionals resist unlawful orders that could place them at risk of criminal prosecution and civil damages lawsuits.
Detailed information on the campaign, and the texts of the proposed bills, are available on the When Healers Harm website. The campaign’s supporters are asking New York residents to contact their legislators as soon as possible. Letters from non-New Yorkers are also welcome. Professional, religious, and human rights organizations, wherever they are, are invited to send letters of concern and support. See the website for a listing of current supporters
Neglect of Medical Evidence of Torture
in Guantánamo Bay: A Case Series
What about health personnel who may not themselves have participated in torture, but who knew that it was happening. Writing in PLoS Medicine (a journal of the Public Library of Science) physician Vincent Iacopino and retired general Stephen N. Xenakis have examined this question with regard to the prison at our Naval Station, Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. ”Little is known,” they report, “about the role of health providers…who should have been in a position to observe and document physical and psychological evidence of torture and ill treatment.”
Examining all available documents, including medical records and case files on nine individual prisoners, the authors conclude that “the medical personnel who treated the detainees at GTMO failed to inquire and/or document causes of the physical injuries and psychological symptoms they observed…The findings in these nine cases from GTMO indicate that medical doctors and mental health personnel assigned to the DoD neglected and/or concealed medical evidence of intentional harm.”
“The abuses reported in this case series could not be practiced without the interrogators and medical monitors being aware of the severe and prolonged physical and mental pain that they caused.”
The Iacopino/Xenakis study was profiled by Dan Vergano in USA Today under the title “Medical care props up Guantánamo tactics.”
In the News: June 15, 2011
Humanitarian Crisis: The World’s
Largest Refugee Camp is Overflowing
Writing from Johannesburg in The Guardian, David Smith reports that the situation in the world’s largest refugee camp has become a humanitarian crisis. While desperate refugees from Somalia continue to flow in, the international medical organization Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) says that Dabaab camp in Kenya has already far exceeded its capacity. Tens of thousands in the camp, mostly women and children, face disease, starvation, and even predation by wild animals.
MSF describes what it calls a humanitarian emergency in the camp, as its population climbs toward half a million people by the end of the year. “Children who have fled war in neighboring Somalia are left without food or shelter in dry heat of 50C (122F),” the organization says.
“We’ve got nothing to build a shelter with,” Fatima, a 34-year-old refugee from Mogadishu, told MSF. “It’s very unsafe here – at night, we’re scared that wild animals will eat the children, and we’ve had threats of violence from local people who say the land is theirs. Children are even being killed by hyenas because they have no protection.”
“More refugees are on their way,” Nenna Arnold, an MSF nurse, told Smith. “We are already at bursting point, but the figures keep growing. This situation is a humanitarian emergency.”
Europe Leads the Way on Accountability for Torture
Writing on the Soros Foundation’s blog, Amrit Singh notes that the European Parliament is demanding that the United States not apply the death penalty in the case of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri “on the grounds that the military commission trials do not meet the standards internationally required for the application of the death sentence.” The Open Society Justice Initiative had previously filed suit on al-Nashiri’s behalf against Poland, before the European Court of Human Rights. Al-Nashiri had been “rendered” by the U.S. to Poland, where he was tortured.
“Official U.S. government documents confirm that during this time, U.S. interrogators subjected al-Nashiri to mock executions with a power drill as he stood naked and hooded; racked a semi-automatic handgun close to his head as he sat shackled before them; held him in “standing stress positions,” lifting him off the floor by his arms while they were bound behind his back and almost dislocated from his shoulders; and threatened to bring in his mother and sexually abuse her in front of him.”
He was then transferred back to U.S. custody, despite the European Union’s policy, under its Convention on Human Rights, of not extraditing prisoners to countries which employ capital punishment. The United States Supreme Court, for its part, has repeatedly refused to review challenges to the practice of “extraordinary rendition.”
Restoring Dignity After Sexual Torture
That’s the title of the latest issue of Storycloth, the newsletter of Minnesota’s Center for Victims of Torture (one of the Refuge Media Project’s Advisors and Outreach Partners.) The organization reports that 67 percent of the clients they care for in Minnesota – both men and women – have experienced some kind of sexual torture which, in addition to physical and psychological trauma, puts them at risk for HIV and other sexually transmitted disease, and can leave them unable to have children. Storycloth is available online.
“By its very nature, rape is more invasive than other forms of torture, and often results in overwhelming feelings of shame…Lots of women come to us saying they can’t trust a man. They may feel so branded or shamed that they become convinced strangers can identify them as a rape survivor, as if it’s tattooed on their forehead…When a woman can accept herself again, then she is making steps towards healing.”
– Andrea Northwood, CVT’s Director of Client Services.
There’s one encouraging and one very disturbing report in today’s forwards from the ever-invaluable Ken Pope. Let’s start with the dark side.
British Doctors Will be Asked to Report
Patients “At Risk of Becoming Terrorists”
Ken reports that an article in the new issue of British Medical Journal, indicates that an upcoming revision to the country’s “Prevent” program will call on physicians “to help identify people at risk of becoming terrorists.” According to the article’s author, Clare Dyer, the British Medical Association says it has not been consulted on the new policy, and that the move would put doctors “in an impossible position.”
The new policy, according to an article in The Guardian, will be released on Tuesday. BMJ says that the forthcoming document, “suggests that people with mental health problems or learning disabilities may be more easily drawn into terrorism.” (The article can be accessed online, but only by subscribers or by payment of a $30 one-time/one day fee. Universities and other institutions may also be able to provide access.)
Alan Travis’s piece in The Guardian is more helpful. It indicates that the new policy is quite controversial within the UK government, and has, in fact, delayed publication of the revised program for five months. The “Prevent” program was first developed to combat home-grown terrorism following bombing incidents in 2005. It’s currently funded at £60 million per year (about $90 million.)
Travis writes that the revised document will ask doctors “to identify people who may be ‘vulnerable’ to recruitment by terrorist groups.” He quotes a BMA spokesperson as saying “Doctors cannot look into the future and say how someone might behave. This would threaten the trust of the doctor and…patient relationship. A doctor’s role is to treat the patient in front of them, not predict how the patient will behave in future.” (NOTE: “Prevent” has provoked controversy from the start. For a little background see the articles here and here.)
N.Y. Medical Board Could
Discipline Physicians for Torture
On a somewhat more hopeful note, Kevin B. O’Reilly writes on amednews.com that first-in-the-nation legislation proposed for New York would give the state’s Medical Board the power to discipline physicians and others “who take part in, or conceal evidence of, torture.” The bill (see full text here) “would give the state medical board and other health professional licensing boards the explicit authority to suspend or revoke practice rights.” It prohibits health professionals from “directly participating in torture, treating patients with the intent of determining when torture could continue, concealing medical evidence of torture or taking part in individual interrogations. Health professionals could generally advise interrogators on rapport building or other nonabusive techniques.”
“We want to clarify that this is, indeed, grounds for discipline and also to achieve a preventive effect” said Dr. Allen Keller, Associate Professor of Medicine at NYU School of Medicine. Keller directs the Bellevue Hospital Center / New York University Program for Survivors of Torture, in New York City.
“It’s easier for individuals to torture than we’d like to think, because of hierarchies and environments that allow it. We believe this legislation would help physicians who are put in an untenable position to say, ‘I can’t do this; I’d lose my license.”
— Dr. Allen Keller
While the Medical Society of the State of New York has opposed physician participation in torture or direct participation in interrogations, it said the matter is best handled at the federal level. Keller responds that “health professionals — whether they practice in their state or in the Army or wherever — they do so because they have a license that is issued not by the federal government or the Army but by a state.”
(NOTE: Regarding the poster at top of this post. I would welcome any info. The one I’ve reproduced here is clearly a parody. For example, the text at lower right, next to the credit card, reads: “Terrorists often have dubious sources of income. Do you know any bankers?” However, I have not been able to determine whether “If you suspect it, report it” is a real government campaign, and whether it is related to the ”Prevent” initiative. Help!)
Did Torture Lead to Osama?
Did Torture Lead to Osama Bin Laden? The Last Post
I think we’ve had enough of Bush administration leftovers and their acolytes trying to justify their crimes by claiming that waterboarding and other “harsh” interrogation techniques produced information that helped target Osama Bin Laden. I’ve posted on this before, and don’t want to waste any more time on it. So, as my final words, here are a few more resources on the issue for those who are still being harangued by neighbors or co-workers, and need to muster their arguments. After this, no mas, basta, genug…
♦ I have to start with a column by Jeff Jacoby, the Boston Globe op-ed page’s resident right-winger, and someone with whom I almost never find the slightest grounds for agreement. Here, though, Jacoby takes a rock-solid stance against the use of torture, even if it may sometimes yield valuable information.
“The case against waterboarding never rested primarily on its usefulness. It rested on its wrongfulness. It is wrong when bad guys do it to good guys. It is just as wrong when good guys do it to Al Qaeda…There was good reason why waterboarding was one of the war crimes for which Japanese officers were hanged after World War II.
“Like chemical and biological warfare, torture is something we refuse to engage in, despite its potential effectiveness, on the grounds that it is fundamentally immoral and uncivilized. Our repudiation of torture is absolute — the international Convention Against Torture, ratified by the United States in 1994, allows for ‘no exceptional circumstances whatsoever.’ That unconditional repudiation is one of the lines that separates us from the barbaric jihadists with whom we are at war.”
♦ I’ve wondered whether the torture debate in the U.S. may have led to a decline in public respect for international human rights norms, but haven’t seen any data on the question. Human Rights Now, a blog of Amnesty International, calls our attention to a rather disturbing survey of U.S. attitudes to international humanitarian law. The survey was conducted by the American Red Cross to mark the 150th anniversary of our Civil War. It found that 59% of teenagers and 51% of adults surveyed believe that it is sometimes acceptable to torture enemy fighters to obtain military information. As Amnesty notes, “The survey powerfully suggests just how far the norm against torture in American public life has been eroded.” The Red Cross Survey is brief and graphically presented, and I strongly recommend taking a look.
♦ As Ellen Massimino, President of Human Rights First, writes: “The renewed debate has made clear that we can’t sit back and let the torture apologists speak unopposed…I went to the American Enterprise Institute to debate the issue with prominent torture supporters, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey and former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen, on a panel moderated by John Yoo.” Watch the debate here.
♦ Writing for Common Dreams, Marjorie Cohn musters considerable historical background to demonstrate that the torture of detainees had no impact on the quest for the Al Quaeda leader; that it in fact produced substantial misleading information (an argument also emphasized by Senator John McCain); and that all of the crucial information was obtained through non-abusive interrogation techniques and intelligence gathering. She quotes Tommy Vietor, a spokesman for the National Security Council, as saying: “If we had some kind of smoking-gun intelligence from waterboarding in 2003, we would have taken out Osama in 2003…It took years of collection and analysis from many different sources to develop the case…” Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, and a past president of the National Lawyers Guild.
♦ Finally, Peter Weiss, a vice-president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, cites one of the organization’s cases, in which the Federal Court of Appeals (2nd Circuit) said “The torturer has become like the pirate and slave trader before him, hostis humani generic, an enemy of all mankind.”
Upcoming Events: June, 2011
June 20 – World Refugee Day
Since, 2001, June 20th has been celebrated worldwide as World Refugee Day, dedicated to raising awareness and understanding of the plight of millions of refugees throughout the world. Check out the sites of the United Nations and the U.N. High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) for further information, and Wikipedia for historical background.
“On World Refugee Day, let us reaffirm the importance of solidarity and burden-sharing by the international community. Refugees have been deprived of their homes, but they must not be deprived of their futures.”
— U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
June 21 – D.C. Conference on Trauma & Torture Survivors
According to the organizers of this conference, “The Washington, DC, metro area is one of the gateway cities for immigration in the country. An estimated 40,000 of those people are survivors of severe trauma or torture…There are different organizations that are set up to work with this population, but little communication between them.” In response, Northern Virginia Family Service, through its Program for Survivors of Torture and Severe Trauma, has joined with the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition (TASSC) to initiate this one-day workshop at George Washington University. Registration is $20, $10 for students, and free for survivors. Check the website for further information and to register.
June 19-26 – International Day in Support of Survivors of Torture
In addition to its participation in the conference above, the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition (TASSC), has an entire week of event planned to mark the International Day in Support of Survivors of Torture, declared by the United Nations in 1998.
Let Us Know About Other Events, Now and in the Future
If you know about other commemorations of World Refugee Day or the International Day in Support of Survivors of Torture — anywhere in the United States — please let us know. The same goes for conferences or other events dealing with torture, immigration, and related subjects.
Keeping our Communities Safe?
Is this Really the Way to
Keep Our Communities Safe?
The Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service is warning that legislation currently under consideration in the House of Representatives (HR 1932) may result in prolonged or even permanent detention of some asylum seekers and survivors of torture – without meaningful judicial review. In a recent newsletter they estimate that the law could result in the detention of 6,000 immigrants over current levels, and could increase our spending on detention by over $26 million. Check the LIRS website for a summary of the “Keep our Communities Safe Act” and a statement on the expected impact of the proposed law on immigrants. LIRS also has some suggestions on taking action. (Photo from LIRS.)
In the News: 5-21-2011
United States will Renew Temporary Protected
Status for Refugees from Haiti’s Earthquake
As reported by the Boston Globe – and most other major papers – the U.S. has authorized a continuation of Temporary Protected Status for Haitians who fled their country after last year’s devastating earthquake. TPS allows recipients to remain in the United States legally, and in some cases to work, for a fixed amount of time. It can be renewed – or not – at the discretion of the U.S. Customs and Immigration Service. Federal officials had resisted granting the special discretionary to earthquake 
survivors, ostensibly out of concern that it would encourage Haitians to risk their lives trying to reach the U.S. by sea.
Haitians wishing to establish or renew TPS must file written applications (see the USCIS website) and pay fees that vary depending on the age of the applicant, whether they are requesting the status for the first time or renewing, and whether they wish a work permit or not.
See our prior post on this issue for more perspective on U.S. reactions to the disaster, and on Temporary Protective Status. (photo above from UNHCR)
Guantánamo’s Sixth Suicide,
Eighth Prisoner Death
Al Jazeera English reports the sixth death by apparent suicide of a prisoner at the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay naval base. Known as Inayatullah, the 37-year-old was found dead on Wednesday, May 18. Two other prisoners are reported to have died of natural causes. Inayatullah had been held without charges since September 2007. Spokeswoman Tamsen Reese said that “an investigation is underway.”
New York Times Article Challenges
Belief that Private Prisons Save Money
Challenging the major rationale for our mushrooming private prison system, a new New York Times piece by Richard A. Oppel, Jr., documents growing doubts that the for-profit jails are actually saving money for the more than 30 states which have outsourced incarceration. Data from Arizona, for example, suggest that the bill for holding an inmate in a private prison may be as much as $1,600 more per year than in prisons run by the state itself.
In addition, according the article, private jails in many states have contracts which allow them to keep their profits high by declining to accept prisoners who will be more expensive to manage – those with physical or mental health problems, or other disabilities. The states are then forced to pick up the substantially higher costs of caring for these more costly inmates. (See our recent post on the death of an immigrant while in detention in Massachusetts.)
Use of Solitary Confinement Questioned
Video Questions Excessive Use of
Solitary Confinement in United States
So, now that I’ve learned how to incorporate video in the blog, it might be hard to stop. Anyway, following up on my post about the deaths of immigrants from inadequate medical care while in ICE detention, I’m passing along today’s video, from RT America television, on the excessive use of solitary confinement in the U.S. prison system, another topic I’ve explored in prior posts (see a listing of other posts here). RT is a Russian-based international news service. It’s been criticized for political bias (certainly something no U.S. network would ever be guilty of) but this report seems pretty solid. Included is a brief interview clip with Steven Soldz of Psychologists for Social Responsibility, a group which has campaigned actively against the involvement of psychologists in abusive interrogations.
REQUEST FOR INPUT: The video suggests – without documentation – that many children in U.S. prisons are held in solitary confinement, ostensibly to protect them from adult inmates. I would welcome further information on this if any of you out there are on top of this issue.
New Resources: 5-20-2011
Best and Emerging Practices in the Care of Torture Survivors
That’s the focus of the latest issue of TORTURE Journal, a publication of the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT). Featured articles focus on best practices in medical and psychiatric care, social and legal services, expressive therapies, and spiritual care. The journal is available for free download; for the hard copy, IRCT requests a contribution to cover shipping.
Hidden Anxiety and the Conspiracy
of Silence: an Interview Recalls
the Armenian Genocide:
In a late 2010, edition of the Mirror Spectator, an English Language newspaper published in Massachusetts for the Armenian community, Marni Pilafian has an interview with psychologist Jack Danielian. Danielian is the author of “A Century of Silence: Terror and the Armenian Genocide,” recently published in the American Journal of Psychoanalysis, (and reprinted in Ararat Magazine.)
In the interview, Dr. Danielian, a grandchild of survivors, reflects on the impact of the genocide on the second and third generations of Armenian immigrants. Here, he recounts an incident from his own childhood (emphases are mine.)
“An 8-year-old boy hears a terrifying wail emanating from a female visitor in another room having coffee with the boy’s parents and grandparents. The wail is followed by prolonged sobbing, which then is followed by an equally prolonged silence. The woman is a victim- survivor of the Armenian Genocide and a participant in the Death March, arriving in this country a shell of her former self. She is thoroughly trapped in the dangerous and potentially lethal world between terror and nothingness, despite seemingly involved in an innocuous social situation.
Without awareness, the boy is also trapped between hearing and not-hearing, between knowing and not-knowing. Despite belonging to a close-knit family, the 8-year-old does not enter the coffee room to seek explanation or reassurance from his family. And neither the boy nor his parents ever bring up the experience again.”
Among the Asylum Seekers
With J.K. Rowling’s 2008 commencement address in mind – and its exhortation to young graduates to “use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice,” I wanted to mention a little essay in The Pennsylvania Gazette, alumni magazine of the University of Pennsylvania.
Livia Rurarz-Huygens is an ’06 graduate who has been working as a resettlement consultant for the UNHCR in Iraq and now in Kenya. In describing her work with asylum seekers, she reflects on the influence of her own background. (The complete article is available online):
I do know something about the pain and despair of being uprooted from your home. My mother’s family came to the US as refugees from Poland in 1981. The sense of loss that comes from being orphaned from one’s home and culture is hard to describe, but even as a child born in my mother’s adoptive homeland, I could feel their disorientation and knew that it would never fully disappear. No refugee can really know what awaits them in a land so different from their own.
J.K. Rowling on Torture
J.K. Rowling’s Encounter with Torture
In this season of university graduations, as the relatively privileged youth of the United States and Western Europe prepare to face the realities of a rapidly changing world, it’s worth revisiting some excerpts from one of the best commencement speeches I’ve ever heard or read – J.K. Rowling’s address to the Harvard class of 2008. (See the full text here.)
“One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books…I paid the rent in my early 20s by working at the African research department at Amnesty International’s headquarters in London. There in my little office I read hastily scribbled letters smuggled out of totalitarian regimes by men and women who were risking imprisonment to inform the outside world of what was happening to them. I saw photographs of those who had disappeared without trace, sent to Amnesty by their desperate families and friends. I read the testimony of torture victims and saw pictures of their injuries. I opened handwritten, eye-witness accounts of summary trials and executions, of kidnappings and rapes…
“I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him back to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.
“And as long as I live I shall remember walking along an empty corridor and suddenly hearing, from behind a closed door, a scream of pain and horror such as I have never heard since. The door opened, and the researcher poked out her head and told me to run and make a hot drink for the young man sitting with her. She had just had to give him the news that in retaliation for his own outspokenness against his country’s regime, his mother had been seized and executed…
“I began to have nightmares, literal nightmares, about some of the things I saw, heard, and read. And yet I also learned more about human goodness at Amnesty International than I had ever known before…”
“Unlike any other creature on this planet, humans can learn and understand, without having experienced. They can think themselves into other people’s places…The great majority of you belong to the world’s only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way beyond your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden. If you choose to use your status and influence to raise your voice on behalf of those who have no voice; if you choose to identify not only with the powerful, but with the powerless; if you retain the ability to imagine yourself into the lives of those who do not have your advantages, then it will not only be your proud families who celebrate your existence, but thousands and millions of people whose reality you have helped change. We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.”
Death in Detention
Lawsuit Charges Gross
Negligence: Who is Responsible?
On the heels of yesterday’s post about immigration detention, comes the news that a lawsuit has been filed in the case of a 49-year-old immigrant detainee who died in the Suffolk County (Boston, MA) House of Correction in 2009. According to the suit filed by his daughter, Pedro Tavarez “died from a heart attack caused by a massive sepsis infection that the defendants failed to properly treat.”
The Boston Globe article, by Maria Sacchetti, quotes the County Sheriff’s attorney as saying that the allegations in the case “do not remotely support a civil rights complaint against any employee of the 
Sheriff’s Department…Neither the sheriff, the superintendent, nor the unidentified corrections officers have a role in the medical care provided to inmates or detainees.”
Evidently, that’s true, since healthcare services in the facility are contracted out to a private company, PHS Correctional Healthcare (formerly Prison Health Services. It looks like this could end up being one of those endless squabbles in which all of the parties involved try to duck out on their responsibilities – ICE, which made the bust; Suffolk County, which is paid $90 per day to house ICE detainees; and PHS Correctional, which was paid to provide healthcare (and did not respond to Sacchetti’s request for comment.) And we’re responsible too, because we’ve allowed this multi-tiered (and highly profitable) system of blame avoidance to be created in our name.
For more posts on immigration detention, check here. Also, take a look at this new video on the private, for-profit prison industry from Brave New Foundation. Visit their website when you have a chance; the work is uneven, but they’re making a serious effort to use modern media techniques to educate and agitate on important human rights issues. (Photo above was taken during a prior demonstration at the Suffolk County House of Correction.)
Immigration Detention
Immigration Detention Reform: A Matter of Life and Death
This deeply disturbing report on the reproductive health rights website RH Reality Check highlights the profound inadequacy of the medical and mental health care services available to women incarcerated in the mostly for-profit prisons contracted by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). According to the article more than 400,000 people per year are thrown into immigration detention. Women, who have special medical needs, make up roughly 10 percent of that total. Note that, for the most part at least, these women have not been convicted or even accused of crimes other than immigration violations.
We met women who required screening and treatment for breast and cervical cancer but experienced extended delays and outright denials. We met women who complained of inadequate care during pregnancy, including one diagnosed with an ovarian cyst that threatened her five-month pregnancy shortly before she was detained who never got to see a doctor. We met pregnant women who did get a doctor’s appointment, but who were taken there shackled. We met mothers who were nursing their babies prior to detention and were then denied breast pumps in the facilities, resulting in fever, pain, mastitis, and the inability to continue breastfeeding upon release.
We met women who had to beg, plead, and in some cases do chores within the facility just to get enough sanitary pads not to bleed through their clothes…We met women who sought mental health care for pre-existing conditions, including the effects of trauma, and for the stress of detention but found that the crisis orientation of the services that were available meant they could not get counseling, and could expect to be put in isolation if their condition deteriorated to the point where they were suicidal.
Author Meghan Rhoad is a researcher in the Women’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch. She centers her article on a Haitian woman she gives the pseudonym Antoinette L., who was the driving force behind a letter sent in 2008 by women in an Arizona ICE facility to legal aid and human rights groups. Among other things, the women reported that their complaints were met with responses like these:
- “You should have made better choices…ICE is not here to make you comfortable…
- “Our hands are tied…We can’t do much, you’re getting deported anyway…
- “Learn English before you cross the border…Mi casa no es su casa…”
Antoinette’s story, which the article conveys in some detail, is clearly representative of thousands of other women detainees. When Rhoad first met her three years ago, she had already been in ICE custody for almost six months. When the researcher returned for a visit to the detention facility recently Antoinette was still there – and she delivered some sad and shocking news. To try to summarize her story would not do it justice. Please read this article.
RH Reality Check is an online community and publication serving individuals and organizations committed to advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights. Rhoad’s article is one in a series on immigration issues as they relate to women. (Illustration above from GWS350.)
Immigrants Behind Bars:
How, Why, and How Much?
This new report from the National Immigration Forum looks at the costs local jurisdictions incur through the often unnecessary detention of immigrants
[This] backgrounder provides explanations of the ways that immigrants end up in local custody and are held there on the basis of their immigration status. It also explores the associated fiscal costs of increased detention to states and counties. In recent years police have increasingly been drawn into immigration enforcement operations, and as a result, local jails are holding increased numbers of immigrants, even those not facing criminal charges. Detaining immigrants in state or local custody creates additional costs and burdens on local law enforcement agencies, and the unnecessary and prolonged detention of immigrants costs local budgets millions of taxpayer dollars per year.
Visit the Forum’s website for other publications.
U.S. Detention Practices called “Disproportionate” and “Punitive”
A 155-page report by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights criticizes the U.S. government for its unnecessary reliance on detention and its detention of immigration detainees in “unacceptable” conditions in facilities that “employ disproportionately restrictive penal and punitive measures.” According to Human Rights First, the report addresses many of the ways in which the U.S. detention system for immigrants and asylum seekers is – despite some recent reform efforts – inconsistent with international human rights standards. A fact sheet on the IACHR report is available from Human Rights Watch.
“Massive Crisis” in Immigration Courts
Keeps Asylum Seekers in Limbo for Years
On a closely related note, a recent article by Sharon Cohen for the AP documents the five-year struggle of a woman from Cameroon, a survivor of severe torture, to obtain Asylum in theUnited States. During that time, her husband died in prison in Cameroon, and she was unable to communicate with her children who – by the time of the Asylum decision – were ill and reduced to begging.
If the system had worked, this kind of asylum case would have been resolved promptly. But this was immigration court, where justice often moves at a glacial pace. Files were lost. Background checks delayed. Hearings scheduled at least 12 times over five years. The woman’s lawyers, fearing their fragile client had become suicidal, were so alarmed they appealed to two members of Congress — not to intervene, but to call attention to what they say is a system in desperate need of reform.
The woman profiled in this case had the support of some obviously skilled and committed attorneys. Most asylum seekers do not, and many must pursue their cases while held in ICE detention.
Torture in Iraq Continues
In Iraq: New Order, Same Abuses
This Amnesty International report focuses on human rights abuses committed – yes, still being committed – by U.S.and coalition forces and by the Iraqi government itself. New Order, Same Abuses: Unlawful Detentions and Torture in Iraq doesn’t whitewash the abuses of the government’s opposition. It holds the “insurgency” to be fully responsible for “gross human rights abuses amounting to war crimes and crimes against humanity.” Its focus, however, is on those abuses that citizens of the United States and other coalition nations might be able to do something about – those involving our forces and our allies:
…the unlawful detention, enforced disappearance and torture or other ill-treatment of thousands of people since 2003 by the US-led Multinational Force (MNF) in Iraq and by the Iraqi authorities. Some have been held arbitrarily, without charge or trial, for seven years…Most have had no access to legal representation and some have not had visits from relatives.
An estimated 30,000 untried detainees are currently being held by the Iraqi authorities…in severely overcrowded facilities and otherwise poor detention conditions…Some detainees have been held in secret detention facilities and tortured.
Under international law, the USA is barred from transferring detainees to places where they face torture or other serious human rights violations…A state cannot claim to be treating detainees humanely while knowingly handing them over to torturers, anymore than it can knowingly “release” detainees in a minefield and claim that their safety is no longer its responsibility.
Iraq: Detainees Describe
Torture in Secret Jail
It’s also worth checking out Human Rights Watch’s report on the same issue – based on interviews with 42 prisoners in the Al Rusafa Detention Center on April 26, 2010. The men were among 300 prisoners who had been transferred from a secret facility at Muthanna airport inWest Baghdad, after news of the prison was first revealed. The detainees reported being “hung upside-down, deprived of air, kicked, whipped, beaten, given electric shocks, and sodomized,” according to the report.
“The horror we found suggests torture was the norm in Muthanna,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle Eastdirector at Human Rights Watch. “The government needs to prosecute all of those responsible for this systematic brutality.”
HRW judged the men’s stories to be “credible and consistent. Most of the 300 displayed fresh scars and injuries they said were a result of routine and systematic torture they had experienced at the hands of interrogators at Muthanna.”
“What happened at Muthanna is an example of the horrendous abuse Iraqi leaders say they want to leave behind. Everyone responsible, from the top on down, needs to be held accountable.”
— Joe Stork, Human Rights Watch
Listen to NPR’s story on this report, or read the transcript. You can also view the BBC report onIraq’s secret jails, but you’ll have to wait through a commercial first.
Tugging at Threads to Unspool Stories of Torture
Finally, if you haven’t read Denise Grady’s devastating portraits of Iraqi torture survivors in the New York Times, don’t miss it. The piece focuses on the work of the torture treatment center recently opened in Amman, Jordan, by the Minnesota-based Center for Victims of Torture. The center has seen survivors of torture inflicted by the Saddam Hussein regime, by Al Qaeda in Iraq, and by “the sectarian groups, gangs and militias that continue to terrorize parts of Iraq,” as well as by the Iraqi army and U.S. forces, and the article notes that some of the survivors seen by the center have been tortured by more than one of these groups.
Voices of Young Survivors
Young Survivors’ Odysseys of Escape
and Survival – in Their Own Words
Freedom from Torture – until recently the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture – has been serving torture survivors in Britain and Scotland for more than a quarter of a century. It is marking Our Year, Our Voice, the United Nations’ International Year of Youth, by giving some of its young clients the opportunity to tell their own stories of escape and survival. Five of those stories are available on the group’s website.
Said is a talented young artist with a devastating story of travelling with an abusive guide – mostly by foot, boat and horseback – from Afghanistan via Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Bulgaria, Italy, France, and finally to Britain. Of the guide, or agent, he writes, “I was their property and I was young. I had heard terrible stories about agents doing awful things to young people.” After falling off his horse and being dragged until he passed out, he wakes up:
The agent was asked if he could get a doctor. He said, “This journey has not got a doctor, if you die, you die.” Other people tried to give me some of their clothes but nobody was able to give me shoes. The agent said, “Either you stay here or walk barefoot in the snow to the car.” So that is what I did. I began walking barefoot through the snow in the evening and arrived at the car the following morning. I could not feel my feet after that; they were numb, my nails were bruised and the rest of my feet badly blistered…Maybe ten to fifteen days went by where I had to wear shoes that were too big and wet. Days later, when they tried to take the shoes off, the socks I had on were glued to my skin. They had to be peeled off. When they did come off, so did my skin. Even now, years later, I still have problems with my feet. They get really painful in winter and I always buy shoes a size too big.
There’s also the story of Ehsan, another boy who tried to help him out on the journey. After arriving in Britain, the two lost touch. Said writes, “He helped me through very bad times. 
I remember that just before we arrived in Dover, he gave me a tube of toothpaste with a $20 note inside it. He told me to hold on to it and if I ever needed help or to make a phone call, $20 may help. The agents took it from me though – they did not want any traces left of our journey. I hope Ehsan reads this and that one day we’ll meet again.”
About the first picture, above, Said writes: “The picture is of a woman, maybe my mum, trying to climb to the moon where she thinks life will be better. My mum thinks I’m living in harmony but she does not know that I’m not, and I can’t tell her – I don’t know what happened to her.” The second painting carries the wistful note, “When I’m an old man, I’d love to have my own house in the country. I’d sit and watch the sunset through the mountains.”
Read the rest of Said’s story, and those of four other young people, on Freedom from Torture’s website. Our Year, Our Voice, the United Nations’ International Year of Youth, continues through August 12, 2011.
Did Torture Help Target Osama?
If Enhanced Interrogation Aided in the Search
for Osama Bin Laden, Does That Make it OK?
It’s distressing that public discussion following the initial euphoria over the capture and killing of Osama Bin Laden has so quickly devolved into speculation about whether some clues to his whereabouts may have been obtained through “enhanced interrogation.” Even more troubling are the terms of the debate. It seems to be assumed that if the answer is “yes,” that will justify our now hopefully discredited program of torture. It’s also implied that opponents of enhanced interrogation claim that it never results in “good intelligence.” In fact:
- The core argument against torture is not and never has been that it never works. It is that torture is immoral, illegal, and fatally destructive of democratic and humanitarian values.
- Informed opponents recognize that torturing detainees will sometimes yield accurate information; they argue – as the FBI has consistently done in opposition to its CIA and military counterparts – that you can get more reliable information, and faster, through non-abusive interrogation methods.
One of the first books I read when I was developing The Refuge Media Project was Alfred M. McCoy’s groundbreaking and influential A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation from the Cold War to the War on Terror. And one of the arguments that struck me most forcefully was his discussion of French use of torture during the Algerian War of Independence. (See the classic film ![""](http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=refumediproj-20&l=am2&o=1&a=B0002JP2OI&camp=217145&creative=399349")
“The water and electricity methods, provided they are carefully used, are said to produce a shock which is more psychological than physical and therefore do not constitute excessive cruelty…According to certain medical opinion, the water-pipe method involves no risk to the health of the victim.”
McCoy argues that the colonial power’s widespread use of torture did, in fact, yield militarily valuable information – information that enabled the French to defeat the insurgency in Algiers in the short run:
“In 1957, the French Army destroyed the urban underground in Algiers with the systematic abuse of thousands of revolutionary suspects. During the yearlong battle, French soldiers arrested 30 to 40 percent of all males in the city’s Casbah, and subjected most of them to brutality, using, in the words of one senior officer, ‘beatings, electric shocks, and, in particular, water torture, which was always the most dangerous technique for the prisoner.’ Although many resisted to the point of death, mass torture gained sufficient intelligence to break the rebel underground.”
“The French Army won the battle of Algiers but soon lost the war forAlgeria, in large part because its systematic torture delegitimated the wider war effort in the eyes of most Algerians and many French. ‘You might say that the battle of Algiers was won through the use of torture,’ observed the British historian Sir Alistair Home, ‘but that the war, the Algerian war, was lost.’”
Apple Rejects Immigration Game
Do we have any readers who are into video games? I would love to get some commentary on games that deal in a positive (or negative) way with issues of immigration, refugees, human rights, and so on. I’m doing this post in hopes of kicking off that discussion:
Apple Rejects Immigrant
Smuggling Video Game
In today’s Boston Globe, Hiawatha Bray reports that “Smuggle Truck,” a video game produced by local game developer Owlchemy Labs has been rejected by Apple Computer as an app for the iPhone. Players of the game take the role of a truck driver trying to smuggle cartoon “immigrants” into the U.S. past various obstacles. As the newspaper’s editors commented when it first came out, “The developers…deserve the leeway to comment, even in a simplistic way, on an important policy matter. And simplistic it is…”
Because border smuggling is a real-life phenomenon — and people die because of it — Smuggle Truck may be disturbing in a way that the typical sci-fi shooter game is not. It’s no wonder one local immigrant-advocacy leader has called it a ”tasteless and horrible joke.’’ (Boston Globe editorial)
Reacting to Apple’s decision to reject the game, Jorge-Mario Cabrera, of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights in Los Angeles, told the Globe that “Smuggle Truck” trivialized the sufferings of the thousands who seek to cross the U.S. border every year. “I think it’s distasteful,” he said. “I think it’s offensive.’’
Not one to pass up the chance to make a buck, Owlchemy quickly repositioned their handiwork as “Snuggle Truck,” changing the migrants to cute little forest animals. The goal of the game is now to get them from the wilderness “to the comfort of a zoo.” Apple is apparently OK with the change. Perhaps the Wilderness Society will want to weigh in on the relative comforts of the forest vs. the zoo.
At least one product review site feels that the problems of cartoon immigrants are more “fun” than cuddly animals, and reminded readers that for a couple of bucks more they can still get “Smuggle Truck” for their computers.
