For my outside reading book I am reading Five Years of My Life by Murat Kurnaz. It is his story of the five years he spent as an innocent man in Guantanamo Bay. This story, as far as I have read, really opened my eyes to how disgusting people can be. I know that I’ve talked about Hollywood using Nazi like propaganda, but the way the United States soldiers treated these prisoners is heading down the path of Nazi cruelty. I knew from pictures on the news that some of the soldiers treated the prisoners like they were less because of their racial background, but I did not know that they treated prisoners like test dummies. One of the torture treatments that disgusted me was one I shared in class; prisoners were hung up by their wrists from ceiling rafters for hours and for days, they would only be let down so that doctors could check to see if they were still living and if they were the prisoners would be raised up back into the rafters. Much like Nazi doctors the doctors Guantanamo used the prisoners as experiments. Prisoners were even tortured and beaten into admitting to being a terrorist, and then for admitting to it they were beaten and tortured more. Originally I picked this book out because I thought it would be interesting to look at the reactions of the innocent who were accused of being terrorists, just as another point of view in war, but I didn’t know I would be so interested in Kurnaz’s story. I also learned that most of the prisoners in Guantanamo were nowhere near terrorists. In factmost were victims of the United States paying bounties to countries for people that they could use in the media to pretend that they were capturing terrorists. I would definitely recommend this book to those who are pro and anti-war. How can this cruelty be humane and legal?
In the play, "9 Parts of Desire," the Iraqi girl that lives in America talks about seeing the images of Abu Ghraib on television. She was furious at them, for being so inhumane, cruel, and callous, then claiming they didn't know what they were doing. I think its totally unacceptable to treat any human that way or like what you said in your blog. But in relation to Gitmo, it seems like there's an internal struggle. These prisoners have done terrible things and should be punished, but at the same time they're human beings. How can such treatment be justified toward people just like us?
ReplyDelete