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Bagram Detainees Stage Protest Against US Treatment
Prisoners at airbase in Afghanistan refuse family visits and recreation time to highlight denial of legal rights
KABUL - Hundreds of prisoners at the main American detention centre in Afghanistan are refusing privileges such as recreation time and family visits in protest at their lack of legal rights.
US soldiers stand at attention during a ceremony at Bagram air base, about 50 kms north of Kabul in May 2009. Former detainees of the Bagram air base in Afghanistan have alleged a catalogue of abuse at the US military facility, the BBC reported Wednesday, after a two-month investigation. (AFP/File/Shah Marai) American forces hold around 600 prisoners at Bagram airbase outside the capital, Kabul, as "unlawful enemy combatants", a status the US says does not give them the right to legal representation.
Human rights campaigners have argued that these prisoners should be given the same rights as those detained at the US naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The US military argues that Bagram detainees should be treated differently because they are being held in an active theatre of war.
A US federal judge ruled in April that the Bagram detainees have the right to challenge their detention in American courts, and the Obama administration has asked a federal appeals court to overturn the decision.
The Bagram detainees' protest, which began on 1 July, is about this lack of access to lawyers or independent reviews, said a military official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to talk about the issue to the media.
The prisoners have refused outside recreation time, family visits and video phone calls arranged by the Red Cross, he said, adding that the majority of detainees are taking part.
Red Cross officials confirmed they had been asked to halt family visits and calls. "The detainees told us that they don't want to participate in the family visit programme, and we have suspended it until they're ready to resume," said spokeswoman Jessica Barry.
The Red Cross last visited the detention centre on 5 July, and further visits have been temporarily suspended, though one would not normally happen for another six weeks, Barry said. She could not comment on the protest, saying only: "We are aware that there are tensions in the prison at the moment."
The prisoners have not refused food or water, the military official said.
Bagram detainees are told the reason for their arrest and are allowed to defend themselves at six-month military review sessions, but without outside legal counsel, according to military statements.
Afghan human rights officials said they could not comment on the protest because they were not allowed into the prison and had no information on it.
"The constitution has given us the authority to monitor the condition of prisoners throughout Afghanistan, and especially the coalition detention centres, but they have refused to let us in," said Mohammad Farid Hamidi, a human rights commissioner.
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Show AllAmerica's military dictatorship is starting to look a lot like Myanmar.
Early Christians were frequently required to carry the loads of Roman soldiers. They were admonished to carry the load, and then offer to carry it further. It was a way of peacefully pointing out awareness of the assymetry of power and the unjustness of it - also hopefully humiliating the person into some level of consciousness by appealing to the humanity of one who failed to see the humanity in the person they were abusing.
What good is a privilege if one has no rights?
What good is the imprisonment by law when it it is predicated on denial of rights to the same code of law? It renders the law lawless. It reveals that lawlessness to be detrimental in the overall scheme of life - a reminder that such a law cannot be sustained in peace because it would be inappropriate for it to be reciprocally applied. This places the prisoner on the ethical high ground and humiliating the those carrying out the law for their failure to think when they are supposedly of a 'democracy' that values the rule of law, the Nuremburg principles and respect for the cultural and intellectual integrity of other peoples.
Deepa
Bagram is "Abu Ghraib of Afghanistan".
We are back to an oligarchy pretending to be a republic pretending to be a democracy. Peace
Even I'm surprised that Obama has yet to do a single thing to appease his delusional supporters. Why not do something innocuous just for PR? Obama's supporters are gullible people. All it would take would be a few minor environmental or gay rights issues, and they would continue to be enthralled with him. Instead, it's transparent that he's behaving like Bush.
before bush there was no such thing as an "illegal enemy combatant". this was a category of (non) human that made it possible to lock people up in places like Bagram and all the rest of the gulag, deny them all the most basic rights, and pretend it was ok because such beings were not mentioned in geneva or ant other conventions of international law. It does appear now that it was a brilliant, if twisted, idea. This is so not because it was intrinsically clever, but because bush had found he was presiding over a nation of timorous cowards who could never object to anything he did, disinformed by an even more cowardly news media. "enemy combatant" was first used so as to to call them prisoners of war in which case they would have been accorded the legal dignities extended to, for example, Nazi prisoners in WWII. "unlawful" was added so they could lock up anyone who might otherwise argue they were prisoners of war, but, according to bush rules were not because they were not wearing military uniforms.
So here's to you, prisoners of Bagram, and best wishes for a successful protest.
This, of course, is one of the many advantages of attacking countries that have no armed forces, so whatever resistance your troops meet must necessarily come from civilians. Who must therefore be out of uniform, as there are none, and so must be pronounced "unlawful enemy combatants".
oh yeah and did I mention under this category, they can, and do, arrest, detain, and torture
children? That was an extra advantage, because in international law child soldiers are defined as victims, and cannot be perpetrators.
Obama has developed an infuriating habit of embracing some of bush's most egregious war crimes, and here he is doing it again.
Your just finding out that Obama is a coward and has deliberately misled and lied to the US. He is a total Fascist and is smarter than either of the Bush Presidents and also smarter than the Clintons (both). The USA has lost it's constitution all of it's rights and freedoms (except at the whim etc) your country is very much like 1935 Nazi Germany and getting worse everyday. You need to standup and get rid of these criminals. The world court would try them if you arrest them and charge them with the various war crimes that they are guilty of. The alternative is "SLAVERY" forced labour and detention with no charges and no defense or legal help. Bye, Bye, USA down the drain any day!!