For the United States, human rights is a political tool and sarcasm that’s used to suppress the opposition’s voice, to oppress, and to strengthen America’s absolute rule over the world. In many cases, the United States accuses other countries of things that it is a leader in doing itself. An example of this is the illegal, hidden US prisons which are situated all around the world and the deplorable, shocking conditions of the prisoners in these illegal detention centers. The US government uses every event they can to justify and expand their anti-human rights activities. The discrepancy between the American government’s rhetoric and their behavior on human rights is so apparent that a simple search in the country’s media will show one the extent of its crimes against humanity.
The event which took place on September 11, 2001, can be seen as a turning point in these inhumane activities of the United States under the pretext of fighting global terrorism. Following the Twin Towers event, not only has the US intelligence and security services violated international law, they have also breached the country’s domestic law. They have abducted and detained individuals in unknown detention facilities without allowing them with a court trial. These prisons are known as “black sites” due to their secrecy, their unknown locations, and the illegal activities going on in them. According to official reports and research carried out by human rights organizations, the CIA with the cooperation of some 54 governments has secretly detained and held at least 119 foreign nationals in these black sites over the past twenty years. These sites are located in Guantanamo Bay, Thailand, and some countries in Eastern Europe. The prisoners are detained and interrogated without a warrant or a fair judicial trial.[1] In 2006, The New Yorker magazine reported that the CIA was transporting suspects to unknown detention centers in Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, and Uzbekistan while they were blindfolded, in chains and had been injected with drugs. Many of these prisoners disappeared completely after the transfer.[2] The exact number of sites, the way the prisoners are handled, and their fate is a total secret and cannot be investigated. However, based on information that has leaked out in some cases, common examples of the torture used during interrogations at these prisons include “waterboarding,” “walling” and many forms of rape.[3] In addition to not having the right to a fair trial, inmates at the American black sites are deprived of a large part of their basic human rights, such as adequate health care, food, etc., at the discretion of US security agencies. Many people die because of the tragic circumstances in which they are held.
These human rights abuses are not limited to US security agencies, and they are publicly pursued and politically justified by many other American government agencies too. Over the past two decades, the US military has waged many wars under the pretext of a “Global War on Terror.” In the process, it has held thousands of prisoners for security reasons and prisoners of war - including women and children - in its illegal detention centers in Abu Ghraib, Iraq, and Bagram in Afghanistan, and subjected them to physical abuse and psychological pressures.[4] Human rights groups have estimated that the number of victims who have suffered from these inhumane crimes is as high as 70,000 people.[5]
If we wish to look at the issue in an international context – while disregarding the number of victims of these crimes – the arrest and detainment of even one person must be legally enforced under the four Geneva Conventions of 1949. These four conventions have been the main framework used for the arrest, detention and treatment of suspects and prisoners of war since World War II. They’ve been approved of and ratified by 192 countries, including the United States, Afghanistan and Iraq. However, at the beginning of George W. Bush’s so-called “war against terror,” US officials decided to abandon the provisions of the 1949 Geneva Convention in favor of a new legal system in order to justify and pave the way for their inhumane actions. Ultimately, George W. Bush issued an executive order [6]banning the application of the law of the Geneva Convention to prisoners of al-Qaeda, the Taliban and the prisoners being held in the war against terror in US detention centers across the world. Even though Amnesty International reacted to this matter at first, these illegal, inhumane acts continued until US troops withdrew from the war-torn countries. These actions continue to this day in Guantanamo and many other American black sites around the world.
To this date, no international tribunal has admonished the United States for clearly violating international law and the human rights of the prisoners of war. Furthermore, no US official has yet been reprimanded for having sanctioned and launched these anti-human rights projects. Guantanamo Bay is one of the bases that has become strong evidence for human rights defenders in exposing the inhumane activities of the United States. This is due to the high volume of cruel activities and inhumane behavior the torturers have used there. Their practices in this prison have been exposed due to the publishing of numerous photographs that were taken in that site.
On the other hand, in addition to the legal side of this, the actions taken in these black sites have targeted the human nature of prisoners. Similar to the “MK Ultra” and the “Human Radiation Experiment,” which were carried out during the Cold War era, and the Tuskegee Experiment, which tested syphilis on black people from 1932 to 1972, the US government has used captives and prisoners in the black sites as human, laboratory samples for their research projects.[7] With the help of psychologists like James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, the country’s intelligence agencies have designed torture techniques and collected data in this field. Leaked documents have revealed that the CIA has paid more than 80 million dollars to develop the “enhanced interrogation” methods of these two men.[8] Even though America’s history is replete with cases of torture and aggression for purely experimental purposes, the international community too has turned a blind eye to these vicious crimes, ignoring the inhumane nature of the US officials’ actions. This country portrays itself as a supporter of human rights while using every opportunity it can get and any excuse it can think of to advance its inhumane goals. To this date no US official has ever been questioned or reprimanded for his war crimes and crimes against humanity.
[1]. Tayler, L., & Epstein, E. (2022). Legacy of the “Dark Side”: The Costs of Unlawful US Detentions and Interrogations Post-9/11. Brown University: Watson Institute; Sadat, L. N. (2006). Ghost Prisoners and Black Sites. Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law.
[2]. Mayer, Jane (2007). The Black Sites. The New Yorker.
[3]. United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. (2014). Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Detention and Interrogation Program (“Torture Report”). “Findings and Conclusions.” (pp. 2 & 12). On Foreign Government’s Participation. See Singh, A. (2013). Globalizing Torture: CIA Secret Detention and Extraordinary Rendition (pp. 61-62). Open Society Justice Initiative.
[4]. Iraqi Women Raped at Abu Ghraib: Reports. (2013, August 22). SBS News. https://www.sbs.com.au/news/iraqi-women-raped-at-abu-ghraib-reports; Frank, T. (2018, March 23). Fatima Boudchar was bound, gagged and photographed naked. John McCain wants to know if Gina Haspel's okay with that. Buzzfeed.
[5]. Sadat, L. N. (2006). Ghost Prisoners and Black Sites. Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law.
[6]. Bush, George W. (2002). Order on outlining treatment of al-Qaida and Taliban detainees: lawofwar.org; Executive Order 13440 of July 20, 2007. Interpretation of the Geneva Conventions Common Article 3 as Applied to a Program of Detention and Interrogation Operated by the Central Intelligence Agency. https://irp.fas.org/offdocs/eo/eo-13440.htm
[7]. PHR. (2022, February 20). Papers and Reports on US Torture. Retrieved from Physicians for Human Rights: https://phr.org/issues/torture/prevention/papers-and-reports-on-u-s-torture/
[8]. Chappell, B. (2017, August 17). Psychologists Behind CIA 'Enhanced Interrogation' Program Settle Detainees' Lawsuit. Retrieved from NPR: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/08/17/544183178/psychologists- behind-cia-enhanced-interrogation-program-settle-detainees-lawsuit
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