This week marked the one-year anniversary of the killing of Osama Bin Laden in Pakistan. President Obama marked the event by making an unannounced trip to Afghanistan to sign a treaty with President Karzai establishing post-war relationship. And today, the United States Military Academy released select documents that were seized in the raid that killed Bin Laden and translated them into English.
The death of Osama Bin Laden was, at the very least, a symbolic victory in the “war on terror.” The title of the New York Times’ piece on the recovered documents was “Recovered Documents Show a Divided Al Qaeda.” The story seems to indicate that Al Qaeda is not as strong as when it attacked the United States on September 11, 2001.
But are we safer now than we were 10 years ago as a result of our policies and two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? And what [...]
Continue reading Osama Bin Laden is Dead but the “War on Terror” Lives On
By Guest Blogger | February 21st, 2012 By Larry Siems
Last week, director Doug Liman—whose blockbuster features include The Bourne Identity, Fair Game, Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and Swingers—sent out this call for citizen-shot footage for his next movie, Reckoning With Torture:
Ten years after the first prisoners arrived at Guantánamo, not one senior official has been called to account for the torture and abuse of detainees there, in secret CIA prisons, or in Iraq or Afghanistan. Not one of those who was abused has received an apology or restitution for his treatment. And none of the courageous servicemen and women who stood up to stop the abuse have received the public recognition they deserve. The United States, a leading proponent of accountability for human rights abuses internationally, now offers its own model of how not to confront and reckon with torture.
Liman’s film project aims to change that. A collaboration with the ACLU and PEN [...]
Continue reading Reckoning With Torture: A Call for Citizen Video Participation
By Sam Gregory | September 20th, 2011 Why You Should Watch This: Last week, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights stated that over 2600 people have died as a consequence of repression of protests in Syria. The Syrian government claims that far fewer have died, and that the balance is split between government forces and armed protestors.
In this climate of official denial, the actions of the Attorney General of the province of Hama, Mohammed Adnan al-Bakkour stand out for his courage in challenging the official story from within the system. In a video released on YouTube he publicly submits his resignation, explaining that he knows that 72 prisoners were executed in Hama on July 31, that mass graves contain over 420 bodies, and that he had been forced to falsely issue a report saying that these people had been killed by armed gangs, not security forces. He states that 10,ooo people have been arrested, and he [...]
Continue reading Video Advocacy Example: In Syria, Exposing Official Lies Through YouTube
By Sameer Padania | October 22nd, 2009 [Note: edited to clarify date of Universal Periodic Review of Bahrain]
As the latest Editor’s Picks on the Hub show, evidence is emerging of continuing abuses against individuals and human rights defenders in Bahrain. Through these testimonies (in Arabic) individuals report serious mistreatment, abuse and injury at the hands of the Bahraini police. Please ensure that these videos get wide circulation, and take action by supporting Frontline’s campaign supporting human rights defenders at risk in Bahrain.
These testimonies come in the wake of Martyrs’ Day, December 17, commemorated every year since 1994, when two young men were shot dead. During the commemoration three weeks ago, one man was killed, after which riots ensued (images here, here, and here – via GV), resulting in a violent crackdown. One blogger, Emoodz, aims a rebuttal at what he calls “lies” on a Bahraini TV show “supposedly showing an injured riot control officer in [...]
Continue reading Bahrain: video testimony of abuses
By Bryan Nunez | October 4th, 2009 The National Security Archive has published and cataloged a remarkable collection of over 83,000 primary source documents relating to US policy and practices of detention, interrogation and torture during the so-called war on terror.
“The goal of the The Torture Archive is to become the online institutional memory for essential evidence on torture. Specifically, the Torture Archive seeks to catalog and publish on the Web all primary source documents related to the detention and interrogation of individuals by the United States, in connection with the conduct of hostilities in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as in the broader context of the “global war on terror.” Thousands of these documents are currently available in multiple locations on the Internet and in numerous private collections, thanks to landmark Freedom of Information Act and habeas litigation, leaks from whistleblowers, public relations releases from government, investigative reporting by journalists including the Torturing Democracy team, [...]
Continue reading The Torture Archive
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