We would like to extend our invitation for you and your family to come and celebrate the New Year at TASSC office on Sunday, January 15, 2012, 2-4 pm.

TASSC, along with our friends and supporters, will contiue to show leadership to end torture wherever it exists and to empower survivors.

As we begin 2012, we are hopeful about what we can accomplish for TASSC together. There is so much good we can do to abolish torture and the will to see it done.

Peace for the New Year! from all of us at TASSC

10 Years Too Many:

National Day of Action
Against Guantánamo

Washington DC – Join Us!

What: Be part of a human chain between the White House and the Capitol in
protest of the 10th anniversary of the Guantánamo prison and the human rights
violations it represents, including torture, detention without charge, unfair trials,
Islamophobia, and impunity for crimes by US government officials.

When: Noon – 2PM Eastern on January 11, 2012 – the 10th anniversary

of Guantánamo prison.
Where: Gather at Lafayette Square at Noon, across from the White House.
We’ll start with a rally in front of the White House and then form a human chain
down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol.

Note: Please wear orange or black and bring signs that say “No Guantánamo.

No Torture. No Excuses!”
Sign up: www.witnesstorture.org, www.amnestyusa.org/jan11,
www.ccrjustice.org/closegitmo, or www.nrcat.org/gitmo2012

More Info: jan11@witnesstorture.org, security@aiusa.org,

closegitmo@ccrjustice.org
Help Spread the Word! Copy and share this flier. Sign up and post
“National Day of Action Against Guantanamo” on Facebook. Tweet #closegitmo.

Why? Guantánamo is a global symbol of human rights violations and lawlessness
by the US government. According to military experts it is counterproductive to
security. We call on President & Congress to: Close Guantánamo & end abuses at
Bagram; end indefinite detention & military commissions; charge and fairly try
detained men in federal court or release them; ensure accountability for torture &
other serious abuses; fully investigate; prosecute and provide remedy for victims;
counter Islamophobia underpinning Guantánamo & US detention policies more
broadly; and ensure security with human rights.

Witness Against Torture Amnesty International USA Center for Constitutional Rights National Religious Campaign Against Torture
September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows Physicians for Human Rights Bill of Rights Defense Committee No More Guantánamos Pax Christi USA Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition
Catholic Worker War Resisters League World Can t Wait Code Pink School of the Americas Watch Voices for Creative Nonviolence National Campaign for Nonviolent Resistance

8th Day Center for Justice WarIsACrime.org Chicago Committee to Free the Cuban 5 Rabbis for Human Rights North America Refuge Media Project War Criminals Watch Arab American Association of New York

Georgetown University Law School

Published on *The Nation* (http://www.thenation.com)

On January 11 it will have been a decade since the first of the men we once called “the worst of the worst” were brought to Guantánamo Bay, a location handpicked by the Bush administration so that it could detain and interrogate terror suspects far from the prying eyes of the law. In the intervening years much has improved at this remote US-controlled enclave in Cuba. Allegations of ongoing torture have ceased; the detainees have access to lawyers and court review; and more than 600 of the 779 men once held there have been released.

But in another way, Guantánamo is a deeper problem today than it ever was. No longer a temporary exception, it has become a permanent fixture in our national firmament. And although at one time we could blame President George W. Bush’s unilateral assertions of unchecked executive power for the abuses there, the continuing problem that is Guantánamo today is shared by all three government branches, and ultimately by all Americans. With President Obama’s signing of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) on New Year’s Eve, the prison is sure to be with us—and its prisoners sure to continue in their legal limbo—for the indefinite future.

President Bush undoubtedly committed the original sin. Had he followed the rules governing wartime detention from the outset, Guantánamo would not be an international embarrassment. It has long been established that in an ongoing war a country may detain the enemy for the conflict’s duration. But the laws of war require that we afford hearings to those whose status is in doubt, that we release them when the conflict ends and that we treat them humanely throughout. Bush refused to provide hearings, asserted the prerogative to hold people during a never-ending “war on terror” and authorized systematic cruel and inhuman treatment. For years, Guantánamo was synonymous with Bush’s defiantly lawless approach to the “war on terror.”

But we can no longer point the finger only at Bush. He’s been out of office for three years, and Guantánamo is still very much with us. Congress, with the support of many Democrats, has adopted a shortsighted “not in my backyard” attitude, making it impossible for President Obama to deliver on his promise to close Guantánamo. In provisions recently renewed in the NDAA, Congress has barred any transfer of Guantánamo detainees to a US prison, even for criminal trial, and radically restricted the president’s authority to transfer detainees to foreign countries, essentially requiring impossible guarantees that they won’t ever pose a threat to the United States. As a result, even though more than half of the remaining detainees—eighty-nine of 171—have been fully cleared for release by a joint review conducted by the military, CIA, FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, they remain stuck there. Locking up people we concede need not be held is the very definition of arbitrary detention, but that has become the norm at Guantánamo.

The courts are also implicated. The Supreme Court twice sought to ensure that Guantánamo would be subject to law. In 2004, in a case brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights, which almost no one thought could be won, the Court ruled that the detainees had a statutory right to challenge the legality of their detentions by filing writs of habeas corpus. When Congress repealed the statutory basis for that decision, the Court in 2008 held that the detainees had a constitutional right to seek judicial review—the first time the Court had extended constitutional rights to foreign nationals outside our borders.

But the Court left the details to be worked out by the lower courts, and because all habeas cases must be filed in the District of Columbia, the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit—the very court the Supreme Court overturned in its habeas rulings—must hear all appeals in the Guantánamo cases. In a series of decisions that come close to echoing the South’s resistance to the 1954 *Brown v. Board of Education* ruling, the DC Circuit has rendered virtually meaningless the judicial review the Supreme Court says the Constitution guarantees. The DC Circuit allows indefinite detention based on notoriously unreliable intelligence reports, to which it accords a “presumption of regularity,” while denying the detainee an opportunity to confront or rebut them. It upholds indefinite detention based on a mere “preponderance of evidence,” and several judges have said they would not even require that minimal showing. As Judge Laurence Silberman candidly stated, “I doubt any of my colleagues will vote to grant [release] if he or she believes that it is somewhat likely that the petitioner is an Al Qaeda adherent or an active supporter.”

DC district courts have granted habeas in more than thirty cases, but the DC Circuit court has vacated or reversed every order the government has appealed. The Supreme Court, once celebrated for reintroducing the rule of law to Guantánamo, has now rendered judicial review a charade by repeatedly declining to intervene.

What seems to drive Congress and the courts is the desire to eliminate any risk, no matter how remote, that a detainee might harm us in the future. Neither Congress nor the courts, however, seem to have any problem with the countervailing risk, namely that we may be needlessly and arbitrarily locking up human beings for years who pose no threat whatsoever.

Meanwhile, despite his assessment that “the existence of Guantánamo likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained,” Obama appears to have abandoned his promise to close the prison. He vowed to veto the NDAA because of its restrictions on his authority vis-à-vis detention and trial of Al Qaeda suspects, but he reversed course and signed the bill after a House-Senate conference committee watered down some of its worst provisions. The bill is better because of his veto threat, but it still assures Guantánamo’s continued existence.

At the same time, Obama has blocked all efforts at accountability for the abuses committed there. Even though the vast majority of detainees have been released, suggesting they were not “the worst of the worst” after all, and even though it is widely acknowledged that detainees held there were abused and in some instances tortured, the executive has issued no apologies. Guantánamo apparently means never having to say we’re sorry.

We used to be able to blame the Bush administration for Guantánamo. No more. And although the executive, legislative and judicial branches are all deeply implicated in the ongoing injustice, we can’t really lay the blame on the government. Guantánamo is our problem as citizens. No doubt because only foreigners are held and tried there, Americans have consistently looked the other way, even as the world calls for it to be closed. A 2010 CNN poll found that 60 percent of Americans favor keeping the prison there. Guantánamo will not close until we insist that our government heed the calls for justice that the world has rightly made.

*Source URL:*

http://www.thenation.com/article/165443/guantanamo-ten-years-and-counting

The meeting was convened just prior to the first meeting of the United Nations Committee against Enforced Disappearances, and included a presentation by many family groups on the urgent need to end the practice of disappearances throughout the world.

Patricio Rice, a survivor of torture and enforced disappearance from Argentina and member of TASSC, served as the first coordinator of the coalition. Upon his tragic and untimely death in 2010, he was succeeded by Aileen Bacalso, from the Philippines.

The practice of enforced disappearances continues in many countries throughout the world as a way for repressive governments to secretly detain, torture and execute activists who oppose them. It was first justified by Nazi Germany as a way to detain and disappear those who opposed their murderous regime. In the 1970s, military dictatorships in Latin America disappeared tens of thousands of activists. In Argentina, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo heroically confronted a bloody regime that disappeared more than 30,000 people from 1976 – 1983. Today, many of those generals have been sentenced to prison for their crimes.

In 2006, a new UN Convention against Enforced Disappearance was enacted, largely as a result of thirty years of organizing by families of the disappeared. To date, 90 countries have signed the convention, and 30 countries have ratified it. The United States has neither signed nor ratified the convention.

A statement from the coalition follows.

 CONFERENCE STATEMENT

 International Conference on Enforced Disappearances

Geneva,Switzerland, 7-9 November 2011

Organizations of Families from Various Continents

And International NGOs

Gather on the First Meeting of the Committee on Enforced Disappearances

and on the 95^th Session of the UN WGEID

We, members and supporters of the International Coalition Against Enforced Disappearances (ICAED) from Africa, Asia, Euro-Asia, Euro-Mediterranean Region, North America convened for the first time at the seat of the United Nations (UN) in Geneva, Switzerland on the occasion of the first meeting of the newly established UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED).  The CED is the body of independent experts which monitors the implementation of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance (The Convention) by the States Parties. 

Our gathering, which we considered a high level of solidarity, was also intended to coincide with the 95^th session of the United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances, which, in its 30 years of working for the clarification of the whereabouts of the disappeared has supported and continues to support our work.

This historic gathering of the members of the Coalition has provided us with a venue to update ourselves on the phenomenon of enforced disappearance in our respective countries and our common campaign for signatures to and ratifications of the Convention. This is an integral part of the search for truth and justice and of our struggle against impunity.  A very important component of the conference was the re-launching of the program Linking Solidarity through the process of conducting a participatory research on Learning History.

Coming all the way from our respective countries, we share the still on-going and unresolved cases of enforced disappearances. The presentations made us reconfirm that in most of our countries, the heinous crime of enforced disappearance remains unresolved and worse still, persists with each passing day. The multiple violations of the rights wreak immeasurable pain and anxiety to both the disappeared and their surviving families and relatives.

The ICAED laments the resurgence of enforced disappearances across the globe. It expresses deep and special concern on the situation of enforced disappearance inAfricaas the number of enforced disappearances throughout the continent remains of high concern. Under-reporting continues to be a problem and associations of relatives of disappeared people are targets of harassment, threats and attacks. The ongoing monitoring of the WGEID and of the CED is therefore of the utmost importance.

The Convention, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 20 December 2006 and had entered into force on 23 December 2010 is a sign of recognition by the United Nations of the global magnitude of the crime.  It is a major victory of the associations and federations of families of the disappeared whose real-life experiences of the consequences of enforced disappearance have been fundamental bases of many of its provisions. To date, the treaty has 90 signatories and 30 States Parties.  Considering the global magnitude of enforced disappearances, much remains to be done in attaining universal implementation of the Convention.

Thus, the Conference deemed it important to chart its plan of action both for internal consolidation and expansion as well as for carrying out its mandate of campaigning for as many signatures and ratifications of the Convention as possible. 

To make its international presence visible, the ICAED conducted a side event, entitled:  Universal Implementation of the International Convention Against Enforced Disappearances:  A Task and a Challenge.  The Chairpersons of both the UN WGEID and the Committee on Enforced Disappearances (CED) spoke on the imperative of cooperation between the two bodies and their cooperation with members of civil society.  The presence the Argentinian government in the panel, whose commendable efforts to ensure the Convention’s implementation is a source of inspiration.

At this juncture, the ICAED expresses its appreciation for the establishment of the Committee on Enforced Disappearance (CED) and calls on the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to ensure that this new monitoring body is provided with adequate resources and staffing support to carry out its functions in the most effective way. At the same time, the ICAED stresses the importance to continue maintaining an effective WGEID, fully staffed and with sufficient resources as well.  The ICAED believes that the UN WGEID and the CED have to work in a coordinated manner.

The ICAED emphasizes the importance of both UN bodies.  The ICAED, thus calls on all States to cooperate with and to provide their support to the WGEID as well as to the new CED.

In as much as the ICAED calls for the support of both the UN WGEID and the CED, it expresses its willingness to contribute its wealth of expertise to the forthcoming exercises concerning the implementation of the Convention as well as the establishment of the jurisprudence of the CED.   It likewise urges both bodies to have an open consultative process including civil society, in particular, families’ organizations for the development of their rules of procedure and working methods.

The ICAED expresses the crucial importance of States to seriously engage in the fight against impunity and enforce by all means their obligation to investigate, prosecute and sanction those responsible for enforced disappearance and serious international crimes.

The ICAED calls on all States to ratify and fully implement the Convention and to recognize the competence of the CED pursuant to Articles 31 and 32 of the Convention and which are systematically included among the criteria applied by the Universal Periodic Review.  It further calls on all States to adopt domestic legislation to criminalize the autonomous offense of enforced disappearance and to ensure the prevention and punishment of this practice.  Corollary to this, the ICAED recommends that States take into consideration the Amnesty International (AI) publication, “No Impunity for Enforced Disappearance: Checklist for the Effective Implementation of the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance” in the drafting of relevant national legislation.

Finally, the ICAED underscores the continuing crime of enforced disappearance for it continues to violate the rights of the victims and to inflict endless sufferings on their families and relatives.  Thus, sustainability of our efforts is deemed important as the theme of this International Conference states: “Linking Our Solidarity; Strengthen Our Unity; Renew Our Commitment Towards the Ratification of the International Treaty Against Enforced Disappearances.”

Participating Organizations to the ICAED International Conference on Enforced Disappearances

November 7-9, 2011 Geneva Switzerland

Asian Federation Against Enforced Disappearances
Al-Ata’a for Human Rights Support-Iraq
Amnesty International
Asamblea Permante por los Derechos Humanos – Argentina
Asociación de Familiares de Detenidos-Desaparecidos, Ejecuciones Extrajudiciales y Torturados Huancayo-Junín (AFDDEET) -Peru
Association de Parents et Amis de Disparus au Maroc
Asociación Pro-Búsqueda de Niñas y Niños Desaparecidos de El Salvador
Asociación para la Recuperacion de la Memoria Historia de Catalunya (ARMHC)
Breaking the Wall of Silence-Namibia
Centro de los derechos humanos y talleres productivos Qatari Panituri-Peru
Colegio de Abogados – Peru
Collectif des Families De Disparus en Algerie
Comision de Derechos Humanos (COMISEDH)-Peru

Comité de Coordination des Familles des Disparus au Maroc (CCFDM)- Morocco
Equipo Peruano de Antropologia Forense – Peru
Federation Internationale de l’ACAT (FIACAT)
Federation Internationale des Droits de l’Homme (FIDH)
Fédération euroméditérannéenne contre les disparitions forcées (FEMED)
Federación Latinoamericana de Asociaciones de Familiares de Detenidos-Desaparecidos (FEDEFAM)
Families of Victims of Involuntary Disappearance FIND
Human Rights Watch
International Commission of Jurists
Jrdin des Disparus
Liga Guatemalteca de Higiene Mental – Guatemala
Russian Justice Initiative
*Track Impunity Always
Torture Abolition and Support Coalition
We Remember Civil Initiative-Belarus
Zimbabwe Peace Project

By Jerry Filteau.

National Catholic Reporter.

Washington DC.

November 7, 2011.

One hundred and fifty years after the United States fought the Civil War “to cure this country of the scourge of slavery,” said the archbishop emeritus of Washington, “this terrible scourge” continues today, even in the  United States.

Around the world, “800,000 [new] people are being trafficked annually, half of whom are children,” as involuntary slaves in forced labor and prostitution, said Cardinal Theodore E. McCarrick.

Today, 14,000 to 18,000 people are brought into the United States each year as sex or labor slaves, he said.

One-third of the foreign-born are children, he added.

“Slavery — to own another person … a person who was born to be free … I can’t put my head around it,” said McCarrick, a leading social justice advocate in the U.S. hierarchy who retired in 2006.

He was the featured closing speaker at a daylong conference Oct. 26 at The Catholic University of America on human trafficking and slavery, which experts say involves millions of men, women and children around the world, including millions of women and children forced into a life of prostitution or coerced labor for which they receive little or no pay.

McCarrick’s talk closed a conference that included a panel of Ethiopans who had escaped sex slavery or torture in their home country and eventually made a circuitous route into the United States as asylum seekers.

Also featured at the conference were keynote speaker Luis CdeBaca, the U.S. ambassador-at-large who heads the State Department’s Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons, and a panel of experts involved in fighting human trafficking and sex and labor slavery.

The experts’ panel also included Hilary Chester, associate director of the Anti-Trafficking Services Program of the Migration and Refugee Services department of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

An important political subtext of the conference — only recently introduced long after the conference plans had been made — was the recent denial of a new U.S. Department of Health and Human Services contract to the MRS anti-trafficking program.

Since 2006, the MRS program had assisted some 2,700 foreign-born victims of U.S. sex slavery and had formed a major national network of Catholic and non-Catholic service providers to identify and assist victims of human trafficking.

But in 2009, the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the HHS contract with MRS because it did not require MRS to include a full range of reproductive services, including referrals for abortion, sterilization and artificial contraception, in its anti-trafficking program.

The ACLU lawsuit appears to have been a decisive element in the government’s decision to switch its funding for major anti-trafficking programs from MRS to other agencies that are willing to offer full contraceptive and abortion services to all clients, though the Obama administration has refused so far to declare the reasons for its shift in funding.

In his closing talk, McCarrick, referring to the nonrenewal of the MRS contract, sharply rebuked HHS for what he called an “illegal” repudiation of numerous U.S. laws protecting the conscience of social service providers who object for religious reasons to abortion, sterilization and artificial contraception.

Earlier, in response to an NCR question about the nonrenewal of the HHS contract, Chester said MRS in coming months and years will try to build innovatively on the network it has created with federal funding over recent years to continue combating human trafficking and sexual slavery in the United States, even though the federal funding has been cut off.

In a conversation following the meeting, however, she acknowledged that the denial of a new contract is forcing the bishops’ agency to regroup and see what it can do with vastly reduced resources to continue the work it has begun.

She said MRS is also concerned about how to continue services to clients previously served within the network it had developed. She said it has urged agencies within the network to establish relationships with the newly HHS-funded anti-trafficking organizations in order to continue the anti-trafficking service work they are already engaged in.

Continuing service to clients who have been receiving assistance under the previous federal contract is a significant point of concern, she said.

The ACLU lawsuit that appears to have prompted the HHS denial of a renewed contract to MRS is another signpost in the church’s growing political struggle with the Obama administration over narrowing definitions of what church social services to the poor and disadvantaged may be eligible for federal funding, despite a an overall administration policy of federal collaboration with faith-based social services.

On the same day the human trafficking conference was being conducted at Catholic University, Bishop William E. Lori of Bridgeport, Conn., chairman of the bishops’ new ad hoc Committee on Religious Liberty, gave testimony on Capitol Hill urging Congress to investigate the new requirements of reproductive services being demanded in federal contracts with religiously based social service agencies — requirements that he said are “illegal” under existing federal statutes.

“This may call for a congressional hearing or other form of investigation to ensure compliance with the applicable conscience laws, as well as to identify how these new requirements came to be imposed,” Lori told a subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee.

At the Catholic University conference, Demissie Abebe, director of TASSC — the Washington-based Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition — introduced several fellow Ethiopian survivors of torture and sexual abuse who had successfully escaped to the United States and are currently seeking asylum.

Abebe told NCR he was imprisoned twice in Ethiopia — first for four months and then for two months — and beaten and tortured there, for filing reports on government corruption, before he escaped and eventually made his way to the United States.

The Ethiopian panelists who followed, who did not want to be photographed or identified by their last names for fear of serious repercussions for family members still living in Ethiopia, included two women and a man who said their asylum pleas have been met with extreme skepticism and dehumanizing treatment by the U.S. Immigration and Customs

Enforcement (ICE) administration.

CdeBaca delivered an unusually blunt plea from an administration official for action to end human slavery practices around the world.

The recently adopted terminology of “‘trafficking in human persons’ is a euphemism for slavery,” he said. “There are 30 million people being held in forced labor and sex labor around the world.”

In 1990, CdeBaca led the prosecution of one of the first cases of modern human slavery in the United States, in which 56 deaf or hearing-impaired Mexican nationals were forced to beg daily in New York for contributions. He also successfully prosecuted a slave labor case in which about 300 Asian workers were enslaved in a textile mill in American Samoa.

John Chance, an American intelligence expert long involved in human slavery issues, described cases he had been involved in, including an American sweatshop in which he said 16 women were chained for 16 hours a day to sewing machines and beaten or raped by their Chinese-born guards if they complained or failed to produce their daily quota of garments.

Chance also described a New Jersey case in which his federal task force followed a daily exodus of undocumented eastern Asian workers from Philadelphia to a chicken-processing plant in New Jersey. One day, one of the workers severed a thumb while cutting up chickens, he said, and fellow workers rushed him to a local hospital. Within minutes, a leader of the illegal labor-lease group showed up at the hospital and said the worker’s health care could only apply in Pennsylvania, he said.

He said the worker was then transferred back to Philadelphia, where a member of the labor-lease group cauterized the stump of the severed thumb with a hot soldering iron, ignoring medical possibilities of reattaching the thumb.

Sara and Saba, two young Ethiopian women who spent months escaping torture and sexual exploitation in their native country, said they encountered new forms of torture upon their arrival in the United States, where ICE officials forced them to live for months in crowded, unsanitary conditions in California as their asylum cases were being processed.

Another Ethiopian-born panelist, Adil, described his experience of four years in Texas detention centers as he tried to press his case for political asylum.

The Ethiopian panelists declined to give their last names for fear that family members still living in Ethiopia might face severe recriminations from the government there if their full identities were revealed.

The lead figure in the Ethiopian group, Abibe, told NCR during a break in the conference that his exile stemmed from his efforts to stop corruption in which U.S. development aid funds were being diverted to private accounts of Ethiopian officials instead of the projects for which they were intended. When he refused to file false audit reports, he was arrested and jailed, and after his second imprisonment on fabricated charges, he fled to the United States after escaping prison, he said.

He said he still bears scars on his body from the beatings and torture he suffered while imprisoned in his homeland. If the corrupt government there were ousted, he would return to Ethiopia as soon as he could, he said.

“That’s where I belong,” he said.

[Jerry Filteau is NCR Washington correspondent]

We, the undersigned,

Council Members of the
International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT), representing
health professionals and other relevant professionals who provide
multidisciplinary rehabilitation for victims and survivors of torture
throughout the world, gathered at the Annual Council Meeting in London, United
Kingdom, 9 and 10 November 2011,

are alarmed by the
level of violence, including torture, that currently occurs in all regions of
the world and specially in situations of conflict and social unrest, and that
is often related to poverty, defined as a human condition characterized by
sustained or chronic deprivation of resources, capabilities, choices, security
and power necessary for the enjoyment of an adequate standard of living and
other human rights.

Bearing in mind,

that all dimensions of
poverty perpetuate an enduring state of marginalisation, diminished rights, and
reduced protections that make an individual more vulnerable to torture and ill
treatment;

that torture has
complex and far reaching consequences on physical, psychological, social and
economic well-being of its victims. The debilitating consequences of torture
affect the victim’s ability to earn and thus provide for the victim and the
family and to further contribute to society;

that in general,
official State policies, including development policies and programmes, have
thus far failed to adequately address the link between poverty and torture, to
fulfil the Millennium Development Goals, and to break the vicious cycle that
poverty and torture create; and

that women and men,
groups or communities historically subjected to discrimination face compounded
violations to their rights when they do not have the financial means to defend
their rights or to access the health, justice and employment sectors in
conditions of equality.

Deeply concerned,

that poverty is one of
the major underlying factors that keeps people perpetually vulnerable to
torture, and that torture tends to increase or deepen poverty by stripping
victims of the ability to continue their livelihoods;

that poor persons are
disproportionately more vulnerable to torture and ill treatment, in particular
in situations of detention and lack of legal representation.

Urgently call upon
States

to effectively take
responsibility to include the eradication of torture and the right to
rehabilitation in their poverty reduction policies and strategies, including
all development policies and programmes;

to ensure
participation by torture victims and survivors and their advocates and defenders,
as well as rehabilitation centres and other health professionals, in the
definition of poverty reduction policies and strategies, including all
development policies and programmes;

to ensure that any
arrested person who cannot afford legal counsel should be provided immediately
with free quality legal aid in conformity with international standards for fair
trial and medical examination, thereby further protecting them from torture and
ill treatment;

to ensure that access
to rehabilitation will be offered to all victims and survivors of torture
within their jurisdiction without discrimination;

to ensure that all
torture victims receive holistic rehabilitation, which includes medical,
psychological, social, legal and livelihood support;

to ensure relevant education
and vocational training and to promote access of victims and survivors to
employment in order to enable them to rise above poverty, thereby breaking the
vicious cycle of poverty and torture; and

to include in their
reporting exercises to regional and international relevant bodies and
mechanisms, the steps taken in this connection and the progress achieved.

Executive Committee

Mohamud Nurein Said,
Sub-Saharan-Africa – President

Jorge Aroche, Pacific – Vice-President

Loreine dela Cruz, Executive Committee Member – Asia

Lilla Hardi, Executive Committee Member – Europe

Simona Ruy-Perez, Executive Committee Member – Latin America

Karen Hanscom, Executive Committee Member – North America

Clarisse Delorme, Executive Committee Member – Independent Expert

Asia

Bhava Nath Poudyal – RATA – Indonesia

Shailendra Guragain, CVICT, Nepal

Pradeep Agrawal, SOSRAC, India

Europe

Mimoza Dimitrova, ACET, Bulgaria

Sebnem Korur Fincanci, HRFT, Turkey

Larisa Alaverdyian, FAVL/ ARDCen-TV, Armenia

Lejla Cakovic, CTV MOST , Bosnia

Mechthild Wenk-Ansohn, BZFO, Germany

Boris Drozdek, Psychotrauma Zentrum Zuid, Netherlands

Latin America

Carlos Jibaja, CAPS, Peru

Middle East and North Africa

Nagib Nagm Eldin Hassan, AMEL, Sudan

North America

John Docherty, RIVO, Canada

Sub-Saharan Africa

Didier Kamundu Batundi, SOPROP, Democratic Republic of Congo

Uju Agomoh, PRAWA, Nigeria

Independent Expert

Johan Lansen, Psychiatrist (retired), Amersfoort, The Netherlands

Secretary General

Brita Sydhoff

Independent Chair of
Council

Victor Madrigal Borloz

On October 16, 2011, survivors of torture from TASSC International testified on a morning panel at a conference on Human Trafficking held at the Catholic University of America in Washington DC. The conference was sponsored by the Franciscan Action Network and the Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies.

All four of the survivors who testified were from Ethiopia. In order to escape their torturers, they had to rely on human smugglers who helped them escape to Sudan, and on a dangerous journey that took them through the Middle East and Latin America until they could cross the U.S. – Mexico border several months and thousands of dollars later.

“There is a direct link between torture and human trafficking,” Demissie Abebe, director of TASSC, shared with the audience. “Where there is war, there is torture. And where there is torture, there is human trafficking. That’s the only way many people can survive, by placing themselves at the mercy of these human smugglers.”

Many of the survivors also focused on their detention experience once they crossed the U.S. – Mexico border. “After all I had been through, when I finally crossed the border into the United States, I breathed a sigh of relief. I thought now I will be treated with dignity,” said Saba, a 28 year old woman from Ethiopia. “Instead, I was placed in a cold room and left there for many hours. Days later, my hands, my waist, and my feet were shackled and I was driven by ICE from a detention center in California to another detention center in Arizona. I spent months there, treated like a criminal, until I could post bond and come to Washington DC to petition for political asylum.”

One of the questions that surfaced during the conference was “Why are survivors of torture, who have been re-traumatized by their experience of human trafficking, punished when they cross the border and ask for political asylum? Isn’t there any alternative to placing them in detention? What crime have they committed?”

According to Amnesty International, “refugees and asylum seekers must be remembered and considered in the larger debate on immigration reform. Specifically, as legislators and lay people think about border issues, they must remember that U.S. borders often present the only viable avenue for protection to asylum seekers from around the world, that asylum seekers have the right under international and domestic law to seek protection in the United States, and that any increased enforcement measures must not take place in a manner that violates the human rights of asylum seekers.”

Every year, TASSC International helps hundreds of survivors of torture, from many different countries, apply for political asylum. In recent years, most survivors come from Africa and, increasingly, many of them arrive in the United States after experiencing a traumatic and dangerous journey through the Middle East and Latin America at the mercy of human traffickers.

In the afternoon, a panel of human rights providers from Catholic religious communities and the Migration and Refugee Services of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops also testified on their work to combat human trafficking. In recent years, stories regarding the trafficking of women and children, and laborers, have appeared in the press. But until today, very few stories have been shared about survivors of torture caught in these trafficking networks.

Joy Ngozi Ezeilo, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Human Trafficking, was also invited to speak at the conference, but was unable to extend her visa to remain in the United States an extra day.

There will be a panel each evening following the performance. The Friday night panel will include: Juan Mendez, United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture; Glenn Carle, former CIA black site interrogator and author of The Interrogator; and Leonard S. Rubenstein, former director of Physicians for Human Rights. The Saturday night panel includes: Glen Carle, former CIA black site interrogator and author of The Interrogator; Nancy Sherman, professor of ethics at Georgetown University; Mary Harding, survivor of torture and board member of the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International.

In the play, an Iraqi doctor is detained, suspected of treating an Al-Qaeda leader. With the clock ticking, interrogators must quickly get the doctor to reveal the location of the safe house. A young interrogation psychologist witnesses severe acts of torture that still yield no intelligence. She takes matters into her own hands. Alternative Methods explores the role of mental health professional in the interrogation of detainees in the war on terror.

Those who have seen it highly recommend it.

The readings are free and open to the public, and no reservations are required.

For more information about the play and playwright see http://www.alternativemethodstheplay.com.

Thank you for all you do to end torture.

Linda Gustitus, President
Rev. Richard Killmer, Executive Director