May 04, 2004
Blast From The Past IV
[Originally cited in "What's So 'Civil' About War, Anyway?".]
PROFESSOR RUTH WEDGWOOD (Yale Law School): I don't have any information that there is a set of horror stories about to be unloaded. The US can be held to the standard of the commitment made by the President, which is part of human rights law as well, that you have to treat people humanely. If you talk to individuals, you may discover they have gotten better medical care than they ever dreamed of, they've gained weight, they have been allowed to observe their faith.
MARSHALL: But this is not a holiday camp. There are currently 660 prisoners. None has any idea if they will ever be freed. In the 13 months up to August this year, there have been 32 suicide attempts. Since then, there has only been one further attempted suicide recorded. They have, however, introduced a separate category -- manipulative self injurious behaviour -- SIB. It is applied to individuals deemed to have merely feigned suicide attempts. There have been over 40 SIBs since the summer. This new classification troubles Britain's leading forensic psychiatrist.
DR JAMES MACKEITH (Maudsley Royal Hospital): It is impossible to authoritatively assess attempts at self harm in such a way as to justify confidence that a particular self-destructive act is designed to have a manipulative purpose, rather than a self-destructive purpose.
MARSHALL: It is not a valuable clinical definition, as far as you are concerned.
MACKEITH: It is a new one on me.
[Originally cited in "'Disappeared'".]
A prisoner tried to kill himself again in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where U.S. authorities are preparing for military tribunals to try terror suspects, officials said Wednesday.
Tuesday's attempt was the 29th since the detention mission began 1½ years ago, said spokesman Lt.-Col. Barry Johnson. Most attempts occurred this year, a sign that the indefinite detentions are beginning to take their toll on the prisoners, who have not been formally charged or allowed to see lawyers.
[Originally cited in "Quote Of The Moment #0049".]
They actually said that: "You have no rights here." After a while, we stopped asking for human rights -- we wanted animal rights.
In Camp X-Ray, my cage was right next to a kennel housing an Alsatian dog. He had a wooden house with air conditioning and green grass to exercise on. I said to the guards, "I want his rights," and they replied, "That dog is a member of the U.S. army."
Posted by Eddie Tews at May 4, 2004 11:53 AM