EDITORIAL – Suicides draw needed attention

After at least 41 attempts by 25 people, three men committed suicide at the U.S…. After at least 41 attempts by 25 people, three men committed suicide at the U.S. government’s Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detainment facility. The men fashioned nooses out of clothing and bed sheets and hanged themselves in the night.

Whether those suicides were out of protest or desperation, three men are still dead. Reports say that they acted under the belief that it would take three deaths to draw media attention.

Sadly, they were right. All along, these detention centers — or prisons, or little pieces of Hell, or whatever you want to call them — have been a problem worthy of global attention.

Consider what’s happened in the last few years:

At Guantanamo Bay alone, detainees attempted mass hunger strikes in protest of their treatment, which were thwarted by force-feeding methods, using special restraint chairs and especially large feeding tubes inserted through the nose.

At Abu Ghraib, prisoners were beaten, stripped naked, raped, stacked on top of each other, frozen, frightened by attack dogs, threatened with guns, forced to simulate and have sex with each other, bitten by dogs, sodomized with chemical light bulbs, urinated on, drenched with cold water and forced to masturbate before cameras. Some of them were shrieking children. Has America forgotten the photos of soldiers smiling as they tortured fellow human beings?

And that’s at one of the recognized prisons. Who knows what happens at the top secret CIA “black sites.”

Between prisons in Afghanistan and Iraq like Abu Ghraib, detention centers like Gitmo, and CIA “black sites” like something out of a futuristic dystopian sci-fi movie, it’s unbelievable this is still going on!

Though Bush’s approval ratings have plummeted to record lows, American citizens don’t seem to be doing much of anything in the way of protest and dissent. Presidential approval ratings weren’t even this low during Vietnam, when college students were participating in huge protests. Shouldn’t our generation be demanding that the government act with at least a little regard for human rights?

Is our complacence out of apathy? A sense of helplessness and hopelessness? Some misguided notion of patriotism? Fear?

Sure, there are meager little protests students put together every so often on Forbes Avenue, but do they accomplish anything?

Well, enough, damn it! It’s time to act! This shouldn’t be a liberal-vs.-conservative thing, a Democrat-vs.-Republican issue, an old-people-are-wiser-than-young-people idea. Sure, some Pitt News editors — though not all — are liberal, and we’re all young, but this is not like gay marriage or abortion or taxes. It’s about expecting our country to behave responsibly, justly and with respect for humanity.

Forget, for now, about whether it was right to invade Iraq. Forget, for the moment, about whether you support or oppose the USA PATRIOT Act. Forget, briefly anyway, about whether you think the government has invaded the privacy of American citizens with its phone-record surveillance.

This is about more than war and privacy and politics. It’s about basic human rights.

The Bush administration argues that the suicides are a form of war and meant to gain media attention. But the thing is, media attention is warranted. The world should be paying attention. And if the U.S. government doesn’t think its actions can stand up to scrutiny, there’s something seriously wrong.

This is not to say that we’re siding with the prisoners. It’s possible that every single one of them is a Really Bad Dude out to do Really Bad Things to innocent American civilians. But if the government actually has evidence worthy of labeling the detainees as dangerous individuals, it should be no problem proving so in a court.

We’re not saying, “Free the terrorists.” We’re not saying “Boo, America.” We’re just saying that the system needs to include justice and needs to be open to outside scrutiny. The government can’t just hold people secretly and indefinitely without charging or trying them, especially if it’s going to torture them. It can’t just ignore what the rest of the world has to say. It can’t pretend the Geneva Convention never existed. Come on, America, we’re better than this.