All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
This is Anti-War Radio, I'm Scott Horton, I appreciate everybody tuning in to the show today.
We're going to go ahead and go to our first couple of guests now.
They are Jeremy Kirk and Luke Hanson from WitnessTorture.org, Witness Against Torture is the organization.
Welcome to the show, guys.
How are you doing?
Good, Scott.
Thanks for having us.
Thank you.
It's good to be here.
Well, I appreciate you both joining us.
Now, which one's Kirk, which one's Jeremy, and which one's Luke here?
Well, this is Jeremy, and I'm here calling in from New York City, Union Theological Seminary.
From Union Theological Seminary, and I think I saw that in one of these news stories here that you were a student there, Jeremy.
And now, what about you, Luke?
Are you a student as well?
I'm working now.
I'm calling in from the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, where I just started working at Red Cloud High School.
Wow.
Isn't that interesting?
Okay.
So now, you guys both recently took a trip to Bermuda to meet some survivors of the Guantanamo Gulag.
Tell us a story.
We did, yeah.
Our organization, Witness Against Torture, started in 2005 when 25 activists traveled to Guantanamo in an attempt to visit the prisoners, which was a response to our call to do the works of mercy, a response to our faith.
And so, the organization is very familiar with the story of the Uyghurs and has long advocated for their release.
Of course, these Chinese Uyghurs were cleared by the Bush administration, and they were ordered released by a federal judge in October 2008, but we were searching for countries that would be willing to resettle them.
The United States was not willing to do so.
So we've long advocated for them.
So the reason for us going to Bermuda was to be in relationship with these men and to seek reconciliation with these men who we had advocated for for so many years, but were never able to have personal contact with them.
So that was motivating our desire to go to Bermuda.
We wanted to ask them, what would you have us do for you?
And we wanted to ask them things like, what sustained your hope during seven years in Guantanamo, even though you had been cleared as innocent men, but weren't released?
So those were some of the motivating factors behind our trip.
And now, how many of these guys have been released?
The Uyghurs have been released to Bermuda?
Is it just the two?
There's four.
Oh, there's four of them.
Yeah, four have been released up until this point, and two of which originally, and then two a little bit later.
I see.
And now, well, before we get too far into their actual stories, tell us a little bit more about who the Uyghurs are, what they are, you know, in relationship to the Chinese government and how it was that they ended up at Guantanamo in the first place, if you could.
Sure.
From what we've collected from news reports and their attorneys, we've learned that the Uyghurs are a persecuted ethnic group in Western China.
They're less familiar to us than the Tibetans, for instance.
They were an independent nation for centuries.
They were around, I think, a hundred years ago, they became part of China against their will.
So the Uyghurs are in Western China working to maintain their culture and their language, and most of them are Muslim.
So they're trying to maintain those traditions as much as possible, but they are very persecuted by the Chinese.
Now, the Uyghurs who ended up in Guantanamo were, for the most part, looking for work, and Afghanistan was a place where they could travel without any fear of being sent back to China, and they could work in Afghanistan, I understand, without papers.
So they were staying in a camp where there were a number of Uyghurs.
Afghanistan, the U.S. started bombing Afghanistan in late 2001.
These men fled to Pakistan for safety reasons.
They were staying at a mosque when they were arrested and turned over to the United States on bounty.
I believe that the United States paid $5,000 for each of these men.
They were suspected Al-Qaeda or Taliban terrorists.
Very soon after the United States interrogated them, we realized that their beef was with China, essentially, and not with the United States, and that they should not have been arrested, and we do not have any lawful authority to detain them.
But they were in Guantanamo, and because of fears of torture or execution, if they were sent back to China, because they're part of the Uyghur group, we were searching for other countries that would be willing to take them.
So they were basically in limbo.
They were in Guantanamo in U.S. custody for seven years, but the United States government was having difficulty ending their detention and resolving their situation.
Yeah, it seems strange, and I guess at least possibly a happy ending that they were able to go to Bermuda, right?
There's worse places to be exiled when you can't go home to China.
I would say, yeah, Scott.
This is Jeremy.
Yeah, I would say, yeah, definitely, these guys feel very, very fortunate to be there and to be able to be out of Guantanamo.
They have jobs.
They have a nice, safe place to live.
They're very grateful to the Bermudian government's support.
But what we noticed is that Bermuda is a really small place, and what these guys care most about in their lives is family, both the families they were born into, their extended family, and the families that they hope to create someday.
And if you look at Bermuda, it is beautiful, but it's also very small, and right now they don't have the legal ability to travel, to see their families anywhere throughout the world.
So, in a sense, they are still, in one sense, in prison, albeit a very beautiful, beautiful place.
Elaborate on that, please.
They're sort of house-arrested there on the island?
No, no, not at all.
They have a very free life on the island to work, to sustain themselves, to have communities to worship at one of the three local mosques, but Bermuda itself is a very small geographic area.
Right, and they're not allowed to have a passport and leave.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So you could literally see the entire island in one day.
So while they are free, compared to their custody in Guantanamo, they are not free as I am.
So when I went there for four days and I got on a plane and I left, they don't have the freedom to do that.
So their freedom is limited geographically to the island of Bermuda, which is very small.
Now, that was part of the deal that America made with Bermuda, that, here, you guys take these guys but don't ever let them leave?
No, that's not our understanding.
There's some local politics that are delaying the promise of passports and the ability to leave.
And the Uyghur men are very understanding of that.
They don't pretend to understand, you know, exactly all that is associated with those local politics.
Again, they're grateful for the ability to be there, but it's just kind of the situation that although they are very happy about their current material situation there, they don't have the thing that they most desire, and also that their faith demands, which is close community with their family.
But as of now, they don't have passports.
The future, that may change in the future.
We don't know.
And do they say, or do you know if there's any ability to bring their family to them from China?
Not from China.
Those that live in other places that could potentially come, I guess it's theoretically possible, although one relative, because of having to take care of young children, it wouldn't be practical for her to come.
So they are able to speak to their families on the phone, but no, at this point, passports for family to come visit them would have to come, the Chinese government wouldn't allow their families to come visit them.
All right everybody, it's Anti-War Radio, I'm talking with Jeremy Kirk, he's a student at Union Theological Seminary, and Luke Hanson, he's a teacher at Indian Reservation in South Dakota, and we're talking about the Uyghurs, who were turned loose to Bermuda, a somewhat less restrictive island prison in the Caribbean, and we'll be right back.
All right y'all, welcome back to the show, it's Anti-War Radio, we're on the Liberty Radio Network and Chaos Radio Austin, and I'm talking with Jeremy Kirk and Luke Hanson, they're from Witness Against Torture, that's witnesstorture.org, and they recently went to Bermuda to meet four Uyghurs, that's a Turkic Muslim West Chinese, I guess, who were rounded up with the other 700 something innocent people that were held in the giant publicity stunt at the American Gulag at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and they were recently released, I think toward the beginning of this year, to Bermuda, and when we went out to break, we were talking about the fact that they're still not allowed to leave the island, but at least they're free to travel around that island, so it's not quite as bad as being locked in Guantanamo, I guess.
But then we were talking about their families, and you were saying that possibly they'd be able to get some of their families, but some of them not, can you elaborate a little bit more about that?
Because that is, after all, the most important thing to people, isn't it, that they can see their families?
Yeah, and especially to these guys, that's kind of, that is, you know, what they thought about, that's what sustained them when they were in Guantanamo, and that is what they hope to do now.
I think that really the future will hold, you know, what happens with them seeing their families is yet to be seen, and they're hopeful, although, and they are very patient men.
I think what they're most concerned about is that there's still five of their brothers that are still in Guantanamo, and these folks, you know, don't even have the freedom that the guys in Bermuda have.
So when we talk to these guys about, you know, well, what are your concerns, what do you want, they might say a few things about their own desires, but they very quickly start talking about really their main concern is their remaining brothers, who have the same charges that they had, dropped at the same time, that these guys be freed as soon as possible.
As a matter of fact, the guys in Bermuda said that their happiness will come when their brothers are released as they are.
All right, now, let me ask you guys about your activism here a little bit.
Many may be familiar with the poll that said that the more religious Americans are, the more likely they are to support torture, to support jail without trial, to support war.
And yet, if I have this right, if I understood, I forget if it was Jeremy or Luke here, one of you all in your first answer said that this is about living up to your own faith, going to, I'm not sure, counsel these men, or at least witness what's happened to them, hear their stories.
That's right.
Our group that went to Bermuda was very much motivated by our faith, and the same is true for the Witness Against Torture organization.
I guess I would say that, you know, amongst Christians in the United States, there are very different views of who Jesus was and what was important to Jesus.
And we're very much inspired by the way that Jesus lived his life, and what he taught us about God and who he associated with, and how he invited us to love our enemies, to forgive others, to feed the hungry, to visit the imprisoned, to shelter the homeless.
So we're very much coming out of that Catholic radical tradition of being of service to our neighbor, which is very much inspired by our own faith commitment, and how we understand how God is calling us, and how God is laboring in the world.
So I would also just add that my understanding about Jesus is that he was an individual who was poor, who was tortured and crucified by the Roman Empire.
I think as a contemporary Christian, I see it as my duty to respond to crucifixions of our time, to both the events themselves, as well as the systems that allow such crucifixions to happen.
Well, that's interesting.
I guess I don't want to get too far into theology or whatever, but would you guys chalk this up to the basic difference in doctrine between whether you just need to believe in Jesus to have grace and be saved and live forever, or whether you have to actually live your life performing good works to the best of your ability, which is sort of a whole different doctrine here?
Or is that kind of an ignorant, non-Christian understanding expressed there?
Which is very possible, I admit.
I think there's been some congruence in Catholic and Protestant understanding of faith and works and how these interrelate.
I think all of us would see whatever good works we do, or however we're motivated by our faith, as a gift from God, something that we can't really do on our own, but as a result of grace in our lives.
So in a certain way, faith is very much central, and just simply putting our lives in God's hands is very central, but at the same time, faith needs to have consequences in our lives.
And that's what's really important to us, and that's what motivates us.
So I would say that the duty that we experience to love our enemies and to reach out to our neighbors who are in need is a result of our faith in God.
So I think there's kind of a synthesis that exists in the Catholic and the Protestant imagination right now.
Well, that's good to hear.
I guess, you know, when you hear about high numbers of Christians, or higher numbers of church-going people who believe in and support torture compared to the others, what do you chalk that up to?
Is it just, you know, we're in the in-group, and so whatever happens to the out-group doesn't matter there?
Well, I think, which is often the case, which is disappointing, is that many Americans feel more allegiance to their country and more allegiance to whichever political party they belong to than they do to God, the ultimate authority, or moral principles that should be guiding our lives and guiding our politics.
So I think sometimes there's kind of a disordered arrangement of priorities, and people are sometimes more likely to support their country before very critically reflecting on what are the consequences of our foreign policy, how is this affecting people's lives, and how are we called to respond as people of faith, and to really put that first in our lives.
All right, now let me ask you guys to just talk about the organization, Witness Against Torture.
So Luke said a little bit about the origins of Witness, and if people go to the website www.witnesstorture.org, they'll be able to see a catalog of all of the actions and advocacy that we've done on behalf of those detained at Guantanamo.
We've done several different actions.
Our actions include advocacy, also civil disobedience, and what we try to do is we try to bring attention to the American public, bring their attention to the fact that we are all involved and all responsible and can all do something about the men that still stay in Guantanamo.
And how long has Witness Against Torture been around, and what all have y'all been involved in before this?
Witness Against Torture, like I said earlier, started in 2005, when a group of people, mostly on the East Coast in Washington, D.C., New York, people of faith gathered together and asked themselves the question, how are we called to respond to the suffering that's been caused by our response to terrorism?
And like Jeremy said before, because of our commitment to Jesus who was tortured, unjustly tried and executed, Witness Against Torture felt inspired to devote their attention to the men who are at Guantanamo, and then in more recent years, we've focused more and more on the 700 to 800 men who are at Bagram Air Base with even fewer legal protections and much less publicity than the men who are at Guantanamo.
So we started in 2005, and even though we were focused primarily on the men at Guantanamo early on, we've certainly extended our focus to those at Bagram, those who have been detained at CIA secret detention centers, and even after President Obama was elected, we knew that Guantanamo would not be closed easily, or with the use of his pen in signing the executive order, so we had a 100-day presence in front of the White House during the first 100 days of Obama's presidency to keep the pressure on him, to remind him that Guantanamo isn't closed until every single man leaves the facility, is given a fair trial in accord with due process, or is released immediately.
So even under the Obama presidency, there's been very little progress on closing Guantanamo, which has really left us with a lot of work to do, and to really maintain our commitment to these men who have been unjustly imprisoned in places like Guantanamo.
Well, thank you both very much for your work and all your efforts on this.
It's Jeremy Kirk and Luke Hanson from Witness Against Torture, that's witnesstorture.org.
Thank you.
