Day 6: Fast and Vigil for Justice

Compiled by Kate Cowley

We have been talking a lot this past week about how a good deal of our work seems to be about understanding the "other," and how it is especially difficult to understand the one inflicting the torture: the one in a position of power. In our reflection this morning, Jack contributed to this discussion and aided in our understanding by sharing with us his own story, which he described as "coming to this world from another world."

He told us about his previous work for many years as a police officer, and then as an FBI agent. Jack was fired in 1987, 10 months short of a full pension, when he refused to investigate the 'Veterans Fast for Life.'

Jack spoke about how difficult it can be to take that first step. To say no...to write that letter...to make a phone call...to participate in a demonstration...to risk arrest. But how after that first step, each step in succession becomes easier. Easier still, when done in community. It is the same with acts of violence. With each act of violence, one becomes more callous. And as one becomes more callous, the violence becomes easier, and escalates.

It is easy, when we think about the violent acts of the police officer or the prison guard, to think that we are an exception to this sort of violence. However, as Jack said, it is important to come to terms with the fact that we are all violent. How can we not be? We are a part of a violent society, and violence has been ingrained in us. We need each other to help us to know this about ourselves, and to help us shed this violence from our hearts. As Clare said, "Blessed are the ones who know they are violent, blessed are they who ask for help." To understand those who are violent, we must realize the ways in which we each participate in violence in our lives, by the things we do and the things we let happen, and especially by our privilege, whether by race, gender or class.

After the reflection, we headed to the CIA headquarters to be a presence at the "Peace of the Action" rally focused on the CIA's use of drone's. Two fasters, Kathy Kelly & Jack Ryan, were speakers at the rally and you can find Kathy's remarks at the end of this update.

After returning to from the CIA to St. Stephen's Church, we packed up our stuff and headed to the Peace Oasis (http://www.lffp.org/peaceoasis.html) which M.J. and Jerry were gracious enough to open up for us. We will use this space tomorrow (or today, as we finish writing this) to rest, reflect, and plan for more action. When we arrived here at the Peace Oasis, we gathered to discuss the upcoming day, and ended with Josie from Chicago reading a poem from a man who was formerly in Guantanamo. Jumah al-Dossary spent five years in Guantanamo, three and a half of them in solitary confinement. While held, he attempted suicide twelve times. He was released in 2007 to Saudi Arabia, without charge. We share his poem, written while he was in prison, below.

Thank you for all you are doing.

Peace with Justice,

Witness Against Torture
www.witnesstorture.org

Table of Contents:

1. Reflections at the CIA - January 16, 2010 Drone Attack Protest, Kathy Kelly, Chicago, Illinois
2. Death Poem, Jumah al-Dossary, Guantanamo, Cuba

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Reflections at the CIA - January 16, 2010 Drone Attack Protest
Kathy Kelly, Chicago, Illinois [Watch video of her speech]

It's a privilege to be with all of you, and I want to thank the organizers and Cindy Sheehan for the energy dedicated toward gathering us here today.

I'm here with the Witness Against Torture campaign. We're on day six of a twelve day fast. This weekend, celebrating the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's birth, we've been guided by his words. One mantra for us, from Dr. King, urges us to develop tough minds and tender hearts. Our speakers today have given us information we need to develop tough minds. Together, we must nurture tender hearts. The community gathered for the fast has grown over the past week. This means, however, that as more people sleep on the floor of St. Stephen's church, there is a rising cacophony of snoring. Our good friend Fr. Bill Pickard suggested trying to hear the snores as an orchestra, when I told him I'd slept fitfully last night.

There is a young boy in Mir Ali, a town in North Waziristan, in Pakistan, who also lies awake at night, unable to sleep. Israr Khan Dawar is 17 years old. He told an AP reporter, on January 14, that he and his family and friends had gotten used to the drones. But now, at night, the sound grows louder and the drones are flying closer, so he and his family realize they could be a target. He braces himself in fear of an attack.

We're told that we will be more secure if the CIA continually attacks the so-called lawless tribal areas and eliminates "the bad guys."

In late May and early June of 2009, while visiting in Pakistan, a man from the village of Khaisor, also in North Waziristan, told us about his experience as a survivor of a drone attack. Jane Mayer, writing in The New Yorker, mentioned that the people operating the drones and analyzing the surveillance intelligence have a word for people like him who managed to survive a blast and run away. They are called "squirters." So, I suppose he would have been considered a squirter. This man, at some risk to himself, walked a long distance and took two buses to meet with us. Because of travel restrictions, we would not have been allowed to visit him in North Waziristan. His village is so remote that there are no roads leading up to it. Five hundred people live there. One day, three strangers entered Khaisor and went to the home of vigil elders. For centuries, villagers have followed a code of hospitality which demands that when strangers come to your door, you feed them and give them drink. It's not as though you can point them toward a Motel 6 or a 7-11. The strangers were welcomed into the home they approached and they left after having been served a meal. They were long gone when, at 4:30 a.m. a U.S. drone, operated by the C.I.A. fired 2 Hellfire missiles into the home they had visited, killing 12 people, two of whom were village elders. Children were dismembered and maimed.

"What do people do?" I asked, "if you've no Emergency Medical Teams, if you've no roads?" I was wearing a "tbutta" the long scarf that Pakistani women traditionally wear. "You see your scarf," my friend said. "We wrap it around the wounded person, as tightly as we can, to stop the bleeding." I could imagine the white scarf I wore becoming blood-soaked, in seconds.

The CIA uses sophisticated technology, extensive education and a great deal of money to collect intelligence. The drone surveillance produces picture images so vivid that when the CIA targeted a Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, they knew that he was on the rooftop of his in-laws' home. His wife's parents, both doctors, were tending him, and had inserted an IV into his arm, giving him fluids. The drone attack killed all of them, and Mehsud's wife.

The CIA made fifteen attempts to kill Baitullah Mehsud. In the fourteen previous attempts, people were killed who may not have been members of a Taliban group. Some may have been family members of the murdered victim. Baitullah Mehsud's successor, Hakimullah Mehsud was known to be more violent and unpredictable and also media savvy. According to speculation, the Jordananian suicide bomber who killed nine CIA agents, Dr. Al-Balawi, had gained credibility with those same agents by providing information about drone targets. But, the information he supplied named political rivals of Hakimullah Mehsud, or people suspected of disloyalty or people considered to be expendable. But, with tough minds, we must ask why we are being told that the drone attacks are successful. With tender hearts, let us mourn for the families, friends and community members of the nine CIA agents who were killed in the suicide bomber attack at a CIA base in Afghanistan. Their arms will ache, longingly, for loved ones who will never return. In the spirit that says everyone in, nobody out, let us realize their humanity.

The CIA asks "who are the bad guys" so that they can eliminate them. We are fortunate to be guided by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, who asked the same question, but Dr. King actually, earnestly wanted to understand the humanity of his adversaries. At the time, he was speaking of the Viet Cong. He urged his listeners to try and understand how they are seen by their adversaries.

We need tough minds and tender hearts to build a world where the United States will not be seen as a menacing, fearful force. Let's work toward a world wherein 17 year old youngsters won't listen to low-flying drones and ready themselves to die.
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Death Poem
Jumah al-Dossary, Guantanamo, Cuba

Take my blood.
Take my death shroud and
The remnants of my body.
Take photographs of my corpse at the grave, lonely.
 
Send them to the world,
To the judges and
To the people of conscience,
Send them to the principled men and the fair-minded.
 
And let them bear the guilty burden, before the world,
Of this innocent soul.
Let them bear the burden, before their children and before history,
Of this wasted, sinless soul,
Of this soul which has suffered at the hands of the "protectors of peace."

VIdeo: Jumah al-Dossari’s poem is read here by Riz Ahmed, the actor who appeared in the film "Road to Guantánamo." Jumah al-Dossari, who was released in 2007, was held in Guantánamo for more than five years and had been in solitary confinement since the end of 2003. He tried to kill himself more than a dozen times.