'Soul of our nation' is at stake, says interfaith coalition
BY RHODA AMON
Newsday Staff Writer
Latifa Woodhouse, a Great Neck peace and anti-torture activist, was not surprised by recent revelations of a U.S. military prison in Afghanistan where hundreds of suspects were held, some for years, in large wire cages.
She already had the inside story, she said, from two of her sisters, one a nurse and the other a former translator in the Bagram and Kandahar prisons.
Woodhouse, who was born in Kandahar, describes the detainees as "naive young men - they are accused of being Taliban because they have long beards, and they are tortured for information."
Woodhouse, 53, came to the United States on a Fulbright Scholarship 30 years ago and has joined a growing interfaith movement to abolish U.S.-sponsored torture.
A January conference in Princeton, N.J., attended by 200 religious leaders from as far away as California, led to the formation of a National Religious Campaign Against Torture, made up of Catholic, Protestant, Jewish and Muslim organizations.
The campaign's Web site,
www.nrcat.org, is seeking 100,000 signatures endorsing its statement that begins: "Torture violates the basic dignity of the human person that all religions hold dear.... "
A series of events is planned for June, which activists have proclaimed Torture Awareness Month, culminating with a June 26 United Nations International Day for Support of Torture Victims and Survivors. "There's nothing less at stake than the soul of our nation," said Jeanne Herrick-Stare, organizing chairwoman for the coalition.
"Torture is a moral issue. It should not be practiced under any circumstances," said the Rev. Paul Johnson, senior minister of the Unitarian Universalist Congregation at Shelter Rock in Manhasset, whose congregants endorsed a resolution against torture.
Writing letters in protest
Many members of the Interfaith Alliance are engaged in a letter-writing campaign, said the Rev. Mark Lukens, Long Island chapter president. Lukens, pastor of the Bethany Congregational Church in East Rockaway, said he's outraged over the reported handing over of suspects by the United States to foreign countries to be tortured in secret prisons, a practice called rendition. Outsourcing torture is "like hiring a hit man," he said.
Members of Pax Christi Long Island, a chapter of the international Catholic peace movement, will display an Abu Ghraib torture photo during the annual Good Friday Way of the Cross procession on 42nd Street in Manhattan. "We will pray for all prisoners of torture," said Sheila Croke of Greenlawn.
The Long Island Alliance for Peaceful Alternatives presented its annual award this year to Amnesty International USA and to the Manhattan-based Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents 200 Guantanamo Bay detainees - who, attorneys claim, have suffered torture such as being chained to the floor for 16 hours.
"Certainly, we have to protect ourselves against terrorism, but that's not the way to do it," said alliance executive director Megan O'Handley of Babylon.
A recent United Nations Human Rights Commission call for the United States to conduct trials - or release the detainees - was dismissed by a White House spokesman as "a rehash of allegations made by lawyers representing detainees."
But the Rev. Reginald Tuggle, pastor of Memorial Presbyterian Church of Roosevelt, asked, "When the fox is guarding the henhouse, and the fox says all the chicks are fine, can you trust that?"
Still a front-burner issue
While most local clergy applauded the passage in December of Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) anti-torture legislation, some voiced concern over the interpretation of the new law.
"You might think the issue of torture is over and done with now, since President Bush signed the bill outlawing the torture of detainees," wrote the Rev. Jim Adelmann, pastor of the Garden City Community Church, in his monthly newsletter. "However ... the president also quietly reserved the right to bypass that law under his powers as commander in chief."
Last-minute congressional compromises added "legal defenses for torturers" to the McCain bill, said Jennifer Harbury, a human rights attorney in Washington.
"The soldier who tortures can now simply state that he or she was following orders," said Harbury, 54, who has battled for years for abolition of torture. Her husband, a Mayan resistance leader in Guatemala, was tortured and killed by Guatemalan officials who, she said, were on the CIA's payroll.
"Unfortunately, the United States has been involved with torture for a long time," said Dominican Sister Jeanne Clark, director of the Sophia Garden and Learning Center in Amityville. In the 1980s, she helped find housing for Salvadoran refugees; many told her they were tortured by the U.S.-backed military regime there.
Besides being immoral, torture is ineffective in interrogation, said the Rev. Thomas Goodhue, executive director of the Long Island Council of Churches. Torture victims, he said, "will tell you anything to stop the pain. Our own intelligence agents are trained to give false information. Why wouldn't al-Qaida agents similarly be taught? If we want our own soldiers not to be tortured, we should not torture others."
Ghazi Khankan of Long Beach, former interfaith director at the Islamic Center in Westbury, agreed. "America is trying to spread democracy all over the world, but people see the opposite at Abu Ghraib."
Khankan, 72, born in Syria, said, "We don't torture prisoners in this country. Why do we think we can do it to others? They're human beings, too. They should have their day in court.
"That's what America is all about."
SOURCE: Newsday.com