Good afternoon readers,
My ASTU class has taken a short break from reading novels and has begun analyzing poetry. Up to this point we have gone over various poems all related to traumatic events, such as the tragedy of 9/11. About a week ago the class passed around a collection of 22 poems called Poems From Guantanamo, which I found to be quite interesting as they provide an eye-opening account of the emotional state of the detainees. Poems have the ability to encapsulate a feeling that other traditional literature is often unable to do. It’s not only the poetic nature of this collection that I find captivating, but also the rarity as it is some of the only information to come out of Guantanamo.
As the the book circulated the class I was only able to quickly flip through the pages and read one introduction and a small biography of an author. Near the end of the biography the author describes a situation where US soldiers tell him that if he can convince them that he is not associated with Muslim extremists he will be let go, but until then he is to be held captive and tortured. His reply was something along the lines of “Why do I have to convince you? Doesn’t the code of the United States legal system state that you are innocent until proven guilty?”. The weight of truth that his words bear cannot be turned away from, regardless of whether or not he deserves to be detained. How can we justify the mistreatment of others on the basis of citizenship? Putting the horrendous torture techniques aside, the United States had no right to imprison many of the people there. They seize people of abstract connection to crimes without any real evidence and this poem help shed light on this, as well as attach a name and emotion to the the people of Guantanamo. Although the poems give a more intimate glance into the prisoners and help to humanize them, they are still extremely limited. They are both poorly translated and censored by United States military personnel, which means that they are far from an exclusive look inside the camp.
This issue of censorship triggered me to think more broadly of about the United States’ actions and those of other nations. So much of what governments do is privatized and their information remains withheld. This train of thought causes me to further question what the role of the government should really be and whether people have the right to know exactly what their nations are doing. In my Geography course, we learned about the Edward Snowden incident and how he is currently protected and in asylum in Russia. For those of you that don’t know, he was the one that leaked to the public regarding the United States government, and how they are tracking and monitoring what people do to an alarming degree has rendered him an enemy of the United States. Despite the truth that his action did break the law, most people praise what he has done, in my eyes that makes his actions warranted. The government is supposed to be representative of its people and so are its laws? I acknowledge that just because a lot of people approve of something doesn’t make it right, however to some degree this must be true. Bringing it back to the topic of Guantanamo bay, despite the harshness of the reality is it not better that we know what’s going on instead of living in ignorance? Is it our responsibility as global citizens to pressure governments into being open?
Works Cited
Falkoff, Marc. Poems from Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak. Iowa City: U of Iowa, 2007. Print.