At Saturday’s “Going on the Record: Resistance and Writing,” the panelists discussed the role that documentation and writing can play in exposing and resisting human rights offenses. David Frakt, previously a military defense lawyer famous for the defense of Mohammed Jawad, and Alberto Mora, former General Counsel of the Navy, spoke about documentation, ethics, and accountability involved with the cruel and inhumane treatment of detainees at Guantánamo Bay. Aleksandar Hemon, author of The Lazarus Project, contributed a more abstract and literary perspective, drawing on Kafka and popular media to contextualize the endorsed use of torture.
Why did the abuse at Guantánamo Bay happen and continue to when such cruel and inhuman treatment is so blatantly illegal?
Hemon pointed out the value given to force and violence in American culture: “We have to show that we are the strongest.” A perspective, he argued, that enabled force to become a sustainable solution while absurd notions, like torture, are perpetuated into law. Frakt raised the reality of—religious and racist bigotry—explaining that there were people in the Bush administration post 9/11 who simply did not view the detainees as human beings. As Mora elaborated, the Muslim and Arab detainees were “individuals who had opted out of the human race because of their savagery.”
Who do we hold accountable and how?
Mora and Frakt discussed the importance of record keeping and documentation. After Mora’s investigations into the abusive and degrading treatment of the detainees at Guantánamo, he confronted Jim Haynes, author of the “Rumsfeld Memorandum”, about the language that outright approved the techniques such as sensory deprivation and waterboarding in interrogation. Only after threatening Haynes with a publicized memo was the Memorandum rescinded. “I could no longer ethically or morally proceed orally,” said Mora. Frakt voiced his support for public action as integral to establishing a historical record, correcting the widespread misperception that all detainees are “terrorists,” and advocating Obama’s supposed goal of shutting Guantánamo down.
How can we expect the international community to abide by laws if we break them?
As I left the auditorium, I felt deeply disturbed by our leader’s actions and the blatant civic indifference to the atrocities committed at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. To use Mora’s words, the three panelists aggressively called for the “protection of human dignity through the rule of law.” The question remains what are we—as American citizens—doing to ensure that there will be justice for everyone involved.
