WASHINGTON: US rights activists fear their work around the globe may be hampered by revelations of a brutal CIA torture programme, but hope confronting past transgressions can help America rebuild its moral authority.
In excruciating detail, the report describes crude torture methods straight from the pages of Medieval history books — waterboarding, hanging people for hours from their wrists, locking them in tiny coffin-shaped boxes.
One secret black site where CIA officers sought to “break” Al Qaeda suspects in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States was even known as “the dungeon”. The expose tells how one man died of suspected hypothermia after being left naked and chained to a concrete cell floor, an incident one rights activist said could be seen as “murder”.
“There’s no question that America’s moral authority has suffered greatly from the use of torture and cruel treatment after 9/11,” senior counsel for the US-based non-governmental group Human Rights First, Raha Wala, said. “Our hope is that by publishing this report, that this might be the first step in a long process by which American policy makers and the American people themselves can come to terms with the abuses committed after 9/11 and really ... correct past mistakes in order to regain some of that moral authority.”
It’s a poignant moment for the US human rights community struggling to come to terms with a litany of abuse from the very country where values of freedom, dignity and human rights are constantly held up as an example to others.
“When America breaks faith with its own ideals it diminishes our ability to advance freedom and dignity around the world, it provides an excuse to those who would abuse human rights,” said Elisa Massimino, President of Human Rights First.
She was speaking at a long-planned dinner to honor Senator Dianne Feinstein, who as chairman of the Senate intelligence committee pushed for the report’s publication, and John McCain, one of its strongest advocates, for their work against torture.
“As a member of the global community, as an American citizen, as a human rights advocate, I feel a deep personal sense of shame, of shock, of horror, of anger in reading the details of some of what my government did in my name,” Wala said.
“And there’s no question that the United States is looked at differently around the world because of these abuses.”
Some groups are now pushing for those responsible to be brought to justice — in much the same way that top US officials systematically demand accountability for those behind shocking abuses around the world.
AFP
