When they vomited up blood, the soldiers mocked them and cursed at them, and taunted them with statements like, ‘look at what you religion has brought you.’

-Testimony of Judith Tarver, a lawyer for the detainees held in U.S. naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. Tarver represents some of the detainees who are part of a 100-day hunger strike and who are now being force-fed by U.S. military forces.

During the past year, I have become aware of the reality of torture, the indefinite detention of over 500 human beings who have not been charged [with the exception of 4 people] with any crime, and the abrogation of civil and human rights at a U.S. administered interrogation camp located at the U.S. naval base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. As this reality weighs heavily upon my heart, I find myself re-reading Daniel Berrigan’s The Dark Night of Resistance. Berrigan, writing during the twilight years of the Vietnam War and during the throes of his own resistance to that brutal war, opens his book by asking a few questions: “How is man/woman to live today? Is it possible for a man/woman to do something other than to kill his or her brother/sister -- the practical universal demand laid upon him/her by the state, approved by a silent Church? Is there another way, which will allow men/women to live here and now; will allow the unborn to get born, and to live their lives in a way different from the (one) way sanctioned above?” Those questions have opened up my heart and mind and ‘allowed in’ my participation in the 60-mile walk to the U.S. prison camp in Guantánamo Bay in witness against the torture there.

Tarver told the court that prison guards took a feeding tube from one detainee, and ‘with no sanitization whatsoever, reinserted it into the nose of a different detainee’.
In the second chapter of the book, Berrigan notes that the “longest journey begins with [that/unseen] single step…Nothing will change, seriously, in the great world, unless we submit to change. What is the next step?” For me, the next step was simply to continue a daily practice of silent meditation and to dwell in the life and prayer of the Kairos, Catholic Worker and Jonah House communities. Robert Kennedy, S.J, who is also a Zen master, was kind enough to introduce me to the practice of Zen meditation. In this practice, I learn of the patient effort that is necessary to see through the projections of the ego and to wake up. Through this practice of “emptiness,” I experience “no separation” between those being held in Guantánamo and me. And, I see clearly that to be attentive to the cries of those being tortured is also to be attentive to my true self.

I have been enriched by the many insights, gifts, and the discipline of communal life by those in the peace and resistance communities that I have named. The gift of friendship that is nurtured here often leads me to exclaim gratefully: “Speaking of marvels, I am alive together with you…” Within these communities I learned that we must be constant in our attentiveness to one another. And further, that this attention to the other must not exclude anyone.

It was always a ghastly idea to shunt these guys off to Cuban soil simply to give the military a free pass to experiment with extreme interrogation techniques.
Again, from the Dark Night of Resistance: “The master went walking in a wood. His senses were drawn to a flowering lilac. He thought first: I will pluck a garland, bear it home, and place it in a vase for rejoicing in the new season. His second thought was: No, I will breathe it and remember it. His third thought was: I will do neither. He passed by.” When our hands are empty, we are best able to serve the other. Empty-handed, then, we will walk to Guantánamo and offer those who suffer behind its barbed wire the modest gift of visiting those who are in prison. This gift is one of the corporal works of mercy, which are enumerated quite clearly in the 25th chapter of Matthew’s Gospel: feed the hungry, give drink to those who thirst, welcome the stranger, clothe the naked, care for the sick and visit those who are in prison. Further, it is not lost on me that while I am walking to Guantánamo, I will be joined by so many worldwide who faithfully, quietly, and without recognition fulfill these works of mercy on a daily basis. Hence the “extraordinary” act of walking to Guantánamo is nothing other than the ordinary work of the “little way,” so beautifully commended to us by Thérèse of Lisieux and Dorothy Day, for example.

Guantánamo has become iconic in the Arab and Muslim world; it stands for the United States doing wrong and abusing people.
There are also, however, the fiery words of the prophets bearing down upon us and inspiring us to a walk of resistance – resistance to the state-sponsored acts of torture, no matter how they might be rationalized. I am deeply moved by the unexpected gift of the Liturgy of the Word offered by the Catholic Church on 11 December, or the first day of our vigil outside the gates of Guantánamo. Our celebrant for the Mass that day, Steve Kelly, S.J., will hand the book of the prophet Isaiah to one of our number who will read: “The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor, to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and release the prisoners…As the earth brings forth its plants, and a garden makes its growth spring up, so will the Lord God make justice and praise spring up before all nations.” Astonishing! What the Spirit of the Lord proclaims as good news, our government calls a “terrifying specter.” And which should we follow – the counsel of God, or the manipulations of the White House? No, the walls of this prison must come down and its prisoners must be treated with love and not with hatred. It is only then that may we begin to speak of justice.

Would we not so desire to be treated in the same manner of love and not hatred? What can we say about the legitimacy of a system or a government that requires such terrible acts of torture to sustain itself? And further, why do we pretend that we do not possess Weapons of Mass Destruction that are used to destroy human beings and the beauty and bounty of this earth? I ask this of myself as one who comes from a nation that has thus far spent over $255 billion (at a rate of $6 billion per month) to kill over 2,100 and maim over 15,000 of its own men and women, while killing over 100,000 Iraqis since the invasion and occupation of Iraq began in March of 2003. The tools for killing in Iraq included white phosphorous, a chemical weapon whose use against civilians is banned in warfare, and of an updated form of napalm in the Mark 77 firebomb. It is well known that “phosphorous burns bodies, in fact it melts the flesh all the way down to the bone…” and that US forces fired this chemical weapon down upon Iraqi civilians, children included.

The prohibition against torture is the most fundamental international human rights prohibition, one that virtually all nations of the world had agreed upon long before it was fully codified in the United Nations Convention Against Torture.
In early September of 1943, Etty Hillesum, a young Jewish woman who offered herself up to be the “thinking heart” of the Nazi’s Westerbork internment camp, was riding in a train that would eventually bring her and her family to the gas chambers of Auschwitz. While in the midst of this agonizing journey, she threw a postcard out of the train that described her final acts before reaching Auschwitz: she opened the Bible; she left the camp singing with her family; and, she offered gratitude for the kindness and care that had been given to her by her friends. This postcard, utterly remarkable in its depth of spirit, was found by a farmer and mailed to its intended recipient. Today, we are the beneficiaries of Hillesum’s radiant intelligence and of that farmer’s good act.

I hope that we might serve in the role of that farmer as we vigil outside the gates of Guantánamo. When the cries inside the walls of Guantánamo are uttered, who will be present there to perceive the wailing and receive this “letter to the world”? Who will be present there to share in the daily tajwid and the tartil (melodious and perfect) recitation of the holy Qur’an, with its insistence that justice can only come with mercy? And who will be present to respond, “As-Salaam Alakyum (peace be upon you)”?

We will be present there. I will be present there.
__________
Sources:
Will Dunham, “US Told to Give Data on Guantánamo Hunger Strikers,” Reuters, 26 October 2005. http://www. truthout.org/doc_2005/printer_102705F.shtml
Daniel Berrigan. The Dark Night of Resistance. New York: Doubleday, 1970. p. 5
Dunham
Berrigan, p. 20
Liesel Mueller. Alive Together. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State, 1996. p. 84
Elizabeth Sullivan, “Shut Down Guantánamo,” Cleveland Plain Dealer, 6 November 2005. http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=views05/1106-25.htm
Berrigan, p. 52
Michael Ratner and Ellen Ray. Guantánamo: What the World Should Know. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green, 2004. p. 5
The Holy Bible, NVSR. New York: American Bible Society, 1991. p. 681
William Hartung. “Iraq: The Tunnel at the End of the Light.” CommonDreams.org, 12 November 2005. http://www.common dreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=views05/1112-20.htm
Andrew Buncombe. “US Criticized for Use of Phosphorous in Fallujah Raids.” Independent/UK,
9 November 2005. http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=headlines05/1108-01.htm
Peter Popham. “US Forces ‘Used Chemical Weapons’ During Assault on City of Fallujah.” Independent/UK, 8 November 2005. http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=hedlines05/1108-01.htm
Ratner and Ray, p. 31.
Etty Hillesum. Letters from Westerbork. (trans. Arnold Pomerans). New York: Random, 1986.
Ziauddin Sardar and Zafar Abbas Malik. Introducing Muhammad. Cambridge, UK: Icon, 1999. p. 41