President Barack Obama pledged to shut down the military-operated prison at Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, but that has yet to happen. Failure to do so has sparked a number of international human rights groups and grassroots faith-based activists to make their voices heard in opposition to the treatment of those men detained at the facility.
Those crying out for the prison’s shutdown argue that the basic human rights and dignity of the 166 men detained there have been violated for years, and they advocate justice, particularly for the 86 who have been cleared of wrongdoing yet remain locked up.
One of those advocating on behalf of those detainees allegedly suffering torture and indignity inside the walls of the Guantanamo facility is the Rev. Richard Killmer, a Presbyterian minister and executive director of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT). Killmer also served as the first director of the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program with the United Presbyterian Church and then with the Presbyterian Church (USA) following the 1983 merger from 1980-1996. NRCAT, an interfaith organization started in 2006, is committed to ending U.S.-sponsored torture and is backed by 320 religious affiliations.
“Within the religious community there is such a strong agreement that torture is always wrong and immoral,” Killmer said. “The Presbyterian Church was an early supporter of ending torture.”
Obama vowed in May once again to close Gitmo for the second time since taking office in 2009 when he said it would be shut down within the year.
“There is great concern over Guantanamo,” Killmer said, noting that Obama reportedly has halted acts of torture at the camp and also placed restrictions on the transfer of Guantanamo prisoners to the mainland or other foreign countries, further hampering closure of the facility. “Torture has taken place there and has played an incredible role in recruiting people to join al-Qaeda. It is a symbol, and we want it closed to deter the recruitment of those who want to hurt this country for terror groups.
“How do we make sure U.S.-sponsored torture never happens again? It is such a moral stain on the fabric of our country.”
The facility was established in 2002 by the Bush Administration to hold detainees it had determined to be connected with opponents in the Global War on Terror, including Afghanistan and later Iraq, the Horn of Africa and Southeast Asia.
“9/11 got us to this place,” Killmer said. “It was a very scary time. I was in New York that day and can tell you it was very frightening. We all wanted to make sure that never happens again.”
Inspectors and released detainees have alleged acts of torture at the camp, including sleep deprivation, beatings and locking in confined and cold cells. Some human rights groups have argued that indefinite detention is a means of torture.
But using torture is not the way Killmer and his organization and others want to go about protecting the nation’s security, pointing out that the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE) was one of the first faith-based organizations to develop a stance on torture.
“It’s immoral, it’s illegal, it’s against U.S. law,” he said, observing that torture has been called an intrinsic evil. “The morality that the religious community tries to teach about many issues, including torture, is counterproductive when these acts are allowed to continue.”
The Senate held its first hearing on Guantanamo since 2009 on July 24, and Republicans indicated their opposition to closing the prison. They are reluctant to send the individuals – those associated with terrorism – back to their home countries where they may be released and possibly return to threaten and/or kill more American citizens.
“It is an upsetting and complex matter,” Killmer said of closing the Gitmo detention facility in Cuba. “We wish (Obama) would, in fact, close it, but Congress has passed laws making it difficult to close Guantanamo. It creates a moral crisis.”
While the president has expressed intent to close the prison, it has not happened, and Guantanamo detainees have engaged in a hunger strike that started in February and has lasted some six months.
At one time, 106 of them were engaged in the hunger strike, but that number has been reduced to 75. Of that total, about 45 are being force fed daily, a practice civil-liberties advocates are protesting.
Such action leads to the “shackling and strapping down” of the strikers, forcing them to be fed through a nose tube.
Bishop Richard G. Pates of Des Moines, Iowa, chairman of the U.S. Bishops’ Committee on International Justice and Peace, is calling for a review of conditions for detainees and for closing the prison.
“The desperation that the people are being forcibly fed has reach a point that it calls for action,” Bishop Pates told Catholic News Service. “Rather than resorting to such measures, our nation should first do everything it can to address the conditions of despair that led to this protest.”
Speaking at a rally in front of the White House on June 26 – United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture – to call upon Obama to follow through on his pledge to shut down Guantanamo, Killmer told participants the event should be a “reminder to the world to provide care and healing to victims of torture.”
Killmer continued, saying that Guantanamo “remains an open wound, a symbol of the violation of our nation’s deepest values. Though President Obama has reiterated his commitment during his May 23 speech … to close the detention center, we have to walk every step of the way with the president to ensure that Guantanamo is closed.”
The PCUSA has been clear and consistent in its opposition to torture. In 1978, the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church of the United States declared that “no human agency has the right to own, manipulate, brainwash, torture, physically eliminate, experiment with or deny the existence of any human being.” In 2004, the 216th PCUSA General Assembly voted to “explicitly reject torture and abuse as methods of interrogation and treatment of prisoners for they are inconsistent with the Gospel.” A Resolution Against Torture: Human Rights in a Time of Terrorism, a policy paper of the 217th General Assembly (2006), recognized that “… the purpose of torture is not actually to extract intelligence but to break the sense of self; it is a form of intimate, humiliating terror, a crime against the human spirit and God’s image in us.”