A time comes when silence is betrayal . . . We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak. For we are deeply in need of a new way beyond the darkness so close around us.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Washington Region Religious Campaign Against Torture
Remarks at TASSC 24-hour Vigil in Lafayette Square
UN International Day in Support of Victims of Torture
June 27, 2009
By Gay Gardner
My name is Gay Gardner, and I am honored to be here today on behalf of the Washington Region Religious Campaign Against Torture, to stand with the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition and all survivors of torture around the world. TASSC has done so much to educate all of us about the lasting impact of torture on its survivors and on the societies that let it happen. We are all in great debt to TASSC and to all the survivors who have journeyed to be here this week.
The Washington Region Religious Campaign Against Torture is an affiliate of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture. We are an interfaith coalition of congregations across the Greater Washington DC metropolitan area. We are ordinary people called by our faith and our conscience to stand against US-sponsored torture and to do all we can to end it once and for all.
Before I got involved in the Religious Campaign Against Torture, as a human rights activist for more than 25 years, I worked against human rights abuses - including torture -- in other countries. And while I understood that the US has been complicit in torture many times in its history, I never expected that there would come a time when the United States would be the principal focus of my human rights work. I never expected to hear officials of my own government, at the highest levels, brazenly and publicly assert the very same arguments justifying torture and advocating impunity for its practitioners that had come from the lips of Latin American dictators and despots around the globe.
But here we are. And now President Obama has promised to end torture and abusive treatment of detainees by the US government. We are grateful for that promise. But, unfortunately, while President Obama asks us to move on and to look to the future, the President himself seems reluctant to look beyond his own Presidency when it comes to ending torture. He would have us believe we have turned the page on torture because he says so. And he would like us to stop talking about the past so that we can get on to more pressing matters. But isn't that what torture survivors have always been told? Why do you want to dwell on the past, they are asked. Why can't you just get over it? Can't you see that our country has too many important problems to solve to spend time raking over the past and punishing people who simply may have been a little overzealous in their desire to protect the nation?
But we are here to tell President Obama that you can't get over the past by just wishing it away. The past is a festering wound that must be treated before we can move beyond it. That is true for survivors of torture; it is true for the perpetrators and intellectual authors of torture; and it is true for those who aided and abetted the torturers by their silence.
Recent polls show that public opinion in the United States is more divided than ever on the question of whether torture can ever be justified. That ambivalence and division is all the more reason why we can't simply turn away. The American people need to understand fully what was done in our name and how it happened. We need to understand all of it if we are to understand how to make sure no future US administration approves, advocates, or justifies torture. And we need to come to terms with our responsibility for the unlawful practices and policies of our government. We need to show the world that we understand the gravity of our conduct, that we sincerely regret it, and that we are determined to prevent it in the future. And we must investigate the past in order to understand what we owe those who experienced torture at our hands. All of these are steps we, whether we are people of faith or not, are called upon to take in order to accept responsibility for the injuries our country has inflicted. And they are necessary to repair some of the damage that has been done to the integrity and credibility of the United States in the eyes of the world.
For these reasons, we are calling on President Obama to support the establishment of an independent, nonpartisan commission to investigate the detention and interrogation practices that have been used in our fight against terrorism. The commission should not be composed of politicians, but rather independent experts who have no axe to grind and who are seen to be impartial.
So I ask you to please join in urging the President to exercise the leadership we long for. Shine a light on the truth, Mr. President, so we can find our way forward to a more just and honorable future.