Stand up and protest; sit down and Get on the Bus

 

By LENNY DESERIO

Staff Writer

Amnesty International held their annual day of protest known as Get on the Bus on Friday, April 17, 2009. Organized by Amnesty activists from Somerville, Massachusetts, Get on the Bus is held in New York City each April with Amnesty groups from across the Northeast taking part in the protests. The protests started back in 1996 when approximately thirty Amnesty Activists descended on the steps of the Nigerian Embassy in New York to protest the execution of Nigerian Environmental Activist Ken Saro Wiwa. Now in its fourteenth year, the event draws nearly 1200 activists annually to protest for different human rights violations worldwide. 

 This year the group protested for the immediate and unconditional releases of Tibetan filmmaker Dhondup Wanchun and political prisoners in Burma. 

Wanchun was arrested in March 2008 by the Chinese government for taking part in pro-democracy demonstrations. The conflict in Burma has been ongoing since 1988, when thousands of students and Buddhist monks were arrested or killed by the Burmese military for participating and organizing a pro-democracy uprising against the military junta.

Amnesty estimates there are currently 2,100 people imprisoned in Burma. This includes Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and National Democracy League leader Aung San Sui Kyi who has been under house arrest for the past nineteen years by the Burmese military government. 

According to Get on the Bus Coordinator Deanna Marie, “The purpose of Get on the Bus is to create a forum for human rights education and activism.” Marie went on to say, “The goal is to bring injustices into the light and to stand together in solidarity to change the world.  It truly is amazing what we can accomplish by raising our voices to empower those individuals who have been oppressed in any way.”

When asked why she felt people should care about these injustices, Marie said, “As  Americans, we are in the enviable position of being part of one of the greatest nations on this planet; we have the power to force our leaders to bring about changes in other countries. I believe that because of this, we have an obligation to utilize our power to help those who may be without a voice. We need to ensure that the rules and rights we benefit from as Americans are made available to everyone. All human beings have certain inalienable rights.” 

Jane Timm, an Amnesty member and student at NYU, expressed similar feelings when asked why she felt people should care about human rights abuses in far and distant places of the world and what we can do to help.  “In this country, we take human rights for granted. You don’t have to fear imprisonment for writing a news story or protesting the government. In America, you don’t have to worry about being kidnapped for expressing an unpopular opinion.  As Americans, we  must stand up for those who do not have the freedom to stand up for themselves. We must fight for them because they cannot.”

Though the struggle for human rights is long and hard, Amnesty International has proven, over time, that the fight for global human rights is worth it, one step at a time, one human being at a time.

Closing Guantanamo Bay

Amnesty International members protesting to close Guantanamo Bay.

By AARON RILEY

Staff Writer

Since the construction of the Guantanamo Bay detention center in 2002, there hasn’t been a more controversial containment area since the Gulag’s penal labor camps, as declared by Amnesty International Secretary General Irene Khan. 

Much criticism has arisen from the treatment of prisoners, drawing from accusations of waterboarding, sedation, sleep deprivation, prolonged constraint, stripping, exposure to cold, abuse of the Qur’an, and other moderate to severe interrogation techniques. 

The accusations have sparked protests from citizens, human rights groups, pundits, and even politicians. The controversy has also offset increasing demands to properly define laws on the detention of foreign prisoners. Moreover, many strive to ascertain true constitutional precedent regarding habeas corpus rights underneath the alleged frills of the Bush era.

Most of those frills have been induced by the panic of a post-9/11 world. Is the suspension of habeas corpus simply another unconstitutional measure taken in a list of them that have been justified by the previous administration as necessary sacrifices and critical steps in overcoming terrorism?

“Overall it comes down to security vs. civil liberties. Some are willing to sacrifice security for civil liberties and some are not,” said CCC professor Richard Curcio.

In January, President Barack Obama ordered a suspension of military commissions at the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba for 120 days pending inquiry from the Pentagon and formation of a new detention policy. While it is expected that Guantanamo will be closed before the year’s end, the issue still raises many questions from both sides of the argument.

Are suspected terrorists or any Guantanamo inmates rightfully owed habeas corpus if not U.S. citizens? 

“That’s the crux of the controversy, isn’t it?” Curcio laughed. “It depends on how the individuals are defined. If they are defined as prisoners of war, I believe, under the Geneva Convention, there are certain restrictions. They have the right to not be tortured and so on, but as far as having all the rights to habeas corpus…I really don’t think they do. But if they are defined as something other than prisoners of war…” 

It is true that the Bush administration has commonly used the expression “unlawful combatants” rather than “prisoners of war,” but it is difficult to discriminate any slight differences or criteria between them.

If they do have habeas corpus rights, do the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 and the Military Commissions Act of 2006 hinder the use of the federal writ anyway? 

“It is hard to say how aggressively the Obama administration will move to eliminate the decisions of grotesque military trials, but as we speak, the Restoring the Constitution Act of 2007 is slowly working its way through the courts,” explained CCC professor Kevin McGarvey. The act, if passed, would give detainees access to the U.S. court system, redefine the term “enemy combatant,” and restore due process.

Also, why can’t U.S. intelligence  accurately discern members of organized terrorist groups from wrongly accused noncombatants? How extensively and carefully planned is the release of inmates from Guantanamo Bay detention center? Could the poor conditions, torture, and a refutation of habeas corpus rights aid the defense of actual dangerous detainees if they were to be tried in a legal setting? These questions remain unanswered.

Certainly, there is a lack of accessible information on the going-ons of Guantanamo. Many of the questions remain unanswered. The White House has yet to elaborate on the future of detainees after the closing of Guantanamo. Where will they go, who will take them? Who will be repatriated?

According to McGarvey, “Habeas corpus is an absolute benchmark of American values and ideals. Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist paper number 84, wrote that ‘the establishment of the writ of habeas corpus, the prohibition of ex post facto laws (changing the laws after the fact) are perhaps greater securities to liberty and republicanism than any (the Constitution) contains.’ Basically, habeas corpus protects citizens from arbitrary executive power. The key issue in the debate has been whether or not the right applies to non-U.S. citizens.”

McGarvey concluded, “The United States is supposed to be, as John Winthrop said 400 years ago, and as JFK repeated in his 1961 inauguration speech, a ‘shining city on a hill,’ acting as an example for the world. We’ve lost a lot of prestige and power in the world over the last decade as the US has engaged in misguided and dangerous experiments in the hopes of eliminating terrorism.”

Amnesty International Club to hold film festival

 

By LENNY DESERIO

Staff Writer

The Amnesty International Club of Cumberland County College will be holding a film festival starting on Wednesday, March 25th and concluding on Wednesday, April 8th. Amnesty will be holding the film festival in the Conference Center here at CCC and will show the following films: The Devil Came on Horseback, Blood Diamond and Hotel Rwanda. The films will be shown at 2 p.m. each Wednesday of the festival (3/25, 4/4 and 4/8)  in their entirety.

The Devil Came on Horseback is a documentary about the ongoing crisis in Darfur, Sudan, Blood Diamond deals with control of the diamond fields in Sierra Leone (a country in West Africa), and Hotel Rwanda deals with the 1994 Rwandan Genocide.  

According to Amnesty International Club member Mike Lorenzo, the club is focusing on these films since each of these deal with genocide, a major issue that the group works to put an end to. “Even though this is happening far away there is hope we can make a difference,” said Lorenzo.  “Students sometimes feel there isn’t anything that can be done to stop the brutality of genocide, but there is hope. That’s why we decided to show these films.”  

There will be no admission fee for the film festival. All students are invited and are encouraged to come out and attend. Students are also encouraged to ask their instructors whether or not they’ll receive extra credit. Since the films are about genocide, they are rated ‘R’ and are graphic in nature; students are asked to use their discretion when bringing children to the event.