{"id":178591,"date":"2021-02-08T12:00:24","date_gmt":"2021-02-08T12:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=178591"},"modified":"2021-02-08T12:53:54","modified_gmt":"2021-02-08T12:53:54","slug":"psychologists-should-now-lead-the-call-to-close-guantanamo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2021\/02\/psychologists-should-now-lead-the-call-to-close-guantanamo\/","title":{"rendered":"Psychologists Should Now Lead the Call to Close Guant\u00e1namo"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Both the history and the ethics of our profession point the way forward.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

1 Feb 2021 – <\/em>Last week, Mansoor Adayfi, Moazzam Begg, Lakhdar Boumediane, Sami Al-Hajj, Ahmed Errachidi, Mohammed Ould Slahi, and Moussa Zemmouri published an\u00a0open letter<\/a> in the\u00a0New York Review of Books<\/em>.\u00a0Noting that many\u00a0Guant\u00e1namo detainees had been abducted from their homes, sold to the United States for bounties, and subjected to physical and psychological torture, these seven former prisoners\u2014all held without charge or trial before their eventual release\u2014called upon President Biden to close the detention facility. Their letter, which merits reading in its entirety, includes this plea:<\/p>\n

“Considering the violence that has happened at Guant\u00e1namo, we are sure that after more than nineteen years, you agree that imprisoning people indefinitely without trial while subjecting them to torture, cruelty, and degrading treatment, with no meaningful access to families or proper legal systems, is the height of injustice. That is why imprisonment at Guant\u00e1namo must end.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These accusations are neither isolated nor unsubstantiated. Indeed, the week before Biden\u2019s inauguration, a group of United Nations experts\u2014including Nils Melzer,\u00a0the Special Rapporteur on torture\u2014described<\/a> Guant\u00e1namo as a \u201cdisgrace\u201d and as \u201ca place of arbitrariness and abuse, a site where torture and ill-treatment was rampant and remains institutionalised, where the rule of law is effectively suspended, and where justice is denied.\u201d They too called for its closure and reaffirmed,\u00a0\u201cThe prolonged and indefinite detention of individuals, who have not been convicted of any crime<\/a> by a competent and independent judicial authority operating under due process of law, is arbitrary and constitutes a form of cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, or even torture.\u201d<\/p>\n

As an American psychologist, I recognize that my profession should be among the most vocal in supporting this humanitarian call. There are three compelling reasons why. First, the ugly, unwelcome truth is that psychologists, and other healthcare professionals, were key participants in designing and implementing the brutal \u201cwar on terror\u201d detention and interrogation operations that have caused so much grievous harm. According to a Senate\u00a0report<\/a>, for example, a military psychologist and psychiatrist stationed at\u00a0Guant\u00e1namo during its first year of operation\u00a0recommended that \u201call aspects of the environment<\/a> should enhance capture shock, dislocate expectations, foster dependence, and support exploitation to the fullest extent possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

Likewise, according to a\u00a0memo<\/a> from the Department of Justice, \u201cclose observation\u201d by psychologists and physicians was\u00a0required whenever waterboarding and other torturous \u201cenhanced interrogation techniques\u201d were employed at the CIA\u2019s infamous black sites. In short, Guant\u00e1namo is a potent symbol of a shameful catalog of abuses and torture from which psychologists cannot hide, one that includes\u00a0sleep deprivation, extended isolation, stress<\/a> positions, sensory bombardment, forced nudity, freezing temperatures, sexual and cultural humiliation<\/a>, and confinement in coffin-like boxes.<\/p>\n

Second, the\u00a0American Psychological Association<\/a> (APA), the world\u2019s largest organization of psychologists, failed to adequately resist these unfolding horrors or defend the profession\u2019s fundamental do-no-harm principles.\u00a0In the days immediately after the 9\/11 attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney\u00a0told<\/a> a national television audience that those deemed to be our enemies would\u00a0face the \u201cfull wrath\u201d\u00a0of the United States and that our operatives would \u201cspend time in the shadows\u201d working \u201cthe dark side\u201d and using \u201cany means at our disposal.\u201d<\/p>\n

Early reports from\u00a0Guant\u00e1namo also raised concerns about psychologists\u2019 involvement in detainee mistreatment. The International Committee of the Red Cross even\u00a0characterized<\/a> the regime there as \u201ctantamount to torture.\u201d Yet for years the APA\u2019s stance was to deny any wrongdoing by psychologists, instead insisting that their participation helped to keep these operations \u201csafe, legal, ethical, and effective<\/a>.\u201d Eventually, an\u00a0independent review<\/a> documented that key APA leaders had engaged in years-long covert collaboration<\/a> with Department of Defense psychologists to ensure that the APA\u2019s ethics<\/a> policies would not constrain the continuing participation of psychologists in\u00a0Guant\u00e1namo\u2019s detention and interrogation activities.<\/p>\n

Third, given our training, psychologists understand better than most how profoundly devastating trauma<\/a> can be. Those who work with survivors of abuse and torture have witnessed the ongoing anguish that results from deep\u00a0psychic wounds<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0from the feelings of\u00a0brokenness\u00a0and\u00a0helplessness<\/a>\u00a0that persist long after being subjected to intentional pain and humiliation at the hands of another human being. For many victims,\u00a0nightmares<\/a>\u00a0and flashbacks are recurrent experiences, making any lasting sense of safety seemingly unimaginable. Despite examples of remarkable resilience<\/a>, many who were once imprisoned at\u00a0Guant\u00e1namo will undoubtedly carry\u00a0psychological scars<\/a> for the rest of their lives. The familial and\u00a0transgenerational effects<\/a> of trauma are significant as well.<\/p>\n

As for those who are still detained indefinitely, they are understandably very distrustful of U.S. military healthcare personnel.\u00a0Experts from the\u00a0Center for Victims of Torture<\/a> and\u00a0Physicians for Human Rights<\/a> also\u00a0warn<\/a> that they suffer from deprivation and despair, along with the adverse consequences of inaccurate and misleading health records, the subordination of their medical needs to security functions, and outright neglect.<\/p>\n

Over the past several years, the APA has made headway in acknowledging its past failures and in resetting its\u00a0moral compass<\/a>.\u00a0Of particular note, in 2015 the association\u2019s leadership<\/a> overwhelmingly approved a policy that now prohibits military psychologists from\u00a0involvement\u00a0with detainees at Guant\u00e1namo or other sites that United Nations authorities have determined to be in violation of international human rights law.\u00a0But for the APA, its members, and the profession at large, these and related steps face ongoing resistance from influential actors with ties to the military-intelligence<\/a> establishment and defense contractors.<\/p>\n

It would therefore represent an important milestone on this fraught journey forward for the APA to now call for the permanent closure of Guant\u00e1namo and the just resolution of the legal cases of the 40 prisoners who are still there. Other organizations committed to human rights\u2014ACLU<\/a>,\u00a0Amnesty International<\/a>, Center for Constitutional Rights<\/a>, Human Rights First<\/a>,\u00a0Human Rights Watch<\/a>, National Religious Campaign Against Torture<\/a>, Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition<\/a>,\u00a0and\u00a0Witness Against Torture<\/a>, among others\u2014have already done so.\u00a0Joining these groups would signal loudly that respect for human dignity and professional ethics had successfully overcome considerations of political and economic expediency at the APA.<\/p>\n

In his book\u00a0Life Lines<\/em>, the late minister and theologian Forrest Church wrote, \u201cWhen cast into the depths, to survive we must first let go of things that will not save us. Then we must reach out for things that can.\u201d That insight applies here: The United States should let go of Guant\u00e1namo, and the APA should help Americans understand why.<\/p>\n

_______________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Roy Eidelson is a member of the TRANSCEND Network<\/a> and was a member of the American Psychological Association for over 25 years, prior to his resignation. He is a clinical psychologist and the president of Eidelson Consulting<\/a>, where he studies, writes about, and consults on the role of psychological issues in political, organizational, and group conflict settings. He is a past president of Psychologists for Social Responsibility<\/a>, former executive director of the University of Pennsylvania\u2019s Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict, and a member of the Coalition for an Ethical Psychology<\/a>. Roy is the author of <\/em>Political Mind Games: How the 1% Manipulate Our Understanding of What\u2019s Happening, What\u2019s Right, and What\u2019s Possible<\/a> and can be reached at reidelson@eidelsonconsulting.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Considering the violence that has happened at Guant\u00e1namo, we are sure that after more than nineteen years, you agree that imprisoning people indefinitely without trial while subjecting them to torture, cruelty, and degrading treatment, with no meaningful access to families or proper legal systems, is the height of injustice. That is why imprisonment at Guant\u00e1namo must end.” Both the history and the ethics of our profession point the way forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":110813,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[867,133,1810,1464,112,572,95,70],"class_list":["post-178591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-anglo-america","tag-cia","tag-enhanced-interrogation","tag-guantanamo","tag-pentagon","tag-torture","tag-us-military","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/110813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}