den Index ? hat ja vor kurzem einige Preise bekommen, wenn ich mich recht erinnere...
"Road to Guantanamo-Bay"
What's most shocking isn't the torture or the shackling, it's that Guantanamo Bay exists at all. I think it should be closed down, and last week the United Nations said it should be closed down,? said Michael Winterbottom, the director of an award-winning film that depicts torture and abuse at the U.S. detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
Winterbottom's film, The Road to Guantanamo, is a courageous protest against an illegal jail where prisoners have been held for as many as four years, most of them without charges. In fact, the documentary, which won the Silver Bear award for direction at the Berlin Film Festival last week, could be considered as an indictment of the ?state of modern democracy,? an editorial on Bloomberg says.
The film is based on the story of three British citizens - Ruhal Ahmad, Asif Iqbal and Shafiq Rasul, from Tipton - who traveled to Pakistan in September 2001 and ended up in Guantanamo Bay. The three were released without charge in March 2004 after more than two years? detention.
The documentary charts the brutal treatment of Guantanamo detainees. It shows horrible scenes of mistreatment by U.S. guards: Prisoners are beaten, manacled to floors and banned from speaking or moving. Hooded and shackled, they are subjected to defeaning music in solitary confinement. The film also includes interviews with the so-called Tipton Three with dramatized reconstructions of how they ended up in U.S. custody.
According to the Independent, the three Britons say they decided to travel to Afghanistan after hearing a preacher in a Pakistani mosque call for volunteers to help with aid efforts in the neighboring country. When the U.S. invaded Afghanistan, the three were trapped and ended up being captured by Northern Alliance fighters who handed them over to U.S military.
The film will be shown on Britain?s Channel 4 next month. Four or five distributors are considering showing the film in the United States.
?The holiday from hell?
"We'd heard about the Tipton Three, so we got in contact with their lawyer, to arrange a meeting. Luckily they were interested in telling us their story. What was fascinating about the way they described the experience was that two of them were teenagers when they left, and one of them was 21, and none of them were particularly religious or political before they left; even when they were talking about it with us, after the event. And when they described it, it was in a matter-of-fact way, like someone telling you about their holiday - the holiday from hell,? Winterbottom, who co-directed the film with British director Mat Whitecross, told a Berlin conference.
"They were just ordinary British teens who got caught up in these events. We wanted to show the gap between what you thought people would be like in Guantanamo and the reality of meeting them?. It's good that people see that these are ordinary guys; to contrast the messiness of reality and real people's lives with the simplicity of Bush and Blair's insistence that they know these people, they're bad people, and that it's a fight of good against evil, it's a war against terror. All these absolutes are so deceptive and so misleading. Things are not like that in the real world."
?They chained you to a hook on the floor?
One of the former detainees, Shafiq Rasul, says: ?[In Guantanamo] You were sitting on your knees for ages. It was hot and you felt the sun burning your head. For the first month and a half, we never went out of our cells. They wouldn't let us pray; you couldn't stand up in your cell for the first two weeks. You weren't allowed to speak to the guy next to you,
?There was a hook on the floor and leg irons attached to the hook, and they put your hands between your ankles on the floor and chained you to the hook on the floor as well. They'd keep you there for five hours, six hours - you couldn't go to the toilet, you'd have to urinate, defecate where you are."
?The camp reminded me of a zoo?
Ruhel Ahmad says: "[In U.S. custody in Afghanistan] you weren't allowed to talk, you weren't allowed to walk, you weren't allowed to look at the soldiers. If you looked at them, that was it, you would get punished.
"[In Guantanamo] we used to walk five minutes every week - they used to take us out for five minutes every week. It reminded me of a zoo... there were rats, mice, snakes, scorpions.."
?The world's not a nice place?
Asif Iqbal: "The preacher [at a Karachi mosque] was saying we should help the Afghan people in whatever way we can. So we got a bus and off we went."
In U.S. custody in Afghanistan: "At night it was so crowded we had to take turns at sleeping. In prison, everyone told you not to say you were English."
In Guantanamo: ?They wanted to say I was a fighter. The next thing was: 'Were you a member of al-Qaeda?' Once you say you were a member of al-Qaeda, that was it. It either destroys you or it makes you stronger. I think it made me stronger. It destroyed me for a few weeks, after that I was all right. It's changed my life, the way I look at things. The world's not a nice place."
?Ugly farce?
It is worth mentioning that Ahmad and Rasul, two of the Tipton Three, and the actors who played them in the film - Rizwan Ahmad and Farhad Harun - were stopped by London police under ?anti-terror laws? as they returned from Berlin.
Reprieve, a human rights group, said the four were among a group of six "detained" at Luton airport last Thursday. They were arrested by three Special Branch officers, who searched Rizwan?s wallet and mobile phone to investigate personal details, the charity said.
Rizwan said: "[A female officer] asked me if I intended to do more documentary films, specifically more political ones like The Road to Guantanamo. She asked, 'Did you become an actor mainly to do films like this, to publicize the struggles of Muslims?'"
Bedfordshire Police confirmed that the four people were stopped under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. It said they were questioned about their journey and reasons for traveling.
Reprieve legal director Clive Stafford Smith said: "This may be a farce, but it is an ugly farce."
Closure
The United States has been facing mounting international criticism over the number of suspects it holds and the conditions at its prisons in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere in the world. The U.S., moreover, came under increasing scrutiny after media reports revealed it was holding an unknown number of suspects in secret locations overseas, refusing either to acknowledge the detentions or to give information on the fate or the whereabouts of those detainees.
A recent report by the U.S.-based Human Rights First organization shows that almost 100 prisoners have died in U.S. custody in the U.S.?s ?war on terror?. Of those deaths, more than 34 were suspected or confirmed homicides that were ?caused by intentional or reckless behavior?. Despite this fact, charges are rare and sentences are light, and the U.S. refuses to head to growing international calls and close down Guantanamo Bay.
?There are still 500 people in Guantanamo. They are still experiencing all the things that we filmed.? Winterbottom said as he criticized the British government?s "perverse" refusal to help the eight UK citizens still detained at Guantanamo.
|
1 |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
|
7 |
8
Thread abonnieren
