Framing the Issue

Preventing Torture

within the fight against terrorism

Volume 3, Issue 5

September 2009

N E W S L E T T E R

Special thematic issue 1

Visual artist: Guy Colwell 2

Musicians against torture:

zero dB 3

Cartoonist: Ed Stein 4

Multimedia artist:

Legofesto 5

Cartoonist: Kirk Anderson 6

Visual artist:

Daniel Heyman 7

Recommended reading 8

Inside this issue:

This special edition of the Preventing Torture within the Fight against Terrorism newsletter turns its attention to the often under-recognised champions of social commentary: those who work in the creative arts.

The artists profiled in these pages use a range of media to express their viewpoints: pencil and paper, music, paint and even an iconic toy building block. Several of them have been publicly denounced, had their work

banned or pulled from galleries or – in the case of the musicians – had their art exploited to become actual instruments of torture.

We asked these artists to share their work and stories with us, including what inspires them and what role they believe artists play in bringing about social change around issues such as torture, rendition and human rights violations.

We hope you will enjoy this special issue. We also

encourage you to show your support for these artists by visiting their websites (links

are included at the end of each profile) and learning more about their work.

--The Editors

Special issue: Artists against torture

Copyright Ed Stein, 2007, Rocky Mountain News. Reproduced with permission of the artist. Learn more about Ed Stein’s work on page 4.

Copyright Kirk Anderson, 2004. Reproduced with permission of the artist. For more of Kirk Anderson’s work, go to page 6.

Volume 3, Issue 5 Page 2

Visual artist Guy Colwell is known for his politically charged social realist and surrealist paintings. Here he talks about the impetus for his work, especially two recent pieces focused on torture within the war on terrorism:

At age 18, in 1963, when I had to register for conscription, I contemplated making application as a conscientious objector. I thought a great deal about the questions I would be asked about my philosophical and religious views. They would be hard questions of right and wrong and I didn’t know if I could answer them. Years later, after time in prison for refusing to answer either the questions or the call, after the horrible destruction of the Vietnam War, after adding a bit more maturity and realism to the

idealistic views of youth, I began to realize it was I who should be asking the questions. The new horrors of Abu Ghraib and the “war on terror” greatly clarified this view that it is not the conscript who should be asked to justify his objections to war. It is those who make war who must show that the cause and the means are just, necessary and moral. I should have asked if I would be required to put mines in the ground or chemicals in the

environment that would main and kill children for years after the hostilities end. Will I be asked to engage in aggressive actions so indiscriminate that large numbers of civilians will be killed? Can I be guaranteed I won’t be asked to participate in a war against nature, destroying ecosystems in the process of eliminating enemy cover, that may never again return to a productive health? And, perhaps one of the most urgent questions now, will I be asked to participate in the torture, degradation or humiliation of prisoners?

It didn’t occur to me that I could and should ask these questions, and many others, when I faced the draft. Now my country, the USA, avoids having to face young people with these concerns by having an all volunteer military. Today, though I am no longer of military age, I ask these questions anyway with my paint brush. Works such as The Abuse and This Is Not Torture are my contribution to the public conversation about these urgent moral questions.

More of Guy Colwell’s work can be viewed at: http://www.atelier9.com/

Works such as Abuse and This Is Not Torture are my contribution to the public conversation about urgent moral questions.

Visual artist: Guy Colwell

This Is Not Torture. 2008, Pencil on paper. Copyright Guy Colwell. Reproduced with permission of the artist.

Abuse. 2004, acrylic on canvas. Copyright Guy Colwell. Reproduced with permission of the artist.

Volume 3, Issue 5 Page 3

Reprieve, partnered by UK Music and the Musicians Union, have launched zero dB, an innovative online campaign to help raise awareness and bring an end to the practise of music torture. Together through zero dB, musicians and fans are condemning this brutal form of torture and calling on governments to explicitly ban its practise.

The use of music torture has been widespread, with the CIA using it to interrogate suspects and prisoners across its network of secret prisons from Afghanistan to Morocco to Guantanamo Bay.

Victims are blindfolded, shackled to the floor in stress positions and are subjected to ear splitting music played on a loop, often for hours, days and even months at a time. Former Guantanamo detainee and Reprieve client Binyam Mohamed recalls his experience of being held in Afghanistan’s “Dark Prison”:

“It was pitch black….They hung me up. I was allowed a few hours sleep on the second day. …they hung me up again, this time for two days. My legs had swollen. My wrists and hands had gone numb… There was loud music (Eminem’s ‘Slim Shady’ and Dr Dre for 20 days). [Then] they changed the sounds to horrible ghost laughter and Halloween sounds…The CIA worked on people, including me, day and night…Plenty lost their minds. I could hear people knocking their heads against the walls and the doors, screaming their heads off.”

and calling on all governments and the UN to adhere to and enforce the Convention against Torture and other relevant treaties.

In a striking “petition of silent protests”, zero dB supporters have been posting 5 second silent protests onto the zero dB website www.zerodb.org as well as signing the online petition; each clip has been added to a long and powerful video petition. At the beginning of 2010 the

signatures will be taken and used to call on governments and the Obama administration to ban music torture and enforce the Convention Against Torture.

Musicians have been rallying to the cause, realising not only that prisoners’ rights are being abused but also the musicians’, whose music and art is being used to abuse and torture. Prominent artists who have already backed the campaign include Massive Attack, Dizzee Rascal, Elbow, Doves, Peter Gabriel, Speech Debelle, Graham Coxon, Mr

Scruff, Beth Rowley, Ash, Suggs, The Proclaimers, Schlomo, Aruba Red, Alabama 3, John Snow, Tony Benn and Marcus Brigstocke amongst many more.

Music industry bodies have also being pledging their support for the campaign, including UK Music and all its member organisations, such the Association of Independent Music (AIM), the British Academy of Composers & Songwriters (BAC&S), BPI (British Recorded Music Industry) Limited, the PRS for Music, the Music Managers Forum (MMF), the Music Publishers Association Limited (MPA), the Musicians Union (MU) and Phonographic Performance Limited (PPL).

The campaign continues to grow with support from artists, fans and the music industry becoming more involved. Please visit the website and pledge your support by signing the petition and posting a silent protest at www.zerodb.org

You can also follow zero dB on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#/pages/zero-dB-against-music-torture/216063655651?ref=ts or on Myspace http://www.myspace.com/zerodb_silentprotest

You can find out more about Reprieve at www.reprieve.org.uk and on Twitter http://twitter.com/ReprieveUK

Despite such testimonies music torture is still considered a “torture lite” method of interrogation. Reprieve director Clive Stafford Smith points out that “the US military likes to paint this as harmless, like a prisoner being given an iPod. In reality, the torture is constant as victims are left with nothing but the same sound occupying their consciousness 24/7 with no escape and no respite. The

impact is devastating, with victims often losing their minds.” Despite being beaten and having his penis routinely slashed, Binyam Mohamed describes the sensation of having his sanity slip as even more horrific: “[Having the choice]…to lose your sight or lose your mind. While having your eyes gouged out would be horrendous, there is little doubt which you would choose”.

zero dB was created by Reprieve to raise awareness of and to stop music torture by encouraging widespread condemnation of its practise

Musicians against torture: zero dB

Volume 3, Issue 5 Page 4

Ed Stein is an award-winning editorial cartoonist whose work is syndicated by United Media in daily newspapers throughout the United States. Stein writes:

My cartoons say pretty much what I have to say on the subject of torture. Everyone, I believe, has a responsibility to speak out against abuses of civil liberties, here and abroad, and to hold our government accountable for acts that are contrary to our national values. Artists have a special ability to reach people, and thus a special responsibility to voice our concerns.

You can read more about Ed Stein and view more samples of his work on his website at http://edsteinink.com.

Cartoonist: Ed Stein

Copyright Ed Stein, 2006, Rocky Mountain News. Reproduced with permission of the artist.

Copyright Ed Stein, 2006, Rocky Mountain News. Reproduced with permission of the artist.

Volume 3, Issue 5 Page 5

Using actual photographs taken by soldiers posted in Abu Ghraib prison, images and detainee and eye witness testimony from Guantanamo Bay, Lebanon, Iraq, Gaza and elsewhere, Legofesto recre-ates real events of barbarity, torture and war in LEGO:

I want to draw attention to what is going on in the War on Terror: how blithely our gov-ernments ignored the Geneva Conventions against torture, our media happy to use the euphemisms of "harsh inter-rogation" even when pre-sented with evidence of de-tainees illegally kidnapped and tortured to death by our governments. How quietly people accepted state-sponsored illegal acts, be it torture, rendition or the war in Iraq.

The use of a toy, and such a recognisable one at that, represents something of a paradox. Obviously LEGO, a

symbol of innocent play brings back happy childhood memories, yet in my sculp-tures it is used to represent torture and human rights abuses. This creates an un-easy contrast, using the visual language of play to depict the realities of conflict. There is a tension between what you see and what is depicted.

The toy becomes a metaphor for the news, subverting its original, innocent status. Maintaining the veracity of events in the reconstructions is essential for the integrity of the work.

As an artist I aim to raise and provoke debate about the really serious issues affecting us, because what we do in Iraq, Afghanistan and else-where does affect us all; our actions have consequences for others and ourselves. If we silently acquiesce to torture, what have we, as people, become?

Legofesto’s artwork can be viewed on her blog at http://legofesto.blogspot.com/ and Flickr photostream at http://www.flickr.com/photos/legofesto/, and in this You-

Tube Mashup: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_iqOasev8c.

Multimedia artist: Legofesto

Waterboarding. Copyright Legofesto. Reproduced with permission of the artist.

Pieces from the Abu Ghraib series. Copyright Legofesto. Reproduced with permission of the artist.

Volume 3, Issue 5 Page 6

Cartoonist Kirk Anderson recently penned the graphic novel Banana Republic, which “follows the mischievous death squads and hilarious junta hijinks of Amnesia, a zany Third World dictatorship that is the polar opposite of America! In Amnesia, Generalissimo Wally engages in roughhousing practices we would consider unconstitutional in our own country, such as torture, warrantless surveillance, and imprisonment without charge…” Kirk Anderson had this to say about his work:

Torture is not a political issue, or an issue of "looking forward not backward," as my president says, or an issue of retribution. It is simply an issue of the Rule of Law. Torture is illegal in the United States. That is not in dispute. Among many other forms of torture, water-boarding was committed. This is not in dispute. Water-boarding is torture; this is not in dispute among anyone with a sense of history, and with a sense of America's history of prosecuting water-boarding as torture in the last century, nor is it in dispute by the current U.S. President and Attorney General.

Americans tortured, torture is illegal in America, and no American is above the law.

But now America believes in the rule of law only when it is on

our side. When it forbids us from torture or indefinite detention or domestic surveillance or secret evidence, we deem it merely a bothersome obstruction that can be waved away like a pestering house fly.

There is little point of having war crimes and crimes against humanity on the books if they are, by definition, too political to prosecute. Small, cowering countries run from their own past, and try to cover up their wrong-doing from their own citizens and the world. Great, confident nations own their behavior, they do not deny it; and when they have erred, they make amends. My country could learn a great deal in this regard. Instead, we have forgotten the lessons of Nuremberg and now spout the infamous legal and moral rationalizations of the Nazis: "We were only following orders!" As long as well-meaning Americans were torturing "in good faith," we tell ourselves, who are we to fault them?

This disrespect for the basic Rule of Law goes to astonishing extremes: Washington is largely in agreement that we should be

able to lock up people without a trial or even charges, and throw away the key. Of course, we have been doing that for years now, but we'd all feel so much better about it if we could agree on a bold rationalization for a legal imprimatur. (Still, there's the pesky problem of it being blatantly unconstitutional.)

The recent announcement of the Attorney General's investigation into torture is not too promising. To my understanding, this will not ask who broke what laws, and certainly not who gave the orders to break what laws, but only who went beyond the Bush administration's stated limits of what was legal. In other words, no one will be held responsible for water-boarding, unless you were water-boarding with more water than was specifically permitted under the administration's expansive legal rationalizations.

I have often wondered why torture persists when almost everyone who has ever studied it, performed it or experienced it says that it does not work; a human will say whatever is required to

get the pain to stop. The best, certainly most succinct, explanation I've heard is this, from Ali Soufan's testimony before Congress, a former FBI interrogator who has spoken out against torture: "It's easier to hit someone than outsmart them."

I don't think of my political cartoons much in terms of art, but mostly in terms of activism. I'm aware that my activism is not going to singularly change minds, but it can make a constructive difference, even if very small. People are influenced first and foremost by their family and friends. They're also influenced by co-workers, 30 second commercials, news stories, opinion columns, music, pop culture, and many more things, including political cartoons. Family and friends' opinions can influence you like a rock to the head. All the others are only grains of sand; but if you have enough grains of sand, they can make a rock.

E-mail Kirk at kirk@kirktoons.com. See his work online at www.kirktoons.com and www.MolotovComix.com.

Cartoonist: Kirk Anderson

Excerpt from Banana Republic. Copyright Kirk Anderson. Reproduced with permission of the artist.

Excerpt from Banana Republic. Copyright Kirk Anderson. Reproduced with permission of the artist.

Volume 3, Issue 5 Page 7

For several years, Daniel Heyman has concentrated his artwork on the war in Iraq, specifically by representing the images of former detainees arrested and abused in the so-called “war on terror”. Here, he describes the political motivation underlining his work:

The political climate regarding torture shifted significantly with the election of President Obama in the United States. While I do not believe that watch dog groups should be any less vigilant, at least at this time I believe the United States Government is not going out of its way to torture. Still there is no reason to believe that any government has its own best interests at heart in

reporting truthfully to the governed and so a healthy distrust of government seems to be the best route. Certainly a change in government in a western capital does not mean that torture is going to stop in many countries across the world where it is deeply ingrained in the local system.

I believe strongly that artists have a significant role to play in speaking out for social change. From time to time, artists must use their medium, be it the visual arts, music, film, and so on, to identify for the public areas of human rights abuses that are not receiving the attention of the press and the political classes, using their public voices to speak for those whose voices cannot be

heard. Since so many visual artists work independently, they often feel isolated from the major currents of contemporary culture, and feel intimidated to speak out beyond the tight confines of the global art market. I believe however that the reverse is true, and an artist's independence is his or her most important asset. Compare simply the needs of a larger enterprise such as the effort to produce a film, and the need to pay each participant with revenues from the project, with the needs of an independent artist working alone. This independence, coupled with a little bit of research, allows an artist to speak out with an authority not compromised by

commercial or corporate entanglements. When artists give up their independent voices to express the truths about the times in which they live, they do so at a great loss not only to the value of their work, but also to the greater public, as the public relies (albeit sometimes unknowingly) on artists to be society's watchdogs.

More of Daniel Heyman’s work can be found on his website at www.danielheyman.com. The artist can be contacted via e-mail at daheyman@aol.com.

Visual artist: Daniel Heyman

From the time of morning prayers. 2009, gouache on nishinoushi paper. Copyright Daniel Heyman. Reproduced with permission of the artist.

Recommended reading

Readers of the Preventing Torture within the Fight against Terrorism newsletter may be interested in the following recent reports. These resources are not meant to be an exhaustive list.

Aiding torture: health professionals’ ethics and human rights violations demonstrated in the May 2004 CIA Inspector General’s report from Physicians for Human Rights examines medical complicity in torture. Available at:http://physiciansforhumanrights.org/library/news-2009-08-31.html

Ignoring executions and torture from Human Rights Watch examines the way

Bangladeshi security forces have abused rights in the name of fighting terrorism. Available at: http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2009/05/18/ignoring-executions-and-torture

Saudi Arabia: Assaulting human rights in the name of counter-terrorism from Amnesty International highlights cases of incommunicado detention, torture, killings and other abuses perpetrated by Saudi forces in the name of national security. Available at: http://www.amnesty.org/en/news-and-updates/report/saudi-arabia-human-rights-abuses-name-fighting-terrorism-20090722

The controversial CIA Inspector General’s Special Review of counterterrorism detention and interrogation activities from September 2001-October 2003 is available at: http://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/cia_oig_report.pdf

Une société sous contrôle : du détournement de la lutte contre le terrorisme et l’extré-misme en Russie from FIDH

International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims (IRCT)

Borgergade 13 · P.O. Box 9049

1022 Copenhagen K DENMARK

Phone: +45 33 76 06 00 Fax: +45 33 76 05 00

Email: irct@irct.org www.irct.org

This newsletter is being published with funding from the European Commission. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and not the EC.

FIDH 17, passage de la main d’or

75011 Paris FRANCE

Phone: +33 1 43 55 25 18 Fax: +33 1 43 55 18 80

www.fidh.org

summarises the lessons lear-ned from a recent fact-finding mission to Russia. Available at : http://www.fidh.org/IMG/pdf/RapporRussieFr.pdf

Volume 3, Issue 5 Page 8

For more information...

The “Preventing Torture within the Fight against Terrorism” newsletter is published bimonthly as part of a joint FIDH-IRCT project aimed at reinstating respect for the prohibition against torture in counterterrorism strategies both globally and in ten target countries: Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Kenya, Mauritania, Pakistan, the Philip-pines and Russia.

The newsletter editors welcome submissions of content for future issues, including articles (send query first), com-ments, letters to the editor (up to 250 words) and sugges-tions for recommended reading. To submit content or make enquiries, email Brandy Bauer, IRCT Senior Communications Officer, at tortureandterrorNL@irct.org

For more information about the “Preventing Torture within the Fight against Terrorism” project, please visit the IRCT web site (www.irct.org) or contact: Sune Segal, Head of Communications, IRCT, +45 20 34 69 14, sse@irct.org or Isabelle Brachet, Director of Operations, FIDH, +33 1 43 55 25 18, ibrachet@fidh.org