From Birmingham to Barack, what a dream it has been.

In April, 1963, Birmingham, Alabama, Police Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor let loose the dogs and fire hoses on civil rights demonstrators on Palm Sunday. Martin Luther King was jailed, held incommunicado in solitary confinement.  While there, he wrote his Letter from Birmingham Jail ⁽¹⁾, probably the single most important document in the history of the civil rights struggle. In it he said:

   I am in Birmingham because injustice is here.

_________________________________________________

President-elect Obama, tomorrow, as we inter forever the memories and injustices of those days , let us also resolve to honor Dr. King by redressing the injustices visited upon another group of alien people. These injustices are still here.

___________________________________________________

The Creation of the American Gulag

In the days immediately following September 11, 2001, over 750⁽²⁾  immigrant men and women, many of them legal residents, mostly Muslim (but not all, Hindus and Sikhs and even Christians from the Middle East were a sizeable number) were rounded up in an anti-terrorism sweep in the New York City area alone. Most were held at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, a Federal facility. The War on Terror had begun.

A Department of Justice report ⁽³⁾ details their treatment. They were subjected to a "communication blackout", not allowed visitors, legal or social telephone calls for several days to several weeks. They were in "lockdown" 23 hours per day. They were subjected to "restrictive" escort procedures: handcuffs, leg irons and "Martin chains" - four foot long heavy chains linking leg irons to handcuffs. There were numerous complaints of verbal and physical abuse. In at least one case the government reached an out of court settlement with an Egyptian detainee, Ehab Elmaghraby, who had charged he had been "subjected to multiple unnecessary body-cavity searches, including one in which correction officers inserted a flashlight into Mr. Elmaghraby's rectum, making him bleed."

After incarcerations lasting upto several months, and most proceedings held in camera, not a single detainee was charged with any terrorism related offense.

Expansion of the Gulag

After the start of the invasion of Afghanistan, large quarters were needed to detain captives. In what can be seen in hindsight as a fitting twist of history, the U. S. authorities chose for their purposes  a disused airfield and hangars built by the Soviets during their occupation of Afghanistan. Given an Orwellian-sounding name, the Bagram Theater Internment Facility has been home to thousands of prisoners, held without trial or hope thereof, rife with stories of abuse, torture and even death.  One such story I had recounted earlier, that of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui.

Guantánamo was opened simultaneously.  Its horror stories are too well-known for further discussion here. Abu Ghraib was taken over (this, of course from Saddam Hussein) in 2003 after the invasion of Iraq and converted into an American facility for prisoner processing.

The point to note is that all these prisons were deliberately created outside the territorial boundaries of the United States. In doing so, the authorities intended them to be outside the constitutional reach of U. S. law.

Populating the Gulag

Operating behind the presumed protection of the extra-territorial shield (or perhaps knowing full well that it was a fig leaf) as late as 2006, the CIA was given broad new latitude to transfer prisoners to other countries solely for the purpose of detention and interrogation, otherwise known as "rendition".

This despite "the accounts provided by former prisoners who say they were beaten, shackled, humiliated, subjected to electric shocks, and otherwise mistreated during their long detention in foreign prisons before being released without being charged."

Their number is legion. Here are three from the same New York Times article: 

Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian, who was detained at Kennedy Airport two weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks and transported to Syria, where he said he was subjected to beatings.

Khaled el-Masri, a Lebanese-born German who was pulled from a bus on the Serbia-Macedonia border in December 2003 and flown to Afghanistan, where he said he was beaten and drugged.

Mamdouh Habib, an Egyptian-born Australian who was arrested in Pakistan several weeks after the 2001 attacks. He was moved to Egypt, Afghanistan and finally Guantánamo. During his detention, Mr. Habib said he was beaten, humiliated and subjected to electric shocks. He was released after 40 months without being charged.

___________________________________________________

Dr.  King ended his Letter from Birmingham Jail:

Let us all hope that the dark clouds of racial prejudice will soon pass away and the deep fog of misunderstanding will be lifted from our fear-drenched communities, and in some not too distant tomorrow the radiant stars  of love and brotherhood will shine over our great nation with all their scintillating beauty.

               Yours for the cause of Peace and Brotherhood,
                Martin Luther King, Jr.

___________________________________________________

 Om Shanti. Shanti. Shanti.