Wednesday 10 December 2014

The sad echo of CIA practices in the Syrian regime’s prisons




 There are a number of awful things about the CIA's torture programme. The sheer inhumanity of coercion through pain, the blowback from the outrage it engenders, the way it undermines the universal prohibition against torture, allowing other repressive governments to justify their own brutality. This last isn't helped by all those who will profess outrage at the Americans' actions, but have nothing to say about the systematic terror in Syria, because it's not important, because the main enemy is at home, because it's all just another hoax enabling régime change in the Middle East. Whatever the excuses, when Assad is gone, and the truth is plain to see, there will be a backlash against the Left for failing to show solidarity with the victims, in which the few who have sided consistently with the oppressed will not stop the wave of contempt brought about by those who have ignored Syria, stood on the wrong side, or thought it was just a part-time interest while they got on with their real political concerns.

 "On the same day that the U.S. Senate made available to the public a redacted version of its report on the CIA's program of secret overseas interrogation sites, a Syrian activist group released its own documenting of abuses taking place under the watch of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

 The report, compiled by the Syrian Commission for Transitional Justice, a Syrian opposition group based in Istanbul, points to systematic violations of human rights in the Assad regime's jails. According to former U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, the regime has jailed about 50,000 to 100,000 amid Syria's brutal civil war. An untold number have experienced torture and other abuse."

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