U.S. Prisons, Muslims and Human Rights Violations
By Bonnie Kerness
opednews.com
For OpEdNews: Bonnie Kerness - Writer
In 1986, I
received a letter from Ojore Lutalo who had just been placed in the Management
Control Unit at Trenton State Prison in New Jersey. He asked what a control
unit was, why he was in there and how long he would have to stay. We knew
little of control units then, except what we learned from the many prisoners
who reached out to the AFSC to mentor those of us trying to give voice to what
was - and is still - happening.
Today the
continued use of these instruments of torture coupled with the persistent
misunderstanding
and mislabeling of prisoners as Muslim extremist threatens the security of
Americans both inside and outside prison walls, and eats away the moral and
spiritual compass that purports to drive American justice.
After Ojore's letter, we began hearing from
people throughout the country saying that they were prisoners being held in
extended isolation for political reasons. We heard from jailhouse lawyers, and
prisoner activists, many of whom were Muslim who found themselves targeted
and locked down in 24/7 solitary confinement.
The AFSC began contacting people inside and outside the prisons to collect
testimonies of what was going on in those isolation units which by definition
are forms of torture. We had no idea how many people were experiencing this,
the conditions in those units and how many control units there were.
One
woman wrote "the guard sprayed me with pepper spray because I wouldn't take my
clothes off in front of five male guards. They carried me to my isolation cell,
laid me down on a steel bed and took my clothes off, leaving me with that
pepper spray burning my face."
Some
of the saddest letters are from prisoners writing on behalf of their mentally
ill peers like the man who spread feces over his body. The guards' response
to this was to put him in a bath so hot it boiled 30 percent of the skin off
him.
Some
of the saddest letters are from prisoners writing on behalf of their mentally
ill peers like the man who spread feces over his body. The guards' response
to this was to put him in a bath so hot it boiled 30 percent of the skin off
him.
"How do you
describe desperation to someone who is not desperate?" began a letter to me
from Ojore Lutalo. He described everyone
in the Trenton Control Unit being
awakened at 1 a.m. every other morning by guards dressed in riot gear and
holding
barking dogs. Then the prisoners were forced to strip, gather their belongings
while the dogs strained at their leashes and snapped at their private parts. He
described being terrorized, intimidated, and the humiliation of being naked and
not knowing whether the masked guards were male or female.
If we think
back to slavery and to images of the modern Civil Rights Movement, we
understand that dogs have been used as a device of torture in the U.S. for
hundreds of years.
These
testimonies and more are from men, women and children being held in isolation
and experiencing the use of devices of torture in human cages where there are
few witnesses.
I
have received thousands of descriptions and drawings of four- and five-point
restraints, restraint hoods,
restraint belts, restraint beds, stun grenades, stun guns, stun belts, spit
hoods, chain gangs, black boxes, tethers, waist and leg chains.
Control units
first surfaced during the 1960s and 70s, when many in my generation genuinely
believed
that each of us was free to dissent politically.
In those years, people acted
out this belief in a number of ways. Native peoples contributed to the
formation of the American Indian Movement dedicated to self determination.
Puerto
Ricans joined the movement to free the island from US colonialism. Whites
formed the Students for a Democratic Society and more anti-imperialist groups,
while others worked in the southern Civil Rights movements. The Black Panther
Party was formed. And there was a rise
in the prisoner rights movement. Nightly television news had graphic pictures
of State Troopers, Police, the FBI, and the National Guard killing our peers.
I saw on the
evening news coverage of the murder of Black Panther Fred Hampton shot in his
sleep by police, and coverage of the killings by National Guard members of
young people protesting the Viet Nam War on the Jackson and Kent State
Universities campuses. Other civil rights
workers were killed with impunity, so many that we felt there was no
opportunity to stop mourning because each day another activist was dead. These
killings and other acts of oppression led to underground formations such as the
Black Liberation Army.
In response to this massive outcry against social
inequities and for national liberation, the federal government utilized "Counter
Intelligence Programs" called COINTELPRO conducted by a dozen agencies, which
aimed to cripple the Black Panther Party and other radical forces. Over the
years that these directives were carried out, many of those targeted young
people
were put in prisons across the country. Some, now in their 60s and 70s, are
still there.
While the U.S.
denied that there were people being held for political reasons, there was no
way to work with prisoners without hearing repeatedly of the existence of such
people, and the particular treatment they endured once imprisoned. As early as
1978, Andrew Young, the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, was widely
quoted saying, "there were hundreds,
perhaps thousands of people I would describe as political prisoners" in U.S.
prisons.
Across the
nation, we saw an enhanced use of sensory deprivation units often called
"control units" for such people in an attempt to instill behavior modification.
It was this growing "special treatment" which we began monitoring. At the time,
a former warden at Marion, Illinois, said at a congressional hearing, "The
purpose of the Marion Control Unit is to control revolutionary attitudes in the
prison system and in society at large."
People throughout the world are beginning to
understand what the prisoners have been saying to us for decades about the
oppressive, war-like tactics of the U.S. government toward criticism or
resistance. People in prison have warned us that what happens inside finds its
way out here.
In a May 5th
2009 article in The Trentonian,
Afsheen Shamsi of the Council on American-Islamic Relations says that their
coalition "is upset over what it says is increasing surveillance in mosques."
The
group reflects the concerns of Muslims who have grown tired of being stopped
at airports, constant questioning and relentless security years after the
attacks of 9/11.
The department
of corrections system is more than a set of institutions; it is a state of mind.
It is that state of mind which expanded the use of isolation, the use of
devices of torture, the Counter Intelligence Programs, and the Department of
Homeland Security, against activists, both inside and outside the walls.
Ojore, who
first contacted us in 1986, exemplifies the history of control units and the
misperceptions of all Islam as a threat. He was released from the control unit
via litigation in 2002, after 16 years in
isolation. In 2004, he was placed back into isolation with no explanation. When
I called the N.J. Department of Corrections, I was told that this was upon the
request
of Homeland Security. In a 2008 Classification decision, this was confirmed in
writing which said the Department "continues to show concern regarding your
admitted affiliation with the Black Liberation Army. Your radical views and
ability to influence others poses a threat to the orderly operation of this
Institution."
After a total of 22 years in isolation, Ojore was
released from prison in August of 2009 via court order. On January 26th 2010,
he was disappeared from an Amtrak train, accused of "endangering public
transportation" and arrested in La Junta, Colorado. Because of his unusual
name, newspaper articles had him being Muslim and talking about Al Qaeda
neither of which were true. A judge dismissed all charges one week later.
Control units'
latest mutations are as "security threat
group management units." This egregious designation is beyond offensive because
it is the government which gets to define "security threat group."
According to a national survey done by the U.S.Department
of Justice, the Departments of Corrections of Minnesota and Oregon named all
Asians as gangs, which Minnesota further compounds by adding all Native
Americans. New Jersey, Oklahoma, and Pennsylvania go on to list various Islamic
groups as gangs.
The "Communications Management Units" in
federal prisons use isolation to restrict the communication of imprisoned
Muslims with their families, the media and the outside world.
In 2004, four
Islamic prisoners in California were indicted on charges which included
conspiracy to levy war against the U.S. government. One result of this was a
2006 report called "Out of The Shadows: Getting Ahead of Prisoner
Radicalization" by George Washington University's
Homeland Security Policy Institute. The report states that the "potential for
radicalization of prison inmates poses a threat of unknown magnitude to the
national security of the United
States," noting that "every radicalized
prisoner becomes a potential terrorist threat." The report states that it
focuses, "in particular on religious radicalization in conjunction with the
practice of Islam."
Also in 2006,
USAToday reported that the FBI and
Homeland Security were "urging prison administrators to set up more
intelligence units in state prisons, with an emphasis on background checks to
ensure that extremist Muslim clerics don't have access with prisoners."
For those of
us who've monitored U.S. prisons over decades, the targeting of radicalization,
the targeting of specific groups, the surveillance and infiltration of those
groups feels very familiar. There can be no doubt that Islam is being targeted.
In one recent case concerning four Islamic men, known as the Newburgh 4, the
judge herself noted that " 'Equal Justice Under the Law' are words that can be
found on many courthouses, but far too often, where it applies to the socially
and or politically marginalized, these are words devoid of meaning."
The U.S.
government continues to lock down people for their beliefs, and is still
seeking to identify those who have the potential to politically radicalize
others. After each Homeland Security
Code change, Prison Watch is flooded with calls from people reporting Islamic
loved ones being removed from general prison population and placed in isolation.
I have no doubt that Islam itself is suspect
to the U.S. government, and that any Muslim, no matter how law abiding, is
suspect. Our work today needs to be embedded in struggle
against this system and its continued use of isolation and torture as a tool of
behavior modification, religious and political repression.
How U.S. prisons function violates the United Nations
Convention Against Torture, and a host of other international treaties.
The AFSC
recognizes the existence and continued expansion of the penal system as a
profound spiritual crisis. It is a crisis that allows children to be demonized.
It is a crisis which legitimizes torture, isolation and the abuse of power. It
is a crisis which extends beyond prisons into school and judicial systems. I
know each time we send a child to bed hungry that is violence. That wealth
concentrated in the hands of a few at the expense of many is violence; that the
denial of dignity based on race, class or religion is violence. And that
poverty and prisons are a form of state-manifested violence created by public
policy.
I've been part of the struggle for civil and
human rights in this country for over 45 years. We need to alter the very core
of every system that slavery, white supremacy and poverty has given birth to,
particularly the criminal justice system. The United States must stop violating
the human rights of men, women and children. US policies including solitary
confinement,
and use of devices or torture have nothing to do with safe and orderly
operation of prisons or society and everything to do with the spread of a
culture of retribution, dehumanization. The
restriction of civil rights is something we can and should debate regularly as
a society. The violation of human rights, and fundamental human decency, simply
is not negotiable.
By Bonnie KernessCoordinator Prison Watch Project
Healing and Transformative Justice Program
New York Metropolitan Region
American Friends Service Committee
http://www.opednews.com/articles/U-S-Prisons-Muslims-and-by-Bonnie-Kerness-100903-575.html
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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