Injustice takes many kinds. After 20 years in US custody, most of that point spent in Guantánamo, you may say I'm an skilled.
It could shock you to know that I feel America has an excellent justice system. However it's only for People. Within the circumstances of these like me, justice isn't one thing that pursuits the US. I want that individuals understood how Guantánamo is distinct.
In Guantánamo, the torture we're uncovered to isn't remoted to the interrogation rooms; it exists in our each day lives. This intentional psychological torture is what makes Guantánamo completely different. There may be interference in each facet of my existence – my sleep, my meals, my strolling.
For the primary 9 years at Guantánamo, I used to be held in solitary confinement. It was a harsher, extra violent place then. The communal blocks that opened in 2010 made a distinction, however the deliberate psychological torture stays the identical. The principles change always and with out warning. Some guards and a few administrations are extra merciless than others.
Think about you’re watching TV and somebody comes up behind you and begins frivolously kicking you. If it solely occurs for just a little bit, it gained’t be an issue. However say they simply hold kicking you, endlessly, irrespective of how typically you inform them to cease, and there's nothing you are able to do about it. Think about what sort of torture that will be.
The one freedom I've right here is to protest. On combination, I've been on starvation strike for seven years. Seven years, feeling that I'm not useless but in addition not alive. I consider in going through my jailer. They management my physique, however not my coronary heart. They tried to forestall me from studying, however I've anyway.
Portray has been my reduction. I'm happy with my artwork. Maybe you've seen the few items that I've been capable of get out of right here? Once they had been exhibited in New York, I considered the work looking on to the elegant streets and the massive buildings, and of the folks of their good metropolis trying in, and the way they can not presumably think about what our lives are like.
However even this reduction has been taken from me. My captors refuse to let me ship my artwork out of the jail. They've made it more durable to make photocopies of what I paint, so I can’t even present my attorneys. So it turns into a burden. After I paint I really feel a ache in my coronary heart, figuring out that the work I'm doing is rarely going to be seen by anybody else.
When President Obama mentioned he would shut Guantánamo, we had been optimistic and believed him. I hope that President Biden will full that promise. He ought to do all the pieces he can to close the jail – not for us, however for the US.
Different nations used to look as much as the USfor human rights, and so they don’t any extra – any declare by the US to defend human rights rings hole. When Biden criticized Russia, Putin responded “What about GTMO?” Closing it should start to restore the harm to America’s status.
The golden years of my life have been wasted in Guantánamo. If what occurred to me occurred in America, they might give me thousands and thousands of dollars. As a result of I’m in Guantánamo, as a result of I’m Arab, as a result of I’m Yemeni, no one cares.
However I need you to know I'm a hopeful particular person. I don’t know the place I'll go, or what I'll do, however there's one other life for me, exterior this jail.
Yemeni nationwide Khalid Qasim has been detained with out cost or trial at Guantánamo Bay since 2002. His artwork has been exhibited at John Jay Faculty and Cuny in New York
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