Abu Ghraib and the Violence
of America's Gulags
"Cops can kill. And they will." Chumbawumba
As the Iraqi prison abuse scandal unfolds, many people all over
the world look in disgust at the photos that are trickling out in
the media. Like a lot of people, I have been delving into the news
articles, reading the magazines, and watching the talking heads on
TV try to explain to the American public what went wrong in Abu
Ghraib.
What they leave out is that nothing actually went wrong in Abu
Ghraib. This is exactly the way the prison system works, at least
here in America. It makes sense that if Americans export their
prison systems and their prison guards to other countries, then it
will only replicate our system. The only thing that went wrong is
that someone took pictures and they were caught.
Reading about how the Abu Ghraib scandal broke reminded me of
the lengths that the state will go to protect its interests when
they are threatened, or even challenged. In an absurd statement on
the scandal, Donald Rumsfeld told the press in an interview that
prison abuse was "un-American." When I read that quote, prison
abuse is un-American, I wanted to scream. In a few months, it will
be the first anniversary of the day my father was killed by a prison
guard in the Texas Gulags.
It was the middle of the summer, two days after my birthday,
when I got the news about my father. He was serving a pretty
lengthy sentence for armed robbery and was in isolation when he was
killed. My family didn't have the money to pay for a burial, so the
state of Texas took care of the expenses. When my family got to the
funeral home, the director came to meet my mother at the door to
tell her that my father's body had come to them pretty beat up. He
said they did all that they could do with make-up, but he wanted her
to be prepared. When we saw my father's body lying in the
particle-board coffin the state provided, he looked like he had been
through hell. My mother almost fainted. Make-up was caked on my
father's face to cover up the heavy bruising, but they couldn't hide
it all. Bruises everywhere, the back of his head looked like it had
been dragged through the streets, and the worst part was seeing his
hands. The funeral parlor did what they could do with his face, but
evidently forgot about his hands. The space between each one of his
fingers was blackened from the trauma. I later found out it was
because his hands had been crushed. I don't know from what...and
probably never will.
That was almost a year ago, but the pain is still fresh.
My father's initial imprisonment helped bring about my own
politicization. I am an Anarchist now, in part because of this. I
think it is nearly impossible to have family members stolen from you
without it having a strong effect on your life. For me, the
experience radically changed everything I had been taught about
America and the government. Through a long political road of trying
to figure out where I belonged, I fell into Anarchism. A friend
wrote me a letter not long after my father's death saying that she
didn't know if it would be easier or harder to have that happen and
already be aware of the system's corruption. I have to admit that
in some ways, I wish I could plead ignorance to it and believe the
lies they told my family when my father died. But it's nearly
impossible to unlearn those kind of things, I've found. Not that
I'd wish to be ignorant to what the state can do, but this last year
might have been easier to handle if I didn't know what I know. I
think that the American public in general is quickly learning this
same lesson in regards to Abu Ghraib and Iraq. As an anarchist, I
find it harder to trick myself about the intentions of the state,
especially when it comes to prison. What happened to my father was
a systemic lynching. And like a lynching, all the perpetrators will
probably get away with it. For now, at least. Just like how the
real perpetrators of what happened in Abu Ghraib will also probably
get away with their "misconduct". This is a hard reality to live
with, and a source of deep frustration, which I can only imagine is
what many Iraqis are going through now. The state protects itself
well.
If my own politicization helped me in any way, it was in being
able to see my father's murder in a different perspective. I see
what happened to my father as related to what's happening in Iraq,
Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay right now in that the root of the
problem lays in the systemic nature of prison abuse. The system is
to blame. Individuals are accountable for their own actions, but as
long as the system exists abuses like this will continue. The
dehumanization of prisoners as people is the same in America as it
is the world over. But like with the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay
and Afghanistan, the mere suggestion of any wrong doing will be
scoffed at by the state and met with contempt. And also like the
families of those who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan at the hands
of the US government, every bit of information my family was able to
get concerning my father's death was met with legal challenges,
beaurocratic indifference, and occassional hostility. In that
instance, however, our situation is still much better than the
victims of the US foriegn wars, mostly in that my father was only
murdered in prison. We didn't also have our homes and cities
attacked with guided missiles in a racially charged war to compound
our pain and agony. Still, the death of a parent has to be just as
hard for an Iraqi as it is for an American. And the murder of a
prisoner is the same the world over. I imagine that the pain that
Iraqi and Afghani families go through when they find out that their
family members were attacked and murdered by prison guards is pretty
similar to what my family went though when we found out that that
had happened to our family member.
I also imagine the rage felt by those left behind is a universal
feeling.
The hypocrisy being played over and over again on the nightly
news is almost impossible for me to watch right now. The president
who executed over 150 people when he was governor of Texas saying
that he is appalled by prison abuse. The same politicians who got
into office promising to get tough on crime and build more prisons
to "clean up the streets" now speak of prisoners in empathetic terms
and are condemning the abuse that happens in the same institutions
they helped build. These are the same people that are able to keep
their jobs by creating a constant state of panic here in America.
Instead of even considering a treatment option for drug offenders,
they call for mandatory sentences. Where are the tears when the kid
who gets busted with some weed or LSD gets attacked in prison? Did
a single politician here in America cry when my father was killed?
Or when they hear about another prisoner being murdered behind bars?
The empathy and compassion that they show on TV is fake and the
"anger" is calculated. Normally, in the politician's mindset,
prisoners are not even considered people and deserve whatever
happens to them. Prisoners are a class of people who are first and
foremost, according to the state, slaves. They are thus regarded no
basic human rights. None at all. No respect needs to be given any
of them as human beings because to the system, prisoners are just
meat. To the state and its servants, they are simply objects that
deserve every cruelty they get. They can be beat, humiliated,
raped, and, if they choose, they can be murdered and it will be
covered up.
This, the Iraqi prisoners now have in common with their American
sisters and brothers also being held prisoner by the american
government. Not that they didn't already know cruelty under the old
regime, but it's just more ironic with the Americans because of all
rhetoric of "liberation" surrounding this colonial adventure.
The same politicians who are on the front page of the paper
angrily denouncing the soldiers who participated in the abuse are
not, in actuality, angry that prisoners were abused. They are angry
that the image of the US military has been tarnished. That their
vote to go to war is now jeapordizing their political careers. They
are angry that these photos were allowed to leak out to the world
and that now the US government's abuse of prisoners is world news,
thus threatening their interests in the region. This time, they
can't brush aside the allegations of abuse like they normally do.
Someone took pictures and they're on the cover of The Economist,
Newsweek and the New York Times.
Their solutions also speak volumes as to how much they really
care about the problem. As I write this, Donald Rumsfeld is working
on an order to ban all digital cameras from military installations.
That way, if (and when) this happens again, no one will know. For
them, the problem will be solved. For us, however, nothing will
change.
The rarest aspect of this scandal is that there is a call for
"justice" against the perpetrators. This may be only because the
fascist Bush/Cheney/Rummy administration has so much riding on the
"hearts and minds" of Iraqi people and have to appear accountable.
It is also a sad commentary on where the heart and mind of America
is at concerning its own prisons. When the abuse is in Iraq, it is
front page news. When the abuse is a mile down the road, it is of
less concern. This has a lot to do with media coverage. If the
abuse that happens in America were covered like the abuse that
happened in Abu Ghraib, then we'd see a similar outpouring of
emotion.
Since the scandal broke, a few papers have run stories about the
correlation between abuse in the Iraqi gulags as opposed to the
abuse in their American versions. But little has come of it outside
of a begrudging acknowledgment that, yes, it happens here too.
While the conditions of Iraqi prisoners is nightly news, with
condemnations going from the top of the food chain to the bottom,
there is little of that same criticism pointed to the prisons right
here in America. A few years ago when videotapes were released of
prison guards beating prisoners for training purposes, hardly a
fraction of the uproar could be traced.
Still, the abuse of American prisoners is hard to ignore when
the abuse of Iraqis is all over the media and this may have an
effect on public opinion. Recently, several examples of physical
and sexual abuse within the US prison system have come to light.
Studies from over thirty years ago are in the news again that show
the brutal nature of prisons. One in particular concerning how
prisons produce "monsters" was conducted at Stanford University. A
group of students were selected and divided into two groups,
"prisoners" and "guards." Even though they all knew this was just
an academic study and that neither was in reality a guard or
prisoner, only students, conditions in the "prison" soon
deteriorated. "Guards" began using sadistic behavior against the
"prisoners," including emotional, physical, and sexual abuse. The
experiment was supposed to last several weeks, but conditions of the
"prison" deteriorated so rapidly that the study was called off two
weeks earlier than expected. Several of the student "prisoners"
involved were so traumatized by the study that they left the
"prison" (which was the basement of the university) with complete
nervous breakdowns. However unethical the study was, its results
are telling. Prison, and authority, breed violence and contempt to
those under the boot. While this might not be news to many of us,
it is interesting when these studies are in the mainstream.
The American will concerning the war in Iraq has always been
fragile and weak, mainly since it was based almost soley on lies and
propaganda. That a prison scandal could be the straw that finally
broke the camel's back is interesting because it is also helping to
expose the failings of the prison system as a whole and the lies
that it is built upon. Maybe for the first time, people that are
reading about the abuses in Iraq are now hearing about the
condemnations of prisons right here in the US by groups like Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch. And better yet, maybe now
they are taking the allegations seriously.
The media however, is doing a good job at countering these
stories by minimizing the relationship of this scandal to the
prisons at home. The fact that two of the accused in Abu Ghraib
worked as a prison guards before going to Iraq should be a bigger
part of this story, but it is not. What should also be a major part
of this story is that one of the guards accused of the most heineous
abuse worked as a prison guard at State Correctional Institute
Greene in rural Pennsylvania (where political prisoner Mumia
Abu-Jamal is still housed after 20 years) and was accused there of
similar abuse. This should be of great interest. But, while it is
known, it is of little focus. It is a criminal act when agents of
the government violate the Geneva Convention concerning the rights
of prisoners overseas, but it is of little concern to the media (and
thus to the public) when a different faction of that same government
violates international standards against their own citizens.
This also is very telling about the state's concern for it's
minions. The people running the government don't care that the
prisoners were beaten (Of couse they don't. They ordered it!), they
only care that you know about it and that they might lose their war
because people know of it. Otherwise, they do not care at all about
the life of a prisoner, whether she or he is in Iraq, Afghanistan,
Guantanamo Bay, Pennsylvania, Florida, Texas, or wherever.
While we should be outraged at the abuses in Abu Ghraib, we
should also not lose focus of the bigger picture. The universality
of prison abuse and the abusive nature of the prison system, no
matter where it is, is where we should direct our criticism as well
as our attacks. As long as prisons exist, prisoners will be abused.
Prisoners will be raped. Prisoners will be beat. And, like my
father and several other prisoners in this country, prisoners will
be murdered. Just like they will in Afghanistan, Iraq and wherever
prisoners are housed. Disciplining a few soldiers and prison guards
will only serve to show the system as one that is accountable, when
it is clearly not the case. The same people that commit the abuse
and orchestrate it, are often rewarded for their efficiency in
cruelty. One of the same people that oversaw the growth of George
Bush's prison system in Texas, as it was being condemned by several
national and international humanitarian groups, was rewarded with a
high paying position rebuilding Iraq's prison system. In fact, it
was said in an interview before the scandal broke that the prison in
Abu Ghraib was the closest to an American prison in Iraq. This
should not be overlooked.
In the specific instance of Iraq, specific people are
responsible. But this problem is much more endemic to prisons
themselves than to a few sadists within and outside their walls.
The only reason people are being held to account now is because the
pictures released of the Iraqis be tortured have so jeapordized the
US's colonial interests in the region that they now have no choice
but to hold a few pawns accountable. But as more allegations
surface, more is known about the extent of the situation. Several
instances of deaths of other prisoners in the "war on terror", that
are being called homicides even by the army itself, are are begining
to make news. What's also being reported is the difference in the
way the government chose to handle those cases. Basically, the
"justice" served amounts to nothing if no one took pictures. The
greatest crime that happened in Abu Ghraib wasn't that prisoners
were abused. The greatest crime was that someone took pictures of
it. If those photos weren't released, those soldiers wouldn't be
on trial.
Right now, the US government is imprisoning in secret detentions
an unknown number of people without charge here in the United States
in it's "war against terror" (or better said "War against Arabs" or
"War against Muslims"). Guantanamo Bay is such a mystery that no
one really knows what is going on there. Future generations (if
there are any) will surely look at what happened in Guantanamo Bay
and the secret "round-ups" of Arabs and Muslims in this country in a
condemning light and will ask, why didn't anyone do anything? What
will we tell them?
The prison abuse in Afghanistan is showing to be no different
than Iraq, just less visible. These situations are also proving to
be mirrors of what the unchecked authority here in the US prison
system is like.
There is no way to make a prison humane and the notion of prison
reform, in Iraq and in the United States, must be dismissed. If one
is in favor of prisons in any way, then they are in favor of the
abuses that happen within their walls. One goes with the other.
The prison abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan happened, in part, because
of the dehumanization of prisoners in general. Not only were they
all "Arab terrorists", "Ba'athists" or whatever, but they were also
prisoners. In part, they were beat and tortured for the same reason
it happens here. Protection of the ruling class through the
systemic repression of their slaves.
The solution to the problem of prison abuse is clear and
simple-the eradication of the abuser. More concisely, the solution
to prison abuse is the abolition of prison. While the idea of
prison abolition can be frightning to many, it must be shown that
the way the state operates is a far more frightening option. This is
as true overseas and it is here. Clear and simple. As long as the
prisons stand, the abuse will continue. Groups like Critical
Resistance and Anarchist Black Cross are fighting on these fronts,
as well as prisoners on the inside. But this truly is a monumental
struggle and will also be a struggle for hearts and minds. The
prisons in this country are growing at frightening rates. A recent
report indicates that one in every 75 males in America is behind
bars. For Black males specifically it is much higher with one in
three in some kind of direct state control. The Prison Industrial
Complex is on auto-pilot creating more prisoners and more prisons.
As the totalitarian grip of the government grows tighter, more and
more of us will find ourselves behind bars (if we are not there
already). But it doesn't have to be this way.
In Seattle during the WTO protests, activists locked arms
around the King County Jail to force the city of Seattle to not only
listen to their demands, but also free the prisoners. For the most
part it worked. It worked because people were willing to sacrifice
a bit of their privilege and put themselves on the line for the
prisoners in the jail. It was mass anger from the citizens of
Seattle that the Seattle police had to deal with. The city knew
that if they didn't deal with this anger, then they would have
bigger problems to deal with in no time. When the WTO protests
started, those involved were mostly global justice activists, but by
the end of that week it seemed that nearly every single person in
Seattle (except the cops) had taken to the streets and were on our
side. People were being radicalized with each new tear gas canister
being shot into their neighborhoods. That anger brought thousands
of people to an emergency demonstration at the King County Jail to
attempt to free the political prisoners of that action. But what if
that anger persisted past the WTO protests? What if demonstrators
used the same tactics every day to free, not just activists, but
people busted for non-violent crimes. What if they simply used that
tactic to try and reclaim a prison? Could it work? The system can
handle a few demonstrations, but it cannot handle consistant,
constant pressure.
The outrage in Iraq is so great over the Abu Ghraib scandal that
actually razing the prison is being openly considered to quell the
anger. This is obviously a symbolic gesture, but what if the
outrage continues? And continues. And continues. And what if the
Iraqis tell the Americans in no uncertain terms that their military
cannot do this to the people of that country anymore? What if the
Iraqis tell them that they cannot imprison its people for one more
day and that they are not welcome in their land anymore and that
they all must leave? What if that happened?
In Iraq that exact scenario could very well happen and may be
playing out in front of our eye.
Now, what if we did that here?
Why are we not rioting with every prison death or every
allegation of prison abuse? The anger of the Iraqi people is
working to end the occupation and, in large part, is freeing their
prisoners. We need to take notes.
While we wait for the promise of another "Bastille Day" here,
the abuse will continue. It will happen to Iraqis and Afghanis the
same way it happened to my father and countless others in this
country. The violence and abuse will continue in every single place
the government builds walls to separate us.
The prison's ultimate role in society is class separation and
the continuation of state oppression. This oppression will not end
until the oppressor is dealt with. And that will be our mission: To
deal with the oppressor. We owe it to all those who won't make it
out alive, as Anarchists and as people that care about our fellow
human being.
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