Thursday, January 18, 2007
 

As a long-time supporter of Amnesty International and its human rights efforts, I ask that you please consider taking one or more of the following actions:

Placing a link on your website: ;

Write a letter or e-mail calling for the humane treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and asking for their right of habeus corpus to be invoked (Amnesty has pre-written e-mails; all you have to do is push send; it takes no time at all). Visit their Guantanamo site: here.

There is a great deal of information available on Amnesty's page (see left side of the page I linked to, for instance). This is a call to end abuse, torture, and unlawful detention; the prisoners should not themsleves become victims of torture, and they should be brought to swift and legal trial-- just as the US Constitution guarentees for its own citizens. This is how America should be a role model for developing countries; it should not be a symbol of prison camps, torture, and coerced confessions entered as evidence in sham trials.

No one at Guantanamo has been charged with a crime-- in the five years that it has been open. No one has ever been brought to trial.

Even as I type this, I read that US Defense Secretary Robert Gates (Gates, incidentally, has said that he will support attack on Iran as a "last resort," and, while he has not always been explicit about his position regarding the Iraqi conflict, statements he has made point to his continued support of US military intervention, troop increase, and to the general ongoing failure to withdraw for Iraq and let the country "take the reins" itself) has submitted a trial manuel to Congress that would allow hearsay evidence, coerced statements, and evidence obtained by torture to Guantanamo trials. Even in the cases where prisoners are guilty of war crimes, is this how it should be "proved"? Compare these to the sham trials of America's slavery days and Jim Crow era; is this the legal system we want to revive? Call for America to be a leader in international justice!

(You can go here and follow the "contact us" links to send an e-mail to the Department of Defense)

Labels: Amnesty, Bush, Guantanamo

Elvisette philosophized at 10:37 PM