Campaign against torture - Latin America and 9/11

As coordinator of the Education for Justice office at the University of Scranton, I invited Rev. Ron Stief, the Executive Director of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT), to campus to speak to our students about his organization's work, specifically as it relates to the recently released Committee Study of the Central Intelligence Agency's Detention and Interrogation Program produced by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

As is well-known (?), the US set up a global detention and torture program following the 9/11 attacks on our soil. Many CIA and political officials who had suffered reputational costs, and even their jobs, following Iran-Contra and "revelations" at the end of the Cold War were brought back into the fold to carry out this new program to keep Americans safe (think the CIA's Jose Rodriguez and the State Department's John Negroponte).

The Senate Select Committee carried out a limited truth commission to get to the bottom of the interrogation detention program. However, it was interesting to listen to the trade-offs involved in their work in light of the class I am teaching right now on Human Rights in Latin America. The final product concluded with a report that did not name names, focused only on the CIA, and did not put prosecutions on the table. We would have to settle for limited truth - no accountability, prosecutions, reparations, no intellectual authors.

There was push-back from the Executive Branch and the CIA against those in Congress who dared to threaten the dominant narrative that they did what was necessary to keep our country safe from those who would do us harm. They could rest comfortably knowing that the current administration has no interest in prosecuting those who broke US and international law.

But that was the same in Latin America. Only the generals in Argentina were targets of prosecution in the immediate aftermath of the transition from military to civilian rule. However, twenty and thirty years after the separation of the military from governance, prosecutions against military and/or civilians tied to crimes against humanity, war crimes, or genocide, have occurred in Chile, Uruguay, Peru, and Guatemala. It might take awhile, but amnesties do not last forever.

At the same time that the Bush administration brought back people who had broken the law in the 1980s to once again do so in the 2000s, many religious organizations that had formed or cut their teeth during the conflict over Central America of the 1980s re-mobilized to hold our government accountable for illegal acts of the last decade-plus. Ron Stief is the executive director of NRCAT, an interfaith organization of more than 325 religious organizations committed to ending U.S.-sponsored torture.

Like the Madres, Abuelas, and HIJOS of Argentina, CALDH in Guatemala, and SERPAJ, NRCAT will continue to struggle to pressure our elected officials to uncover the truth and hold accountable those who have broken the law.