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Banksy & Guantanamo's Visit to Disneyland

British street artist Banksy put out this brilliant film recently called Exit Through the Gift Shop-- a film you would have to see for yourself to understand what it's about.  In the course of the story, Banksy and filming Frenchman Thierry Guetta travel to Disneyland to install a Banksy piece.  The piece he's leaving on this occasion, however, is the somewhat controversial, life-size figure of a Guantanamo detainee in orange suit and black hood.  (This is 2006, mind you, 5 years after Guantanamo's opening its doors to terrorists and innocents.) Banksy inflates the figure, places it inside a fence next to a train ride, and walks off.

A pleasant day in Disneyland, 2006

 The reaction that ensues is telling of the secrecy and fear surrounding the issue of Guantanamo.  A few people gather to look and take pictures.  The train ride that was flying by the figure is put to a halt.  Thierry, who had been capturing all this, senses danger and starts to walk away.  He notices one man following him, two, three, four.  Finally they grab hold of him and lead him away to interrogate him in a room where they tell him he's in BIG trouble.  One of them claim to be from the FBI.  They drill him, but Mr. Guetta of course denies all connection with the perpetrator of the crime, manages to delete or hide all evidence, and four hours later comes back out into the perfect world of Disneyland.   

Do Disney officials normally carry out lengthy interrogations when dolls are left behind after a day in the park?  It's likely that kids drop dolls and toys daily in that vicinity.  Then what was so threatening about this doll?  That it was life-size?  No, but it was a symbol that makes those who would carry out brutality afraid.

As you can see from pictures below, Banksy continued the work of sneaking Guantanamo figures out into public.

City Museum and Art Gallery, Bristol, UK, 2009

Escape from Guantanamo

"Don't ever hurt the children. They're not guilty of anything."

Looking through old textbooks I found some poems by children during the Bosnian genocide in 1995.  We often hear stories of cruelty and oppression from the mouths of adults, but what do the children who've been through such things see?  It's harder to accuse them of partiality.

When I walk through town, I see strange faces, full of
bitterness and pain.  Where has our laughter gone?
Where is our happiness? Somewhere far, far away
from us. Why did they do this to us? We're their kids.
All we want is to play our games and see our friends.
And not to have this horrible war.

There are so many people who did not ask for this
war, or for the black earth that is now over them.
Among them are my friends.
I send you this message: Don't ever hurt the children.
They're not guilty of anything.

--Sandra, 10, from Vukovar


 The soldiers ordered us out of our house and then burned it
down.  After that, they took us to the train, where they ordered 
all the men to lie down on the ground.

From the group, they chose the ones they were going to kill.
They picked my uncle and a neighbor!
Then they machine-gunned them
to death.  After that, the soldiers put the women
in the front cars of the train and the men in the back.  As the 
train started moving, they disconnected the back cars and took 
the men off and to the camps.  I saw it all!

Now I can't sleep.  I try to forget, but it doesn't work.  I have
such difficulty feeling anything anymore.

--Alik, 13, refugee


If I were President, 
the tanks would be playhouses for the kids.
Boxes of candy would fall from the sky.
The mortars would fire balloons.
And the guns would blossom with flowers.
All the world's children
would sleep in a peace unbroken
by alerts or by shooting.
The refugees would return to their villages.
And we would start anew.

--Roberto, 10, from Pula

Video cameras would be a good step, too...

One Uzbek survivor of torture named Sanjar Umarov who resides in Germantown, Tennessee, was interviewed by the New York Times concerning his role in a reform movement in Uzbekistan and subsequent imprisonment and torture from 2005-2009.  In the course of the interview, he made a suggestion that I thought was interesting:

"Uzbekistan, he said, should install video cameras in all of its prisons. During his incarceration, Mr. Umarov was held in several different sites. Where there were cameras, he said, his guards never beat him. Sometimes they were even well mannered." 

Mr. Umarov said in Uzbekistan, it's usually not the state or high officials who are ordering the torturing; it's often the lower-ranking officials and soldiers who instigate torture because they are trying to intimidate prisoners and exert control over them:

“I don’t want to say all the guards were bad,” he said. “There are some good ones and some bad ones, and without transparency, the bad ones take advantage of their positions.

 “If there were video cameras in the prisons, they may be afraid to use force. They would be polite.”

Because it is mostly the "thugs" working for the state rather than the state itself doing the torturing, video cameras in prisons would be more useful in a place like Uzbekistan.  In a country where high state officials are behind torture, though, how much would video cameras do?

You can read the full NYT article here, An Uzbek Survivor of Torture Seeks to Fight It Tacitly

Gypsy camp

One of the most startling things about France's deportation of Roma and the leading Hungarian party's proposal to send all Roma to specialized camps is that this is a pattern seen before in history.  Not only Nazi Germany but other states have persecuted the Roma people throughout European and world history.  Law made all Roma slaves in the Romanian states of Moldavia and Wallachia from the 14th until the 19th century.  Spain restricted Roma to certain towns and later rounded up Roma and sent them to live in labor camps in the 18th century.  In 1885 the United States forbid the immigration of Gypsies; some countries in South America did likewise.  Czechoslovakia began sterilizing Roma women in the 1970's.  Many more instances of persecution against Roma can be found if one does a bit of research. 

Roma in the last century

1940's, waiting in Belzec
 

1970's (Photo by Josef Koudelka)

2010, leaving France (hurrietdailynews.com)

France has deported over 8,300 Roma already this year.  Some of the reasons it lists for this include prostitution and sex-trafficking, though centuries-old discrimination against Roma in Europe count for something as well.  One of the countries Roma are deported to is Hungary, but the leading Hungarian party Jobbik doesn't want them there either and has proposed creating camps to contain them.  This party's European Parliament representative confirmed their plans:  

"We would force these families out of their dwellings, yes... Then, yes, we would transport these families to public order protection camps." 

He also said that,  

"At these camps, there would be a chance to return to civilized society. Those who abandon crime, make sure their children attend school, and participate in public works programmes, they can reintegrate.  No doubt there will be people who show no improvement. They can spend the rest of their lives in these camps."  (More at thestar.com)


It is as simple as that: they can spend the rest of their lives in public order protection camps.  There have been other camps in centuries past with the aim of keeping the public from Gypsy crime; Spain started this trend in the 1740's, and Germany had preventive custody camps in the late 1930's.  To their credit, Hungary doesn't seem to have anything in mind beyond sending Roma to camps to live, but it is interesting to note what kind of memories living camps may bring back for some Roma people.

What reparations have been given to the Roma after all the persecution they have undergone, especially at the hand of the Nazis in WWII?  Who opened up to care for Roma and heal the wounds they'd undergone as a people? They seem to have been somewhat sidelined in that as well.  It may partly be society at large's fault that this people group is still known for its petty theft and abundant poverty.  This is a complicated issue with a web of opposing angles and we all wish we had a answer for it; but we can change the attitude toward Roma starting with ourselves.

The Quotable MLKJ

I'd like to thank one of my most inspiring inspirers, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, a rock for civil and human rights.  It's easy for any of us to get caught up in the ebb and flow of daily life and forget what it is that we're fighting for; so we keep going back to what first drove us to do what we believe in.  Dr. King had a dream and a vision and by keeping that before him he brought hope to innumerable people-- we have so much to learn from great men and women like him.  So to end the week, a few quotes that I hope will refresh you as well...

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.


Means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek.


There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.


We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope.


Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.  


The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.


Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.


The Negro needs the white man to free him from his fears. The white man needs the Negro to free him from his guilt.


We must develop and maintain the capacity to forgive. He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love. There is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies.


Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.


I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.  

Survivors on bicycles

How do you bring new levels of freedom to people who have been locked up in cages for years or tortured?  One Minnesotan woman has found an answer through fixing up bicycles (and won an award for it).

Cynthia McArthur has been fixing up bikes for fourteen years for survivors of torture who've settled around Minnesota, despite having to deal with chronic fatigue syndrome.  Chronic fatigue left her unable to work so she decided to make the most of it and use her time to fix up donated bicycles for clients of the Center for Victims of Torture in St. Paul.

One man who'd been kept jailed for 12 years in his country for political reasons received a bicycle that Cynthia had worked on.  The bike made a world of difference in the amount of freedom he felt living in America and he expressed it this way: "When I ride a bike, I can ride north or south, east or west for as long as I want, and when I get tired I can lay in the grass and look at the sky."

You can read more at MPR News: Repairing bikes for torture survivors wins woman McKnight award

Revolutionizing through Blogging and Tweeting in Egypt

In a country where we can say mostly what we want about what is going on around the world, it's kind of humbling to read about people who say what needs to be said when they could be jailed for it.  Or beaten or worse... but a young generation in Egypt is doing that about the human rights injustices in their country.  A quote from NPR about one of these youth who are transforming society:

Ahmed Nasser, a young lawyer, says it is up to his generation to reform Egypt.

"I don't want for my generation to be like the one before, because they are responsible for what we are in now," he says as he hands out petitions. "I am from this generation, a new one, and I want it to be different."

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129425721

Shakespeare on the subject of torture

Torture has been around for centuries and millenia and the great literary artists have had something to say about it, none the least of which has been Shakespeare.  In his blog, Jeff Kaye shares a passage from King Lear in which Shakespeare presents torture and "makes clear at the very beginning, the torture is not in the main about gaining information, but about exerting control, and serves as a release for Cornwall and Regan’s "wrath" and sadism." 

Shakespeare lovers, eat your heart out at http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/35173#

Yemen is letting human rights slide out of fear for national security http://ping.fm/jVNP3

Judge rules that youngest Guantanamo detainee wasn't tortured as "defined under M.C.R.E. 304(b)(3)" http://ping.fm/2nONi

DR Congo rebels continue mass rape of women and babies in Congo http://ping.fm/HfBFk

Been looking for a film screening of "The Glass House on Sunday?  Well you're in luck...
http://www.meetup.com/AmnestyWest/calendar/14404067/

Ebrahim Hamidi is facing execution in Iran for false accusations of homosexual assault brought against him when he was 16 years old.  His accuser has since recanted, but Iranian officials are still planning to execute Ebrahim on the basis of confessions he made after allegedly being tortured.  You can sign this petition on Ebrahim's behalf: 
http://www.gopetition.com/petition/38289.html

A more detailed version of Ebrahim's story...  
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/aug/08/iran-mohammad-mostafaei-rights-lawyer

Cheers to NYU dental students providing free dental services to survivors of torture: http://ping.fm/RSgbZ

As questions about British intelligence's complicity in torture are investigated, here's a time line of alleged torture cases :Torture and the UK: 2002- 10

Seychelles becomes latest country to join International Criminal Court http://shar.es/0038V

Omar Khadr, youngest Guantanamo inmate and first child soldier to be prosecuted since WWII, to face military tribunal; jury selection currently underway...
http://ping.fm/EegFg

Brazil makes formal offer of asylum for Iranian woman sentenced to stoning - http://bit.ly/aLFpCR cnn