"what you did to the least of these my brothers, you did to me" ~ jesus christ

it has been announced this morning that the us plans to distinguish between american citizens and foreigners when they are arrested for terrorist offences. while american citizens will still be entitled to a fair trial, foreigners will not. they can be designated illegal combatants, even when arrested at american borders, can be held without trial. when they are tried it will be in front of a military board, rather than a judge and jury. the board will have the power to sentence them to death and will accept hearsay evidence, evidence derived from techniques such as water-boarding and food withdrawal, which would be completely illegal if done on a us citizen. canadian news channels are pointing out that canadian citizens could wind up on the wrong side of this legislation. so could uk or irish citizens like alli and me.

what is going on in the world? it seems we are fast-sinking back into the dark ages. it used to be axiomatic that torture was simply wrong and that a developed country has a duty to treat outsiders no differently than it treats its own citizens; now it seems that manifest truths are not so obvious to some! of course, there is the view that no-one gets arrested who doesn’t warrant such treatment; that anyone on the wrong side of the ‘justice’ system deserves whatever comes to them. this is obviously naïve in the extreme and ignores the basic tenant that people are innocent until proven guilty. the present case of maher arar, a canadian citizen who was arrested by the us government, accused of terrorist offences and sent to syria to be brutally tortured. he has now been shown to be completely innocent (not that such treatment could be excused even were he guilty as hell!) and the canadian government is finally intervening on his behalf and seeking reparations from the us federal government.

please note, this is not an anti-american or anti-british post (some have accused me in the past of having these biases). it's simply a plea for the 'civilised' world to wake up and take stock of what is being done in our name!

a few weeks ago alli and i visited kingston penitentiary museum. it was a sobering and chilling trip. we walked round the exhibits in almost complete silence, completely unnerved by many of the exhibits. cabinets showed shanks, zip guns, sharpened toothbrushes, toothbrushes with razorblades tied on to them, one-shot improvised shotguns and even a crossbow ingeniously woven together out of sundry everyday items (apparently it was shown to be accurate up to 40ft!) all these items had been found by guards during cell searches.

we then went into a room where instruments of corporal punishment were displayed; a 4ft coffin into which the individual was placed and kept for up to nine hours. it was impossible to stand up fully or to sit down and there was only one tiny air hole to ameliorate the intense claustrophobia; an a-frame where the individual was tied up in order to be whipped with a strap or a cat o’ nine tails and, probably most disturbingly, a water-torture device where the inmate had his hands and feet put into stocks and his head encased in a tiny barrel with a small hole in the top and the bottom. water was then poured from the large barrel above, into the smaller barrel to induce a feeling of drowning (the exact same effect produced by water-boarding which is presently routinely used in guantanamo and iraq). the practice was only judged inhumane and stopped after an individual died under this torture (the statistics regarding how many have died under present water-boarding torture are not available).

no matter what an individual has done, to put them in a place where, in order to simply survive, they must fight other inmates (possibly to death), live in fear of rape and brutalisation and have little or no recourse other than joining the culture of death into which we, the public, have put them, is unconscionable, and yet we do this every single day! and now we are taking the further step of legitimating torture and saying that there are certain people who do not warrant fair trials. again, at the moment, this is fine for most of us white citizens, as those most at risk from these abuses are non-white (for example, aboriginal people make up 3% of canada’s population but 15% of their incarcerated population; over 55% of those on death row are non-white and none have high socio-economic status; all those in guantanamo are non-white). are we really so racist? are we really so egocentric?

several arguments are made to justify the present state of affairs. it is said that firstly criminals have forsaken all their rights once they commit a crime. this is the train of thought which leads easily towards eugenics and torture. why not kill the criminal class (or at least forcibly sterilise them to eradicate the next generation)? and why spend any money at all ensuring they are safe and relatively comfortable? throw them in a dungeon and throw away the key!

this view sees ‘criminals’ as being completely distinct from the ‘normal’ population. ‘they’ are totally unlike ‘us’. but of course this is completely naïve. first of all there are few of us who have done absolutely nothing technically illegal: petty theft as a teenager, fighting (assault) in the school playground, speeding, having one drink too many and still driving home, cheating on our tax returns, taking office supplies home or the towels from hotels. it has been more by luck than design that we have stayed out of the criminal justice system. imagine how different it would be were we to have killed a child that one time we were 15mph over the speed limit in a residential area. we could have been incarcerated for vehicular homicide or some such charge. there go i but by the grace of god.

even violent, premeditated crimes are not beyond us. john Wesley said, “i see within my own heart the propensity for every evil under heaven.” who knows, given the same upbringing, faced with the same limited choices, having the same surroundings, circumstances and opportunities if I would not have ended up the murderer, the paedophile, the rapist. I’ve worked with kids and young people all my life and I’ve yet to meet a single 7 year old who when asked what he wants to be when he grows up says ‘a paedophile, a murderer or a rapist’! it starts with tiny, tiny choices, moving in minute increments towards death. and jesus points out that we are all somewhere along that scale.

“you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times ‘do not murder’, and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgement.’ but I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgement; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘you fool’ you will be liable to the fire of hell… you have heard that it was said, ‘you shall not commit adultery.’ but I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already commited adultery with her in his heart.”

god save us from ourselves!!

surely, if prisons should exist at all (which is not at all self-evident to me, see here for more of my thinking on this) they should be places of rehabilitation, reflection and learning. central to the liberative news of jesus Christ is the idea of redemption – the leopard can have his spots changed. if god can make a murderer and rapist like david into “a man after god’s own heart”, then why not in our day? the good news needs to be extended to influence wholesale prison reform.

many in guantanamo were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. some of them 13 years old at the time of their abduction!! not our children! not rich white children! they’re only poor, foreign, non-white kids, so we can turn our heads and pretend not to see. the torture techniques used in guantanamo have been honed and refined over years (centuries even). we now know that physical torture is of less use than psychological. physical torture is still much used – regular beatings, electroconvulsive torture but if we are able to remove hope from an individual, that will make them much more pliant to our wishes. behavioural scientists often oversee the interrogation of individuals there to develop techniques suited to the particular individual – what will most torture him? how machiavellian, how diabolical! stress positions are used frequently in guantanamo. this may not sound particularly arduous but these are positions which have been shown to cause the greatest amount of suffering possible. individuals are shackled on their haunches with their wrists attached to their heels and then bolted to the floor. they are often left their for hours while white noise (scientifically shown to produce insanity) is played or they are put in sensory-deprivation suits (their sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch all removed) which again produces altered states of consciousness very quickly and can lead to insanity.

people, let me say that again, people are being treated like this right now, this minute, by our governments!  we expect criminals to behave this way. we know terrorists do these things (it’s what causes the terror). but for the state to treat people this way is injustice of the highest degree.

but they’re guilty, you say, they’re ‘terrorists’. well then charge them, try them in a court of law and sentence them! can you imagine the outcry if such treatment was being perpetrated by syria or china against a number of british or american citizens! there would be an uproar.

i’m kind of arguing about two different things here i know. the conditions inside ordinary prisons are one thing; guantanamo and state-sponsored torture are another. yet they are linked. dostoyevsky said that you can judge a civilisation by how it treats its criminals and its insane. by that definition we are a depraved society. when asked what he thought of western civilisation gandhi replied that he thought it would be a good idea!

the eye-for-an-eye ethic from the old testament is often cited by christians to justify the grim conditions in prisons and the existence of places like guantanamo. gandhi pointed out that such a philosophy simply leaves everyone blind! when moses made this rule, it was to say where retribution should stop, not where it should begin; the limit of punishment, not the automatic right. if you punched me in the face, it was to stop me from taking a gang to beat you senseless; if you stole a pig from me, i could not burn your house down killing you and your entire clan. the punishment cannot exceed the crime.

by the time jesus of nazareth comes along, retribution was seen as a right – the eye-for-an-eye being a starting point – so christ says, “you have heard it said, ‘an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,’ but i say to you, if your enemy strikes you in the right cheek turn the left one also.” now there is much to say about this verse. many have seen it as jesus authenticating non-violent resistance. more about that another time perhaps. for now, it is important to note that jesus again ups the auntie. mercy triumphs over justice. this is not to say that victims must let their attackers off scott-free, but simply that the eye-for-an-eye principle has been much misunderstood.

lastly jesus’ words in matthew 25 continually rebuke and terrify me. “you that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels; for i was hungry and you gave me no food. i was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink. i was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me… and these will go away into eternal punishment…” of course jesus would have been imprisoned wrongfully, wouldn’t he? but the passage will not be so easily domesticated. the passage allows us, indeed forces us, to think of the murderer, the rapist, the paedophile, the terrorist in guantanamo and think the unthinkable thought that this may be christ himself, and that our eternal destination depends on how we treat him there. by that reckoning our society is on its way to hell in a handcart. god give me the strength to bail out before it’s too late.

Comments

[Heidi]

Thanks for writing this. Its sobering food for thought and I appreciate the challenge to ponder this stuff.

[robin]

Yes Christ was still " Christ like ' even when those he dealt with were far from it.

"What you did not do for the least of them , you did not do for me"

Unconditional love is not judgemental and finds the good and fills the need in those who have not yet found their way.