Broken Treaties
Anti-torture event denounces Bush administration's
policies
By Dennis Taylor
Monterey County Herald, November 24, 2008
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Participants in the anti-torture teach-in and vigil
at Pvt. Bolio Road near the Defense Language
Institute in Monterey wave at passersby on Saturday.
Source: Orville Myers,
The Herald |
Newly elected State Assemblyman Bill Monning expressed
optimism Saturday that President-elect Barack Obama
will honor his stated commitment to close the military
prison at Guantanamo Bay. And, Monning is hopeful
Obama will enforce the domestic and international
laws that he said have been ignored by the Bush-Cheney
administration.
Monning, who will be sworn in on Dec. 1 to represent
California's 27th District, spoke to a small crowd
assembled beneath a blue and white tent that was set
up on a patch of land between Lighthouse Avenue and
the Pvt. Bolio gate of the Defense Language Institute.
The three-day event, billed as an anti-torture teach-in
and vigil, continues today, beginning with a community
breakfast at 8 a.m., and featuring speakers throughout
the day. The complete schedule can be viewed online
at www.peacemonterey.org.
Monning, a lawyer and a professor at the Monterey
Institute for International Studies, said the current
White House administration trampled on the United
States Constitution and ignored international law
in a multitude of ways, with Guantanamo being a glaring
example.
"As this encampment maintains its vigil today
in opposition of torture, it's important to remember
all the lives that have been broken and ruined, and
the violation of U.S. and international law that has
precipitated the use of torture," he said. "If
an international treaty is ratified by two-thirds
of the U.S. Senate, it becomes domestic law. It becomes
enforceable in our state and federal courts. The violations
of the Bush-Cheney administration in contravening
U.S. treaty obligations has violated not only international
law, but our own U.S. Constitution."
Monning specifically cited the Bush administration's
passage of the Military Commissions Act, which enabled
the U.S. military to incarcerate more than 775 mostly-Muslim
prisoners without charges and without representation.
Of those being held, Monning said three have committed
suicide, 24 have died from injuries received from
torture, 40 have attempted suicide, and 128 were forcibly
fed while trying to fast in protest of conditions
at the prison.
"The good news is that President-elect Obama
has made a commitment to close Guantanamo and afford
due process to the majority of captives," he
said. "That's worthy of applause, but there's
still a long way to go."
Much of the onus for enacting change falls on the
public, he said.
"I think it's important that we continue to
lobby for due process for all captives and reverse
this tragic and embarrassing era in U.S. history,"
he said. "These instruments (rule of law and
constitutional rights) give us the tools to organize
and to educate, but they only become living instruments
if we demand their enforcement."
Monning urged people to write letters and op-ed pieces
in newspapers, and be vocal with their legislators.
"It's important to make people understand that
we violate our own constitution when we don't recognize
the domestic application of these instruments,"
he said.
Organizers of the third-year event survived a minor
dust-up Friday afternoon with officials from the DLI
and military police, who demanded that the demonstrators
move their tent two hours before the first speaker
was due to step to the microphone.
"They have a permit from the city of Monterey
to be on this piece of land, which is owned by the
military, but leased to the city. They also had permission
to set their tent up in that location," said
Micky Welsh, an attorney who volunteers with the American
Civil Liberties Union. "But an officer from the
DLI and some military police came by yesterday and
told them they were going to have to move."
Welsh spoke with the Monterey Police and the city
attorney's office, and resolved the issue with 20
minutes to spare.
"I basically said, 'If you tell them they have
to move their tent, and they can't have their program,
then we might have a free-speech issue. I'm calling
to prevent that,'" Welsh said. "And the
happy ending is that this is one of several incidents
in which the ACLU has brought something to the city's
attention, and the city has responded in a way that
resolved the problem."
