Ang una nilang ginagawa ay takpan ang iyong mga mata. Pinahuhubad ka nila para masiguradong wala kang dala. Pinapalitan nila ang iyong mga damit ng mga uniporme na hindi naman damit. Kinadena ka nila sa pamamagitan ng kamay at paa. Kinaladkad ka nila palayo at iniiwan kang mag-isa. Inusisa ka nila. Mamamatay ka daw kapag hindi ka magsasalita. Pinapakain ka nila – hindi ka gaanong mabuti sa kanila kung mamamatay ka sa gutom.
It sounds like Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to which the United States military is deporting men it has captured in Afghanistan. But it was Lebanon in the 1980s. The Hezbollah, Lebanon’s Shi’ite Muslim Party of God, kidnapped foreigners between 1982 and 1989 at the behest of their Iranian benefactors.
I remember the drill – the blindfold, chains, solitude and loneliness. I was there for two months in 1987. It was a bad time, and it seemed unlikely to me then that I would one day see photographs of my countrymen treating Muslim prisoners much as I was treated.
I thought the Eighth Amendment to the US constitution prohibited “cruel and unusual punishments”. I’m looking at the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments that Americans regard as sacred, and read the words “nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted”. Full stop. It does not say that only American passport-holders, legal residents of the United States and members of the Senate who take contributions from corporations that violate the law are exempt from government torments.
It makes clear that no category of human being is excluded from America’s obligation to refrain from cruel and unusual punishments. Amendment VIII means suspects; it means enemies; it means criminals; it means prisoners of war; it means – and the term is as new to me and you as it undoubtedly is to the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld – “illegal” combatants.
Who is illegal and who is legal, by the way, has always been for the courts of the United States to decide, not the Department of Defence. As for international law, the Geneva Conventions say that “captured combatants or civilians” have certain rights – including to correspond with their families – without any distinction between “legal” and “illegal” combatants.
I wonder now whether some mullah in Tehran said, when a score of Americans and Europeans were illegally held against their will in Lebanon: “Obviously, anyone would be concerned if people were suggesting that treatment was not proper.”
That is what Rumsfeld said on television the other day. Rumsfeld’s concern for the Muslims chained like Caliban on America’s Caribbean base seems to match what Tehran’s mullahs felt for us. The mullahs, at least, knew that holding American, French, British and German captives in Lebanon during the 1980s was so shameful that they never admitted it. Rumsfeld seems proud. His is not some secret operation, like the CIA’s Phoenix programme of assassinations and torture in Vietnam. It’s out in the open.
Kung hindi binasa ni Rumsfeld ang konstitusyon kung saan siya nanumpa, kung hindi niya nakikita ang kalupitan sa pagtrato sa mga lalaking iyon sa Cuba, maari man lang niyang aminin na ang pagtali sa mga lalaki, paghaharang sa kanilang paningin, pagpuputol sa kanila mula sa kanilang mga mata. pamilya at paglipad sa kanila sa buong mundo ay hindi karaniwan.
"Ang katotohanan ay ang paggamot ay wasto," iginiit ni Rumsfeld. "Walang pag-aalinlangan sa aking isipan na ito ay makatao at angkop at naaayon sa Geneva Conventions sa karamihan." Para sa pinaka-bahagi? Aling bahagi? Ang mga tanikala? Ang blindfold goggles? Ang anim-by-walong talampakan na mga kulungan? Kahit man lang inilagay ako ni Hezbollah sa isang normal na laki ng kwarto.
It wasn’t much of a room, bare but for a paper-thin mattress on the floor, with a sheet of steel to seal the window. I never saw daylight, but they did turn the electric lights off at night so I could sleep. The men in Guantanamo enjoy no such luxury: arc lights are left on all night so the US marine guards can keep an eye on them.
I’m not sure why. Where are they going to go? We are told they don’t even know where they are. If they manage to clear the fences and minefields, the Cubans on the other side have said they’ll hand them back to the US.
During the 62 days I spent alone in that room in Beirut, all I could do was sit for hours and hours, thinking, praying, hoping. Some friends of mine did that for five years. It was mistreatment, cruel and unusual. The Hezbollah interrogators justified it. The Israeli army, they said, kept Lebanese inmates of Khiam prison, in south Lebanon, under worse conditions.
(When international observers at last went into Khiam after Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon in 2000, they confirmed that the interrogation rooms and cells were much, much worse than anything I had experienced as a hostage.) The Israelis’ brutality to their prisoners no more justified what the Hezbollah did to its hostages in Lebanon than the Hezbollah’s actions excuse what the US is doing in Cuba.
Ang isang Amerikano ay maaaring balang araw ay arestuhin o kidnapin ng mga taong nakikiramay sa mga nakakulong sa Camp X-Ray. Ano ang sasabihin ng mga bumihag sa kanya kapag nakiusap siya na ang kanyang mga kondisyon ay lumabag sa internasyonal na batas? Ang kanilang sagot ay ang magpatugtog para sa kanya ng mga videotape ng mga nakakulong sa X-Ray at ng mga press conference ni Rumsfeld?
Ang Britain, tulad ng ginawa nito sa bawat aksyon ng US sa bawat labanan o pambobomba sa nakalipas na 20 taon, ay nagbigay-katwiran sa Camp X-Ray. Isang tagapagsalita ng gobyerno ang sinipi bilang sinabi, pagkatapos ng isang delegasyon ng Britanya na libutin ang kampo noong nakaraang Biyernes: "Walang gags, walang salaming de kolor, walang takip sa tainga at walang kadena habang ang mga detenido ay nasa kanilang mga selda."
Bakit kailangang igapos at bulagin sila ng sinuman sa kanilang mga selda? Hinayaan ng Hezbollah ang mga hostage nito na tanggalin ang kanilang mga blindfold kapag sila ay nag-iisa sa kanilang mga naka-lock na silid. Kapag pumasok ang isang guwardiya o interogator, gayunpaman, ang blindfold ay kailangang isara nang mabilis. Ang Hezbollahi, na napagtatanto na maaari silang managot sa korte para sa kanilang mga krimen, ay hindi nais na makilala namin sila. Ito ay isang makabuluhang pag-iingat. Marahil ay dapat magsuot ng hood si Rumsfeld sa kanyang ulo para walang makakilala sa kanya.