Threats To National Security

Sami A-Hajj, the Al-Jazeera cameraman held by the US since 2001 without charge or trial, was released last Friday. After well over a year on hunger strike he was very weak and was carried off the plane by stretcher, at Khartoum airport. Curiously, four cartoons he had drawn about his experiences in Guantanamo Bay were not released - they had been censored, supposedly as a threat to US national security.

Descriptions of the cartoons, entitled Sketches of My Nightmare, had previously been given, so cartoonist Lewis Peake has reproduced at least two of them.

The one on the right, Scream For Freedom, is about the force feeding of prisoners on hunger strike, in the so-called 'torture chair'. Al-Hajj describes it like this:-

"The first sketch is just a skeleton in the torture chair. My picture reflects my nightmares of what I must look like, with my head double-strapped down, a tube in my nose, a black mask over my mouth, with no eyes and only giant cheekbones, my teeth jutting out – my bones showing in every detail, every rib, every joint. The tube goes up to a bag at the top of the drawing. On the right there is another skeleton sitting shackled to another chair. They are sitting like we do in interrogations, with hands shackled, feet shackled to the floor, just waiting. In between I draw the flag of Guantanamo – JTF-GTMO – but instead of the normal insignia, there is a skull and crossbones, the real symbol of what is happening here."

The second, In Hospital, is briefly described by Al-Hajj like this:-

"Again it is a skeleton, but with a face this time. The top of the skull is dotted with tracks, tracks of pain. This is the hospital gurney prisoner. He sits completely still, his hands and feet shackled to the side of the bed. ‘In Hospital.’"

Clive Stafford Smith, director of Reprieve, a British charity that provides legal representation to Guantanamo detainees, added (back in March):-

"Sami al-Hajj has often spoken to me of the nightmare that is the hospital in Guantanamo Bay. He is not only suffering from his hunger strike, but he has also been told he may have cancer in his kidneys, and that no doctor can see him until May. Even then, he was told, perhaps the right doctor will not come to the base. It is no wonder that he portrays his own dark vision of the hospital in this way."

"You have to question, I have to question as an American, why the US government thinks that free speech in the form of this picture is a somehow a threat to US national security. I have seen plenty of evidence that is extremely embarrassing to the American government, and that's because this sort of picture gives you a visual image of what poor Sami goes through twice a day. I think a picture sometimes paints a thousand words, and I think that is what the US government is afraid of."

Maybe Stafford Smith is correct about the impact of pictures, but I think that cartoons are an important part of free speech (including these, which contributed to my quitting as editor of our church website). Mind you, when Al-Hajj was originally arrested he was an accredited cameraman covering the war in Afghanistan, so I guess 'free speech' isn't something the US authorities care too much about.

tags: cartoon  guantanamo bay  free speech  democracy  fear  human rights  imprisonment  rule of law  aljazeera  

links: technorati