About 40 people gathered in downtown Manhattan Tuesday, December 9 to support Maher Arar, and to denounce the torture he endured thanks to the United States government. Arar, a Syrian-born citizen of Canada, was on his way home to his family in September 2002 when federal agents detained him at JFK airport. He was held in solitary confinement for two weeks in the U.S. before the Bush Regime rendered him to Syria. Once in his home country, the Syrian government held him for a year without charge and tortured him; after a year, the government released him, and the Canadian government later acknowledged Arar had no connections to terrorism.
Arar ultimately filed a federal lawsuit against former Attorney General John Ashcroft, Homeland Security head Tom Ridge, and other Bush Regime officials, for violating his Constitutional and international rights. Since Arar first sued, his case has gone through a lot of legal back-and-forth, including dismissal and subsequent appeals. On December 9, a hearing was held at a federal appeals court in lower Manhattan to determine if Arar’s lawsuit could proceed. More information about Arar’s case is available here http://www.ccrjustice.org/ourcases/current-cases/arar-v.-ashcroft
Around 12:30 pm, demonstrators gathered near the courthouse, forming a line of roughly 20 people holding white placards with black letters that read, “Justice for Maher Arar.” Over the course of the next hour, more protestors arrived and the crowd roughly doubled in size. Those in attendance sported white ribbons reading, “End Torture.” While the rally and subsequent procession to the courthouse was mainly (too) silent, it was visually powerful, as the pictures and videos below will hopefully attest to. Several protestors carried very eye-catching black-and-white banners that depicted detainees being tortured and displayed messages like, “How much longer?” “For what reason?” and “In whose name?”
The image of a line of protestors standing with these banners and placards in front of the Daniel Patrick Moynihan Courthouse—at 500 Pearl Street— was particularly evocative.
One of the most powerful moments during the rally came beforehand, when a representative of the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) read a statement that Arar had sent to the rally. Arar began by noting that he was a husband, father, engineer, and citizen of Canada, and then described the torture he endured, which included vicious beatings and being held in a “filthy, grave-like cell.”
“The torture I endured still haunts me,” Arar’s statement read. “My life, my reputation, and my career were destroyed.”
Protestor Rich Sroczynski said the importance of the rally extended beyond Arar’s individual case. “All injustice needs to be spoken out against. But it’s a focal point, because it’s here, it’s now,” Sroczynski said. “It’s representative of the many other injustices that are not getting hearings.”
Sroczynski also said that as cases like Arar’s have become bogged down in the legal system, the sheer atrocity of what torture victims were subjected to sometimes get lost. “I think the [public] attention has died down,” Sroczynski said. “As various cases have gone to trial and gotten tied up in various motions and counter-motions and counter-counter-motions, the attention has become more diffuse.”
Srocznyski certainly raises an interesting point that seems worthy of further consideration. On the other hand, there have been signs lately that the issues of torture committed by the Bush Regime—and the criminality of that regime—have been gaining prominence. For instance, the New York Times ran an editorial on December 8 (“Tortured Justice”)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/opinion/08mon1.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=%22tortured%20justice%22&st=cse, denouncing the Bush Regime’s treatment of Arar and its torture policies more generally. And on December 11, the Times ran another editorial condemning the government’s detention and torture of Pakistani national, Javaid Iqbal, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/10/opinion/10wed2.html?_r=1&scp=15&sq=December%209%20editorial&st=cse
In addition, prominent voices like Michael Ratner, president of CCR, have called for prosecution of Bush Regime officials for war crimes. And at a December 3 forum in New York City, which drew roughly 200 people to NYU, Ratner’s call for prosecutions was echoed by voices as diverse as Congressman Jerrold Nadler, General Antonio Taguba, and NYU law professor Burt Neuborne.
The question now is how to transform this increasingly public sentiment into mass resistance that demands war criminals be prosecuted and that torture and illegal detention be ended immediately.
“There’s been all kinds of attempts to create discourse around the issue,” demonstrator Ted Walker said at the Arar rally, mentioning the 2007 film “Rendition” as one example.
“Awareness is one thing,” Walker said. “But what to do about it is an entirely different question.”
When asked what he thought it would take to stop torture, Walker laughed somewhat incredulously.
“That’s what we’re all trying to figure out!” he said.