|
Comment on this article |
Email this Article
|
|
News :: Miscellaneous |
|
Giving Aid To Torturers |
Current rating: 0 |
by Sister Dianna Ortiz
(No verified email address) |
25 Jun 2001
|
|
They can't be humans, I thought: the policeman, the indigenous man with one eye, the even-featured Ladino who abducted me from the convent in Guatemala. They removed my blindfold before leaving me in a room with a woman I befriended. When they came back, the policeman put a machete in my hand, trapped my hand under his and forced me to stab the woman. |
Humans aren\'t this evil, I thought; they must be forms the devil has taken. That thought softened the blow of their words: \"If you live through this, no one will believe you. No one will listen. No one will care.\" Satan, I knew, was the father of lies. And I was an American, a citizen of a democracy. If I survived I would be heard.
The torturers tried to break this belief in the power of my own voice. In the \"cigarette game,\" if I answered a question the way they liked, I could smoke. If not, they would burn me. Those were the rules. By the end of the \"game,\" I knew they would burn me whatever I said. The lesson: Words are useless. Nothing can stop the torture.
Years later, gathering testimonies for a National Institute of Mental Health publication, I found that torturers around the world often tell their victims no one will listen to them. No one will care. The torturers, presumably, hope survivors will not dare put this prediction to the test. The survivors will be unable, then, to demand justice or find support to help in healing but will remain apart, still imprisoned, walking signposts for the torturers\' power.
Those of us who refuse to be silent will gather this year -- as we have for the past three years -- for a vigil in front of the White House tomorrow, the United Nations\' International Day in Support of Torture Victims and Survivors. Throughout the week we will meet with U.S. officials to plead for policy changes.
We met with a National Security Council official in 1999. Eighteen survivors from 16 countries spoke for three minutes each -- long enough to establish that all but one of us had been tortured by militaries supported, trained or funded by the United States. This year, we will conduct a training session for staff of the Immigration and Naturalization Service to sensitize them to torture survivors who may apply for asylum in the United States.
These have been the highest-level meetings we\'ve been granted. President Clinton and Vice President Gore couldn\'t meet with us either of the past two years. Former attorney general Janet Reno ignored our request, as did George Tenet of the CIA. Then-Gov. Bush was busy. And this year, our request to meet with Secretary of State Colin Powell was declined (though a low-level official from the Department of State will meet with us). No one will listen. Nobody cares. The torturers\' words seemed prophetic.
Amnesty International, which eight months ago launched a two-year campaign against torture, has called on governments to take specific measures, including putting an end to training and funding torturers. The campaign is a bulwark against despair. Sometimes, back in the United States, I\'ve struggled with the idea that I\'m still in the secret prison: in 1995, for example, when I learned that I and all U.S. citizens had been funding the Guatemalan death squads. Although the U.S. government supposedly suspended military aid to Guatemala in 1990 to protest human rights violations, $5 million to $7 million flowed annually through the CIA to the worst elements of the Guatemalan army as we fought a secret war.
I had the sense that I was reliving the nightmare, opening my eyes to find my hand, bloody, on the handle of a knife. If the torturers knew the thought that I had held before me like a shield -- that I live in a democracy -- they would have been laughing as they pocketed their checks. My government did to me what they had done, forcing me to participate in cold-blooded murder.
Where military aid is overt, national interest, drug-traffic control and terrorism are often invoked as justifications for overriding human rights concerns. But the most deadly terrorists are the well-connected, well-financed governments that torture with impunity. According to reports received by Amnesty International, in 1999 the United States provided military aid and training to 49 countries where government officials were involved in torture.
While visiting Guatemala in 1999, Clinton stated publicly, \"What we did in Guatemala was wrong.\" Must we always take off the blindfold after the fact?
This is not the torture chamber. I have to remind myself. This is not a secret prison. No one is holding our hands on the handle of weapons. We can say no. We can demand an end to government secrecy. We can put a stop to covert operations. We can disallow presidential waivers that override concerns on human rights. This isn\'t a game in which our voices are useless, our answers futile. Why, then, does the torture continue?
The writer, a Roman Catholic nun now living in Washington, was abducted and tortured while working as a missionary in Guatemala in 1989. She co-founded the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition in 1997.
Published on Monday, June 25, 2001 in the Washington Post |
See also:
http://www.torture-free-world.org/
|
