HOW LOW THE MIGHTY HAVE FALLEN
Deanna Gorzynski, World Can’t Wait Writers Group
“How low the mighty have fallen”…Shakespeare once said it and today we have another reason to say this about the United States.
In a training manual for Canadian diplomats, the United States, along with Israel, has been added to a watch list of countries that torture. We join such stellar members of the Human Rights community as Iran, Mexico Afghanistan, Syria and our “good friends” Saudi Arabia.
In this manual Canada also classifies some US interrogation techniques as
torture.The manual lists US interrogation techniques such as forced nudity,
isolation, sleep deprivation and the blindfolding of prisoners under
“definition of torture”.
The document was provided to Amnesty
International as part of a court case it is bringing against the Canadian
government over the treatment of detainees in Afghanistan.
Canada has come under growing criticism following a
torture awareness course started after Ottawa
was strongly criticised for the way it handled the case of Canadian engineer
Maher Arar, who was deported from the United
States to Syria
in 2002.
Arar says he was tortured repeatedly during the year he spent in Damascus prisons. An
inquiry into the case revealed that Canadian diplomats had not received any
formal training into detecting whether detainees had been abused.gations that detainees were tortured in Afghanistan
after its soldiers transferred suspects to Afghan security forces.
Amnesty is calling for stopping all
transfers of prisoners to the Afghan authorities.
It also refers to the US detention camp at Guantanamo
Bay in Cuba where a Canadian man is being
held. Critics say it ridicules Ottawa’s
claims that Omar Khadr is not being mistreated.
“At some point … the Canadian government
developed the suspicion [Khadr] was being tortured, yet it has not acted to
obtain his release from Guantanamo Bay and protect his rights, unlike every
other Western country that has had its nationals detained in Guantanamo
Bay,” William Kuebler, Khadr’s lawyer, told Canadian television.
Once again we see very clearly, that whether the Bush Crimes Family is run out of office or simply leaves at the end of their term, there is a MOUNTAIN of cleaning up to be done. There are people who need to be held accountable for their crimes if we are to remain a land of laws.
Time and time again our electeds have proven they are not capable of getting important work done.At least not without extreme pressure from the electorate.
Once again it is up to We The People. Are we up to the task?