Took me forever and a day to get back from the Southbank, mainly due to transport and especially the tubes or lack of them. And the rain. I attended the screening of Outside the Law: Stories from Guantánamo + discussion at the BFI. I highly recommend this documentary by Polly Nash and Andy Worthington, it is thought-provoking, harrowing, emotional to watch, touching and politically powerful. Former prisoners such as Moazzam Begg and Omar Deghayes are interviewed along with Andy Worthington, Clive Stafford-Smith and Gareth Pierce.
I will give a fuller review tomorrow.
Advertisement
Looking forward to your review. It certainly showed to devastating effect what ‘outside the law’ really means in practice. One of the themes followed scrupulously in the film was the logic of the torture mentality and how it determines that self-respect and dignity equates with guilt. It is not just a film, of course, which is also made very clear.
In the meantime, here, thanks to earwicga, is an important counter witch hunt update to the ‘Kick-the-victim or you’ll really live to regret this, Amnesty!’ campaign launched 7 Feb in the Sunday Times and which has continued to crop up in many places, not least in other Murdoch-owned newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal and the Australian, but also elsewhere.
http://earwicga.wordpress.com/2010/02/28/gita-sahgal-widney-brown-on-nprs-all-things-considered/
(At the time the above blog was published, the NPR radio transcript mentioned in it was not yet available. It is now: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124156482)
Thanks for that Lucy, it was a a very moving and powerful documentary in that it showed the devastating consequences of the War on Terror.
There was a mentioning of the Gita Sahgal/Amnesty situation in the later debate, it was briefly touched on. I think there has been so much heat on this issue which generates little light. I think there is a witch hunt against Moazzam Begg orchestrated by the ST and aided and abetted by Gita Sahgal but I think there has to be a nuanced approach as Gita has done invaluable work along with WAF but I think she is wrong on this.
I agree that she has done a lot of invaluable work along with WAF. The film-makers said that Shaker Aamer is still being held and that he risks grave deterioration if he is not got out soon. Gita Sahgal’s campaign goes round the world spreading a message about those whom she considers to be bad guys – essentially. And frequently she has deeply personalised it. To use the sort of terminology she herself has deployed to effect in some of her interviews, if she were a white woman what would you make of her attacks? Is she doing anything to help gain due process and the release of prisoners in Guantánamo or to close the prisons set up ‘outside the law’? One thing the film illustrated was how difficult it would be for the jailers, as it were, to institute due process – because it is apparently highly likely that they would appear culpable if they did. Is the anti-torture campaign helped or hindered by Gita Sahgal’s actions?
Lucy, I agree substantially with what you say but it is also about the style of debate and how it is conducted. Indeed Gita has made an extremely bad judgment call. And that various individuals who have jumped on Gita’s cause have done it not about human rights but because they have their own dishonest pro-war ideological axe to grind (it would have helped if Gita had at least distanced herself from them). There are so many unexplained issues about why Gita did this and for someone who has been involved in political activity for many years so knows better than to speak out to the right-wing press who seems intent on creating a witch hunt.There were avenues she coulda and should have pursued in Amnesty but she didn’t. And she has created a hierarchy of human rights (‘deserving and underserving’) .
But in saying all this I still think there can nuanced debate on and sometimes the style of the debate can become personalised that will degenerate into creating more heat than light.
What do you think about this http://1stdreamer.wordpress.com/2010/03/05/the-hospital-road/
Pleas see this…