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| Janice Sevre Duszynska, ARCWP |
This January 2016 begins the 14th year of illegal imprisonment and
torture by the U.S. government of the men held at the U.S. military prison at
Guantanamo. Recently, President Obama announced the release of 17 men. 104 of
the original 779 remain. We of Witness Against Torture await the release of the
remaining men and the permanent closure of Guantanamo. http://www.witnesstorture.org/events/
In
January 2015 I took part in the Witness Against Torture gathering in Washington,
D.C.
Eleven
of us -- ordinary citizens and members of Witness Against Torture – exercised
our First Amendment Rights on January 12, 2015 just a little over a month after
the release of the U.S. Senate Torture Report on the CIA’s Detention and
Interrogation Program at Guantanamo.
In the
Senate Chamber Gallery, we called out: “U.S. Torture! It’s Official! Prosecute
Now! Waterboarding…Rectal Feeding…. For reminding our Senators of
their preeminent responsibility to uphold the Constitution by prosecuting the
torturers of the men at Guantanamo, we were charged with disorderly conduct.
Perhaps the CIA, Department of Defense, former President Bush and the officials
of his administration wanted to avoid the publicity.
On
Monday morning June 22, 2015, the day of our trial, the
U.S. prosecuting attorney announced that the government wasn’t ready for the
trial and our case was basically dismissed. Now, I’d like to share the notes in
preparation for my testimony…
I
followed my conscience when I spoke out in the Senate gallery. As a woman
priest, I celebrate the Eucharist around the country: A Eucharist is re-membering the face
of Christ in each person, including our Muslim brothers at
Guantanamo.
On
Thursday, June 18, 2015, our Republican-led Senate took a historic bipartisan
vote to end CIA torture by voting 78-21 for the McCain-Feinstein Amendment to
the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). As a person of faith this vote
expresses the moral principle that torture is always
wrong.
I came
to the Senate Chamber to remind legislators that they reflect the conscience and
soul of the nation when they make its laws. By violating basic human rights, our
nation has lost its integrity and its right to challenge human rights violations in other
countries. This must be remedied, because it has an impact
even on our children, so they do not resort to
violence.
We must
uphold the Senate Torture Report, prosecute those responsible and return the men
at Guantanamo to their families. Our own children, and
the world, are watching.
I am a
Roman Catholic Woman Priest, ordained on Aug. 9, 2008, Feast day of Franz
Jagerstatter, an Austrian father of four who was inducted into the NAZI army,
but refused to fight because he obeyed his conscience: that place inside our
soul where we hear truth, the voice of God.
The Catholic Church teaches us to be
faithful to the primacy of conscience. The NAZIS beheaded Jaggerstatter for
following his, but during the Nuremberg
trials, which gave rise to the Nuremberg principles that are now international
law, it became clear that a moral choice is as important as a legal
choice.
The
International Bill of Human Rights, which includes the Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, and which our country signed after World War II, is international
law, and we are bound as members of the United Nations, to uphold international
law. This principle is embedded in our constitution and our
foundational documents.
My mother’s parents migrated here from
Poland at the turn of the last century when it was still divided among three
foreign nations. In 1959, at age 9, I got my first look at this
nation which gave birth to the Solidarity movement. I watched the documentary of
the death camps during the NAZI occupation.
Today we have death
camps in Guantanamo and the new documentary is the Senate Torture Report.
Today, the US is terrorizing the Muslim people of the Mideast.
Poles
are outraged that the U.S. operated a black site in Poland and tortured two
Muslim men: Abu Zu
bay dah and Abd al-Ra him al-Na shir ri.
In July
2014, the European
Court of Human Rights formally
ruled that so-called "enhanced interrogation" is torture, and ordered Poland to
pay $250,000 restitution to these men tortured at a CIA black
site there.
I was
raised to respect people of other ethnicities and faiths. I learned what
anti-Semitism did in Poland. In Guantanamo we are seeing the same
principles in action: homophobia, hate crimes
against Muslims, the abuse of the Koran and not allowing the men to wear their
turbans which is part of their religious tradition (just as I’m wearing a
sacramental stole and others wear their collars).
For 15
years, I taught English as a second language as a public school teacher to
children from 65 countries, all the world’s “hot spots”. I heard the stories
from my children from Rwanda whose fathers were tortured in front of them and whose
mothers were raped and disappeared…like the men at Guantanamo who have been sexually abused. I’ve seen my Palestinian
students jump five feet in the air when a door slams like the men at Guantanamo
when their interrogators storm into their cells.
As a
peace activist, I’ve learned about torture at the annual Vigil at Ft. Benning in
Columbus, GA at the School of the
Americas, where torture techniques are taught. Here torture victims from Latin
America (human rights organizers, labor activists, mothers and fathers) share
their stories. At Guantanamo it’s the Navy and US soldiers, not foreign ones,
who torture, with sadistic techniques exported to Abu Ghraib under General
Miller.
In 2006, I journeyed into the wilderness in
solidarity with my indigenous children from Mexico
and Central America. With the Christian Peacemaker Team I walked for six days
and five nights covering 75 miles into the Sonora Desert as part of the Migrant
Trail Walk. Here, I learned how people die in extreme temperatures from
our border policies in the same way as people die in Guantanamo
naked in freezing cold rooms or holding onto their humanity by not eating like
Tariq Ba Odah.
In front
of the White House during a Witness Against Torture action I read poetry by the
men held in Guantanamo subjected to torture. I experienced their breadth and
depth of soul…. I ask, what has happened to the soul of this country? I testify
in ways that show the humanity of the men at Guantanamo.
It’s
been 13 years now. For the mothers who have sons in Guantanamo, Jan.
12th is the13th anniversary of their separation from their
sons. As a mother who’s lost a son, my heart aches for these women. They have no
date to look forward to when they can hug their children again. I also cry for
us… and the heartless men and women described in the Senate Torture Report.
(rest)
With the
SOA Watch delegation I traveled to El Salvador and heard a campesino speak
about the Dirty Wars and the death squads.
In the Romero Chapel at the University of Central America I gasped in horror at
the charcoal paintings on the wall of the torture victims just as I do when I
see photos of our tortured Muslim brothers at
Guantanamo.
Last summer I stood by the bay in
Montevideo, Uruguay where the bodies of tortured Argentinian activists would
wash ashore. In the Museum of Memory of human rights atrocities, I stood under a
canopy of photos of the tortured and disappeared. President Pepe Mujica of Uruguay –who was
tortured and incarcerated in solitary confinement for 12 years –invited six of
the men from Guantanamo to live in his country…
In
Buenos Aires, we walked through the secret torture rooms at EMSA, the Naval
Station, and I saw the room for the pregnant women whose babies were torn away
from them. I learned that the SOA taught torture here. Patricia, our guide in
Buenos Aires and a good friend of Christina the President, was
tortured for 27 months, beginning at the age of 15, at a nearby police
station. She and others eventually took their seven torturers to trial and
they are serving long sentences. Two died in prison. When will we prosecute the
torturers of our Muslim brothers at Guantanamo?
I’ve
been a delegate to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women three
times for St. Joan’s International Alliance, a
104- year -old Catholic feminist organization that has worked through the
League of Nations and the UN to stop the sexual torture of girls, female genital
mutilation which reminded me of rectal feeding – rape of the men at Guantanamo.
I learned that U.S. torture of detainees at Guantanamo violated International
Law, Human Rights Law and our own Constitutional
Law.
Every
human being, including so-called “aliens,” is entitled to habeas corpus,
equality and equal protection under the law. Like Pilate, we torture and murder
people who have never been tried or condemned. But instead of purple cloaks,
we’ve dressed them in orange jumpsuits and black hoods.
In
Guantanamo, these men are contained and the global community is appalled and
supposed to look the other way because they’re suspect of terrorism…and they’re
being held and tortured without due process…outside the
law.
From an
international perspective, Guantanamo is everybody’s concern. From the UN point
of view, the US Senate Report must be legally binding. We want people
prosecuted: the CIA, the Department of Defense, President Bush and officials of
his administration need to be held accountable.
If
people are not held accountable, this makes people’s lives
unlivable.
Modern
day prophet Sr. Megan Rice who entered the tortuous and insane Y-12 Nuclear
Weapons Complex at Oak Ridge, Tennessee said. “All citizens are required to
expose and oppose known crimes.”
We
didn’t disrupt the Senate Chamber Gallery. We interrupted legally.
And by finally voting against torture in overwhelming numbers, the Senate
has affirmed our action.
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