From Cynthia McKinney: A Quick Update, Live from Libya; Accountability FOUND in Kuala Lumpur
Hello!
I have a few more meetings before I make the full Libya report. Yes, a group of us from the U.S. attended a Conference in Libya and learned a lot. I do want to ask you to tune in to our DIGNITY channel on Livestream (at
http://www.livestream.com/dignity) and see for yourself what we were a part of in Libya. People from all over the U.S.--and, indeed, the world--were there.
The full Conference proceedings have been posted. Hours of very good information in multiple languages is available. The U.S. Delegation was received very well. Democracy was the topic of the Conference, and I think it was clear that by the time we experience electronic voting machines, restrictive voter and candidate access laws, special interest money and only limited public campaign finance, our voices are muted because we have "run-away representatives" who run toward the special interests, and away from the values of the very people who elect them. The current health care debate which has turned into a health insurance mandate debate is an example of how hard it is for the people's values and policy desires to become enacted into law. Please tune in to us at
http://www.Livestream.com/DIGNITY where you will see all of this and more.
I think you will be shocked by my full Kuala Lumpur report. In a few days, we'll also have the proceedings from the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Conference, War Crimes Commission, and War Crimes Tribunal posted on the DIGNITY channel as well. So please stay tuned as we try and provide good, new content on a consistent basis.
I am so proud that the song, "Who is Your God?" by Desert Rose was so well received in Kuala Lumpur. I made my remarks and then played the song and several people came up afterwards and asked where could they find it online. In case you didn't see or hear it yet, please click here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H99mzLiBenw for a real movement song that has, by the way, been banned by the powerful Rabbinical Society in South Africa. And interestingly, if you go to youtube and put in who is your god? without the quotation marks before who and after the question mark, the song won't come up at all. So, if you lose this message and want to view the song or share it at a later date, remember to search youtube with the song's title in quotation marks.
In the upcoming weeks, I will be in Minnesota; New York; Bristol, U.K., Kentucky. Please come to or share news about the events if you can! I'll send exact details later when I'm a bit more settled because now I'm still on travel.
Our bike ride is coming together!! Please join us and BIKE4PEACE!! Please help us organize. Please communicate to the contact e-mail below how you can help us! Here's our press release:
We're taking an unsupported bicycle ride from San Francisco to Washington, DC between July and Sept, 2010, led by Cynthia McKinney, six term Member of Congress and 2008 Green Party nominee for President. The ride will demonstrate the bicycle as a transformational tool to solve the problems of Climate Change, Oil Wars, the Health Crisis, and the Economic Crunch. Along the way, riders will facilitate community discussions around the question "How can we support each other to live true to our best values?"
Our route, schedule, and discussion group are open to anybody with a free Google account. Please join us. If you would like to bicycle all or part of the route, plan a convergence ride to meet up in DC on World Car-Free Day 22-Sept, or host riders passing through your community, please e-mail bike4peace@googlegroups.com
If you want the United States to re-enter the global community as a responsible partner, we must accept, atone for, and repair the damage we have done to ourselves and others. Kuala Lumpur is about accountability. If you want to hold the Bush Administration accountable for its actions, please tune in to what we are doing in Kuala Lumpur.
In Kuala Lumpur we heard testimony from victims of U.S. rendition and torture in Afghanistan and Guantanamo. We are determined to hold the leaders who are responsible for this behavior accountable for their policies.
Here are three articles about what we did in Kuala Lumpur and the types of cases we are interested in that occurred in the name of all taxpayers in the United States. We must not remain silent because we know that silence means consent:
1.
Former 6 term United States Congresswoman and presidential candidate, Cynthia McKinney, delivers a speech at the Kuala Lumpur Conference to Criminalise War
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (Mathaba) Former US congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, addressed the conference to criminalise war today at 11.50am local time, with a speech on the subject of `flouting international law` and on the need to criminalise war.
Cynthia McKinney said that the speech given by George Galloway just minutes earlier would not be allowed in the United States, where freedom is under attack in the so-called "War on Terror." She stated that injustice is generally reserved for non-whites and the poor, and gave the experience of the treatment of New Orleans before, during and after Hurricane Katrina as an example.
Cynthia gave examples of a native American "Red Indian" named in English language "Splitting the Sky" who was arrested for trying to serve a citizens arrest warrant against George W. Bush, and that she would be testifying at his trial.
McKinney was the first person in Congress to ask what the U.S. administration knew about the September 11 attacks, and when did it know it. She said that she was forced out of Washington by the Israeli lobby who targeted her and that she has declared her independence from the administration which has become known for war crimes and torture.
She said that the people of Malaysia learnt long ago that there cannot be peace without justice.
McKinney said that while a great many Americans go hungry and without health care or housing, trillions of dollars are being spent on war, and she said that the incumbent President Obama is now continuing the war crimes started by George W. Bush. She said that "if we had true democracy in the United States, then we would not have war." She said that now Kuala Lumpur is the "Justice capital of the world."
The former US Congresswoman and presidential candidate, then showed a video produced in Cape Town, South Africa, from where she has travelled to this conference.
War Crimes Commission Hears Graphic Accounts of US Torture From Former Detainees
By Maria J.Dass
November 01, 2009 --"SunDaily" -- KUALA LUMPUR (Oct 30, 2009): The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission today heard harrowing testimonies about the atrocities committed against the Guantanamo Bay detainees, which included psychological torture and routine humiliation.
A total of seven detainees including Sudanese journalist Sami Al’Hajj, and British nationals Moazzam Begg and Rahul Ahmed testified today about the atrocities that took place in the camps including how they were shackled, stripped naked in front of female soldiers, thrown naked into makeshift cells made with barbed wires, injected with substances and subjected to mental torture to the point they hallucinated.
Begg was detained in January 2002 in Pakistan, said he was told that there was no specific reason for his arrest except for the fact that he "fit a profile".
The family man, who had previously worked in Kabul, Afghanistan on a project to build a school for girls, moved to Pakistan after the Sept 11 bombings.
He said he was "kidnapped" from his home, labelled an "enemy combatant" and detained for four years.
Begg, who is now director of Cage Prisoners – a human rights organisation that works to raise awareness of the plight of the prisoners held as part of the War on Terror – testified about the excruciating conditions in which he was transported from Pakistan to Kandahar and then to Guantanamo Bay.
Begg also revealed that he was interrogated more than 300 times including once when insinuations were made that his wife was in danger while the screams of a woman could be heard next door.
He also said he was forced to sign a confession that he was member of the terrorist organisation Al-Qaeda under threat of torture and because he though it would give him access to legal recourse.
Begg also spoke of the psychological torture inflicted on him while he was imprisoned.
He said a psychiatrist assigned to speak to him had asked him if he had ever considered committing suicide and even suggested how he could kill himself by tying his prison clothes to make a rope that could be used as a noose.
"Of the six deaths that I knew of during detention, five were carried out in this way," Begg said, adding that the detainees were also drugged.
Summing up his testimony, Begg revealed to the commission that 92% of people held in Guantanamo Bay were not involved with the Taliban or Al-Qaeda, saying he believed many were detained and handed to the Americans to get the hefty bounty paid for each detainee.
He also had some harsh words for the role played by the British government in the affair.
"The British idea was that they were guests and that this was an American show and I believe my incarceration would not taken place without the aid of the British government who were closest allies to Americans."
Meanwhile Ahmed and his friends learnt the hard way about the dangers of seeking pleasure in a hostile environment.
In 2002, the then 18-year-old and two friends crossed the Pakistan-Afghanistan border to obtain drugs and alcohol which they were told was easily available in the American-occupied Afghanistan.
They were promptly arrested and Ahmed spent the next two and the half years of his life in Guantanamo Bay.
He said he was interrogated frequently, sometimes in awkward positions while being forced to listen to loud music and dogs barking for up to two days.
"When subjected to this for several hours, the effects of this prolonged exposure makes you hallucinate and see things that are not here," he added.
Commissioners at the hearing were former Bar Council president Zainur Zakaria, former UN assistant secretary general for humanitarian operations in Iraq Prof Hans-Christof von Sponeck, former assistant secretary general for human resource management and head of UN humanitarian programme in Iraq Dennis J.Halliday, lawyer and former magistrate Musa Ismail, professor of law Gurdial Nijar, Perdana Foundation’s Dr Zulaiha Ismail and Prof Dr Mohd Akram Shair Mohamed of the Islamic University.
The testimonies before the Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Commission Hearings will be submitted to a tribunal in conjunction with the Criminalise War Conference and War Crimes Tribunal 2009 spearheaded by former prime minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
Copyright© 2009 Sun Media Corporation Sdn. Bhd.
3.
US/PAKISTAN:
Mystery Behind Aafia Siddiqi's 'Arrest' Deepens
Zofeen Ebrahim
KARACHI, Aug 20 (IPS) - ‘’For you it’s just another story. If you want the truth go to Ghazni where you will get more than I can ever tell you about my sister," said a distraught Fouzia Siddiqi, speaking with IPS, in a voice breaking with helpless desperation.
Fouzia’s younger sister, Aafia Siddiqi, 35, made headlines after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced, on Aug. 4, her "arrest" for attempting to "murder and assault" United States’ officers and employees outside the governor’s office in Ghazni, Afghanistan, on Jul. 17. No soldiers were reported injured in the incident but Aafia received bullet injuries.
Aafia, a neuroscientist, has since been lodged in a Manhattan jail and the preliminary hearing of her case set for Sep. 3. According to charges framed against her in a New York court, she was, at the time of her arrest, found carrying documents describing how to make explosives and chemical, biological and radiological weapons. She, allegedly, also had a list of landmarks in the U.S. and ‘’chemical substances’’ in sealed containers.
Aafia’s resurfacing in Ghazni, five years after her disappearance in the southern port city of Karachi, has shaken the nation. The whereabouts of her three children, who were with her at the time she was kidnapped, remain unclear.
Aafia's story began in March 2003 when this Pakistani woman, then 30, along with her three children, then aged between four months and seven years, became one more victim of numerous disappearances that have been linked to Pakistan’s role in the U.S.-led ‘war-on-terror’. The independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) has stated that she was initially picked up by an intelligence agency in Pakistan and so the "Pakistan government is also accountable for the crime".
The handing over of Aafia to U.S. authorities has been criticised by Pakistani political leaders. "This is not only a heinous act, but tantamount to selling the country's sovereignty and independence to another nation. It is shameful, utterly humiliating to every Pakistani," said Qazi Hussain Ahmed, leader of the Jamaat -e-Islami party at a press conference here last week.
"It is high time that the present government act like an independent sovereign nation and form its own foreign policy leaving behind the legacy of a discredited military dictator," Ahmed stressed, referring Pervez Musharraf who resigned as president on Monday, amid criticism at home of his pro-U.S. policies.
In 2004, then FBI director Robert Mueller named Aafia among the seven al-Qaeda associates who were being sought in connection with possible terrorist threats to the U.S.
Two weeks prior to Aafia’s arrest in Ghazni, a British journalist, Yvonne Ridley, held a press conference in Islamabad, in which she identified Aafia as ‘Prisoner No. 650’, being held in solitary confinement at the detention centre attached to the U.S. air base at Bagram.
Ridley referred to the book ‘Enemy Combatant’ by Moazzam Beg, a former Guantanamo and Bagram prisoner, who had mentioned hearing endless screams, apparently by a woman being tortured, during his detention at Bagram.
"Based on the testimony of detainees held in Bagram in 2003 and 2004, it is clear that there was a woman being held at the base. Whether or not that woman was Aafia Siddiqi is something that, at the moment, cannot be verified," said Asim Qureshi, senior researcher with the rights group Cageprisoners. "However, Dr. Siddiqi has confirmed that she was held in Bagram for years," said Qureshi, responding to queries from IPS.
Fouzia describes her sister, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Brandeis University alumna, as a ‘’fun-loving people’s person," who had completed her PhD on "how to improve memory among mentally challenged children’’.
"I fear for her life. They probably don’t want her to see the light of day,’’ said Fouzia. ‘’If they release her, the truth will come out."
A press release by the HRCP says: "A close look at the picture (in newspapers here) shows the years of torture - dark circles under her eyes, a broken and badly fixed nose, made up teeth and crumbled lips. It is a picture of a severely dehydrated and unwell person, almost as if on the deathbed. It shows the inhumane brutality of a ‘civilised’ nation by the administration of the country which claims to be civilised."
According to the description given to Fouzia given by her brother, a Houston-based architect, who was allowed to meet Aafia in New York, she was in a ‘’fragile condition and in severe pain’’.
"She was suffering from multiple bullet wounds that had been not been attended to. She came to court in a wheelchair and was suffering from intense abdominal pain for which she was given aspirin, which could only act as poison for her ulcerous condition," Fouzia said. Aafia had earlier informed her lawyer that she believed part of her intestines had been removed.
"My brother told me he saw the perpetrators and the victim together in one room. There was not a shred of compassion, just stony-eyed hate," Fouzia said, tears welling up in her eyes. "She has been condemned even before the trial."
"You know, it would have been better if she had died. I believed she had died and was reconciled to the idea. That way I could move on... and then she re-surfaced, like resurrected from the dead, and that brought some hope. But seeing her like this, it just breaks my heart," continued Fouzia.
Since the announcement of her arrest there have been protests from rights groups across Pakistan.
Amina Janjua, who has been leading a campaign for the recovery of almost 400 missing persons, as chairperson of Defence of the Human Rights, formed after her husband was kidnapped three years ago said she could feel the anguish and utter helplessness of Aafia’s family.
"After seeing Aafia’s pictures splashed in newspapers across the country and the torture marks she bore for five years, I fear for my husband’s life too,'' Janjua said. '' But being a woman, and a mother whose children have been separated from her, I can feel the torment she’s going through."
"To say that she (Aafia) had been taken into custody only on Jul. 17, 2008 is a blatant lie, as transparently ugly as any falsehood can be. The insinuation, that she had been hiding herself since 2003, is a travesty of truth, an affront to people’s commonsense," stated HRCP.
But Aafia’s case seems to be shrouded in mystery and no one is able to piece together the puzzle of her disappearance and reappearance. This has made it difficult for rights groups to bring up her case.
Her sister refuses to divulge information about her husband. And if there is a husband, he has not made any statement so far.
U.S. officials have said that she was married a second time to a nephew of Sep. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM). This has been fiercely disputed by the HRCP.
Zaid Hamid, a defence consultant, heading an Islamabad-based think tank ‘Brasstacks’, does not see any mystery about Aafia’s case except for the ‘’criminal betrayals and the deafening silence of our government, media and civil society about all Guantanamo prisoners, especially Pakistanis."
"We consider Dr. Aafia’s case an instance of utterly unconscionable and most brutal form of attack on a human being’s individual rights," says I.A. Rehman, heading the HRCP.
Asked why the commission was silent all these years, Rehman said: "The HRCP had been calling for her recovery since 2003 and when it went to the Supreme Court in 2007 her name was high on the list. The only mystery was the silence of Aafia’s family."
But the silence, explains Hamid, is due to the threats faced by families in similar circumstance. This was confirmed by Fouzia who said "all these years we were told by various government people that she was alright and is well and not to probe too much or harm would come to her’’.
In 2005, Arifa, 18, and her sister Habiba, 20, belonging to Karachi, were arrested from the northern Pakistani town of Swat. Their father, Sher Mohammad Baloch, filed a petition in the High Court and the HRCP took up their case. They were released after a year but HRCP was told by their father that their lips were sealed.
The government, under intense pressure from an incensed nation, has sought consular access to Aafia. As a first active step, two diplomats have visited Siddiqi and the media reported that she has requested a copy of the Quran, religiously appropriate food, and assurances of a fair trial.
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