All Videos Tagged Violations (12160 Social Network) - 12160 Social Network

Why the US Is Not a Democracy?

2013-03-24T05:41:36.646Z

Share with those that call our country a "Democracy"

Get involved, stay active!

THE GUN DEBATE:

The History of Gun Control:
YouTube: "INNOCENTS BETRAYED - The TRUE story of GUN CONTROL WORLDWIDE - (Graphic Images)" OR http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pKasF6l3y0

Australia Gun Ban:
YouTube: "Watch what happens when Guns are banned in Australia" OR http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8RDWltHxRc

THE FACTS:
- Statistics: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ooa98FHuaU0
- Ben Swann: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ac2mBa3JLfQ

Four Days in Guantanamo

2013-03-13T21:00:10.814Z

In July 2008, like millions of Canadians, we watched 10 minutes of video footage of the interrogation of Omar Khadr.

This material that Omar’s Canadian lawyers had just released stunned us. We were shaken by the moment in which Omar realises that the Canadian intelligence agents who showed up at his cell in Guantanamo had not come to help and protect him as a Canadian citizen but rather to make clumsy attempts to cajole, manipulate and threaten him into making incriminating statements.

We felt compelled to use this footage as the basis for a short film.

Our mission would be to craft a documentary in which interviews would provide the context to help us understand what the recording of the interrogation was trying to tell us.

As is often the case in documentaries, the story evolved. Through contacts, we were able to obtain an additional seven hours of interrogation video, which the public had never seen. Some of the sound had been erased by the Canadian Security Intelligence Agency (CSIS), yet enough remained for us to realize that we had something special and rarely seen - the confrontation between an interrogator and a prisoner.

Indeed this is the only footage available that shows - partially - what takes place inside Guantanamo, the prison where, in the words of Dick Cheney, the former US vice president, the "cream of international terrorists" are supposedly locked up.

If you assume that documentaries reflect reality, you would also agree that reality includes segments that sit within the shadows of the invisible. Once in a while some of those segments leave their confinement to fall directly under the public spotlight. Making it public, as a documentary was, for us, a compelling though somewhat bizarre privilege.

Omar’s story was turned down almost everywhere. Disappointed but not defeated, we approached Canal D, a French-language private Canadian broadcaster. The channel gave us a small licence. It was not enough to cover production costs, but we invested our time and some of our own money.

As filmmakers we wanted to encourage a deeper dialogue over current Canadian security policy.

Since the US launched its global 'war on terror' following 9/11, there has been a corresponding shift in Canadian military and security policy. Omar’s video and other recently released documents mean that the Canadian government can no longer claim to be unstained by torture. In fact, Canada has sent several teams of interrogators to Guantanamo.

Before the Canadian interrogators visited Omar, Ottawa knew that he had been tortured. The military lawyer defending Omar established that in 2002, before his transfer to Guantanamo, Omar was detained at Afghanistan’s Bagram Air Base. His chief interrogator there was Joshua Claus., who had pleaded guilty to torturing to death a young Afghani taxi driver named Dilawar.

Knowing all that, the Canadian government continued to claim that the American authorities treated Omar humanely and that he had committed a very serious crime.

International conventions that protect the rights of children in wartime, and in particular the rights of child soldiers, should have applied to Omar. But Ottawa was able to sidestep those laws.

In October 2010, Omar pleaded guilty to all the charges pressed by the US. It was clearly a plea bargain that allowed the young Canadian to serve eight years in jail, rather than 40. He became the first person ever convicted as a war criminal for acts committed as a juvenile.

The failing state of Guantanamo Bay

2013-03-13T20:52:17.226Z

"I think we need to understand what we mean when we talk about closure, we don't mean transfer or prosecute which is what many of the critics of Guantanamo would like to see happen. When the US government talks about closing Guantanamo, they talk about moving some set of detainees to some other place where they continue to be detained without charge."

- Jennifer Daskal, an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center

Attorneys representing detainees at Guantanamo Bay prison say most of their clients are on hunger strike as a result of deteriorating conditions at the camp.

They say the protest has entered its fourth week and there are reports that some men are coughing up blood and losing consciousness.

But a public affairs official at the detention facility denies the reports. In an email to Al Jazeera wrote that of the 166 prisoners seven are currently on hunger strike and that all inmates are closely monitored for health, food and water intake.

Four years ago, Barack Obama, the US president, vowed to close down the facility. But the issue of what should be done with Guantanamo has since disappeared from the radar.

Meanwhile, some human rights attorneys say the situation has actually worsened since Obama became president.

But American public opinion reveals another view: An ABC News and Washington Post poll says that during the 2012 campaign it showed that more than two-thirds of people favour keeping Guantanamo Bay open while only 24 percent think that it should be closed.

To discuss the future of Guantanamo Bay, Inside Story Americas, with presenter Shihab Rattansi, speaks to guests: Morris Davis, a retired US Air Force Colonel and the former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay; Jennifer Daskal, currently an adjunct professor at Georgetown University Law Center, who has also served as a lawyer at the National Security Division of the US department of justice; and David Remes, one of the attorneys representing Guantanamo detainees. He returned from Guantanamo last week.

"There is a rule book for Guantanamo but it seems to get reinterpreted every time there is a new rotation of guards that come in .... There is a lot of world attention on it so you would think that we would want to be on our best behaviour, put our best foot forward, so I just don't see the incentive for trying to be more harsh rather than more compassionate."

- Morris Davis, a former chief prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay

Over 100 Guantanamo Prisoners on Hunger Strike, Citing Threat of Return to "Darkest Days Under Bush

2013-03-13T20:34:58.530Z

Over 100 prisoners in Guantánamo Bay's Camp 6 have reportedly joined in a hunger strike in protest of the worsening conditions amidst the "crushing reality" of indefinite detention.

Detainees in orange jumpsuits sit in a holding area under the surveillance of US military police at Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. (Photo: Shane T. Mccoy/ AFP)
Camp 6 houses an estimated 130 men, the majority of the 166 detainees still incarcerated at Guantánamo.

Reacting to the worsening "humanitarian crisis" at the prison, members from the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) testified at a hearing Tuesday before the international human rights body, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), "marking the first time since President Obama's re-election that U.S. officials were confronted with questions about Guantánamo and its future in a formal public setting."

"In light of the humanitarian crisis unfolding at Guantanamo, it is indefensible that the U.S. government failed to answer the Commission's simple questions about how it plans to close the prison camp," CCR said in a statement released Tuesday. Representatives before the IACHR testified on issues including the "grave psychological impact of indefinite detention, the deaths of men at Guantánamo, the lack of access to fair trials, and illegitimate U.S. policies that restrict the closure of the prison, including the blanket ban on repatriating Yemeni men."

Protests within the prison have grown as well, with reports of over a hundred men having joined the hunger strike now in its fifth week.

Pardiss Kebriaei, an attorney with CCR representing Yemeni detainee Ghaleb Al-Bihani, said, "My client and other men have reported that most of the detainees in Camp 6 are on strike, except for a small few who are elderly or sick."

Prompted by concern over the failing health of the striking detainees, twelve attorneys sent a letter (pdf) last week to the commander of Guantánamo, Rear Admiral John Smith, denouncing "a matter that appears to be rapidly deteriorating and reaching a potentially critical level."

"We have received reports of men coughing blood, being hospitalized, losing consciousness, becoming weak and fatigued," said the letter.

We Are All Becoming Palestinians Now

2013-02-20T22:45:12.524Z

A succinct insightful summary of what is unfolding.