The sudden silencing of Guantanamo's artists
There's no word in the english language for how tragic this is. As a sister comment mentioned, the cruelty is the point.
It's a long shot, but is there any material way of helping these artists be able to take their art with them again? Making noise at specific people? Organizations that specifically target these broken freedoms?
Artistic freedom in particular is a very near and dear subject to me, and would greatly appreciate pointers here if there's any existing work done here.
> Until the end of 2017, Guantanamo detainees were allowed to take their art with them when they were released, or give it to their lawyers to take out.
> The artists could bring their work to meetings with their lawyers, who would submit it along with their meeting notes to a "privilege team", which assesses everything leaving Guantanamo for classified material or national security issues.
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> Then in late 2017, under the Trump administration, it became clear that art was no longer being allowed out. Like lots of things in the world of Guantanamo, there was no official notification to the lawyers, no memo. Artwork was all of a sudden simply bounced back from the privilege team to the detainees.
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> Keeping his art in Guantanamo would be "the same as keeping me here", Qasim said.
> "The art I made is me," he said. "If they keep my art here, my soul will stay here."
Sometimes it really does seem that "the cruelty is the point".
Habeas Corpus and Due Process are the first step to human rights >> https://www.virginialawreview.org/articles/habeas-corpus-due...
If everyone is so sure this is where we're housing dangerous terrorists, why not charge them with a crime and allow them legal defense? If the evidence is so air-tight, so obvious we should deprive them of basic human rights, why not put them in prison instead of "detaining" them forever?
To keep it fair, can we burn Bush's paintings of him in the shower? Why should he be allowed to publish his paintings and not these detainees?
Some comments in this thread are appalling.
Even if every single person held hostage at Guantanamo was directly involved in a terrorist attack they should not be tortured and detained forever without a proper trial. Revenge achieves nothing but more suffering. What has been done can never be changed but we can ensure that no more innocent will be hurt by setting the bar high enough so that even people proven guilty are not treated like sub humans. How we treat the worst people in our society sets the bar for the innocents inadvertently caught in the cogs of the judicial system.
It is better that 10 guilty persons escape than 1 innocent suffers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_ratio
Some people here are asking why should someone care about people who killed innocent men, women, and children. It's a question worth answering.
Since 2002, nearly 779 Muslim men and boys have been held at Guantanamo, nearly all of them without any charge or trial. Of those, 532 were released by the Bush administration itself, and 197 later by Obama [0]. Today the number of detainees is 39.
Almost all of them had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack.
0. https://www.aclu.org/issues/national-security/detention/guan...
Guantanamo will exist until everyone involved in its creation and maintenance has been prosecuted for engaging in torture.
I'll just leave this here:
"Don't throw out the rulebook in a fit of passion. You'll regret it. We did" - Dan Fried
When can we finally close this farce.
There’s a special place in hell reserved for torturers.
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Its not hard to see why. The novelty of being "made in Guantanamo" could turn these into sought-after collector items that wealthy buyers, primarily in the middle east, would easily pay tens or hundreds of thousands for, if that isnt already the case. It doesnt seem fair to the victims of terrorism that the perpetrators/conspirators gets to make hundreds of thousands of $ while in custody and then live a lavish life once released.
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Maybe unpopular opinion - the people held at Guantanamo are responsible for killing humans via cowardly terrorists attacks, either indirectly or directly. The “art” they make while being held is simply their coping mechanism. If they truly want to be released, then worrying about what happens to their art should be the least of their worries. Their art should be a trivial concern in the grand scheme of things when compared to their potential freedom. They weren’t concerned about the innocent lives of men, women, and children they killed or plotted to kill. Why should anyone be concerned about their art?