Sherrill Hogen

I guess I’d do about anything to stop torture. That’s why I fasted for nine days this month, in Washington, D.C. with a group called Witness Against Torture. Last year we got arrested together at the U.S. Supreme Court, but in honor of receiving a new President, we did not try to disrupt business as usual this year. We put on the prison garb of the detainees held without due process at the isolated prison called Guantanamo – an orange jumpsuit and black hood-- and walked silently through the streets of the city and stood in somber vigil. We stood at Dupont Circle, at the White House, in the huge Mall during the inauguration, outside the Senate during the hearings on Attorney General-designate Eric Holder, at Obama’s hotel, at his Transition Team headquarters, and at the Key Bridge as rush hour traffic streamed from Virginia into D.C..

Without our hoods we also went into Union Station with a group of inner city kids who formed a "peace train" to go meet Obama’s incoming train. And without the hoods we entered the Senate Judiciary hearings on Holder to be a bright orange reminder to the formalities under crystal chandeliers that they were dealing with life and death issues. In those surroundings it is very hard to keep in mind that men at Guantanamo have been tortured and, in effect, still are. Thirty-five of them are being force-fed to keep them alive and prevent them from a successful hunger strike.

When we weren’t standing, we were walking, single file, on mile after mile of sidewalks, while a few of our group dressed in street clothes handed out orange cards describing our action. People took them. People were interested. We encountered Barak’s motorcade three times, and he saw us. We will maintain a presence in front of the White House for his first 100 days. He will see us. We will help him to keep his promise to shut down Guantanamo and end torture there, as well in the U.S. secret prisons around the world where 20,000 men are held.

Who are these men? They are Muslim and they are Arab. Of the original 779 men at Guantanamo, 250 remain. Maybe some are terrorists. They should be tried in a U.S. Federal court. But all of the released men, never guilty of anything, have been sent home or elsewhere after years of hell without an apology, without compensation.

As I walked underneath the black hood, able to see just enough to stay in line and navigate the curbs, I thought about one Guantanamo detainee whose name I have carried for the last three years. He is one of the Uighurs, a Chinese Muslim picked up in Afghanistan in 2003, probably by a bounty-hunter. I can’t track him to know if he is one of the six Uighurs sent to Albania last year because no other country would accept our rejects. Or if he is one of the 17 that a Federal judge ordered released into his courtroom last August because of their confirmed innocence, only to have their release be blocked by Bush’s Homeland Security. He’ll never know that I hold him in my heart while he is cut off from his family, maybe tortured, deprived of friends and comfort.

I think of the men on hunger strike being strapped down and fed through a tube that is forced up their nose and into their stomach without anesthetic, then pulled out and used on the next man without sterilization. My ongoing hunger is nothing compared to this. I think how these men have only their bodies as tools of protest, while I can write and speak and organize. When my shoulders ache from holding my hands behind my back as if shackled, I remember that I have a choice to move my arms, while some detainees are tied into unnatural positions and left for hours without relief from pain or even a full bladder. When my feet are cold, I can’t compare my discomfort with the torture of being subjected to extreme cold with barely a t-shirt on. When I feel like the standing has become endless and I want to take a break, I think of endurance. Detainees endure torture and, maybe worse, confinement with no end in sight. The ones still left at Guantanamo are kept in solitary in steel boxes with no natural light, and they don’t know if they will EVER get out. I continue to stand.

Our group of 25 fasters staying at the Japanese Buddhist Temple meets every morning at 7:00 a.m. to share thoughts and feelings. This is how we nourish each other. I drink it in. I expand. We become a community. Questions arise. Answers arise. Our hearts are open to each other, to the men we are trying to bring to justice, and to God. "Where are we rooted?" asks Anna. How do we stay rooted when Gaza is on fire, when occupation grips Iraq, when the women of the Congo are raped as a weapon of war, when the children of Darfur starve, when peasants are forced off their ancestral lands all over the world? "Maybe," she says, "by focusing on the Resurrection; by learning to be The Good News."

As I walked, I also thought about God. I would start talking to God and get distracted by my own thoughts. I tried to connect with Spirit and with why I was walking, vigiling, fasting. During the morning reflections, I heard many profound thoughts, some of which I jotted down and took with me under the hood. "The Spirit needs the fast more than the body needs the food." "Fasting starves the ego more than the body." I’m not sure how that works, but I didn’t feel a need for food; I felt a need for justice and an end to human brutality. "The doing is in our hands; the results are in God’s hands."

At another moment, more wisdom from Anna: "Feeding people is so obvious, but we don’t do it. We insist on not giving people food."

I begin to take in the dichotomy between War and Creativity. Destruction and Creation. And to realize that harming any part of Creation, including myself, harms the whole. I begin to understand the people who look the other way in order not to see Harm. "Being unaware is a defensive reaction." Yes, if you want to defend your way of life, you may need not to notice what is happening to the Other. To be aware is to accept discomfort, which is what our fasting symbolizes. One of the many Catholic Workers in the group offers this: "To sacrifice is sacred." Not to glorify what we are doing or to make right the horrors we are witness to, but to hold to the worth of the struggle for peace and justice and to continue challenging Fear and Violence.

During our ten days together there were many inspirations and many discouragements. I’ll start with the discouragements because they are part of what we are trying to change

.

# President-elect Obama backtracking on his promise to close Guantanamo, maybe even on his first day in office, then maybe in the first 100 days, then saying, "Iwould consider it a failure if I didn’t close it in my first term." That’s four more years. The human rights community, including the Center for Constitutional Rights says it can be closed in the first 100 days, and we hope by our presence to hold him to that.

#Gaza. Miguel D’Escoto, President of the General Assembly, called Israel’s attacks genocide, and I agree with him. The murder of Mohammed Shurrab’s two sons last Friday as they drove home during one of the brief cease-fires called by Israel is just one such incident that we happen to know about because another of Shurrab’s sons is here in the U.S.. Magnify this cold-blooded act by 1,000, and you may understand what is happening in Gaza. And, while Gaza burns, similar atrocities occur daily in the West Bank, like the January 18 killing of a 35 year old farmer who was walking on his land near Hebron when soldiers stopped him, separated him from his 6 year old son, put him in restraints, tossed him into an army jeep, took him away and shot him. The Red Cross was called to come get his body. I fear that Israel is digging its own grave and will deprive Jews of the safe haven that they pray for and deserve.

#Since 2001 our government deported 14,000 Muslims under the National Security Entry and Exit Registration program that targeted 25 countries, all of them Muslim except North Korea. The deportees had not been charged with anything.

#In 2008 2.3 million home forclosures were started and 850,000 homes were repossessed, an 81% increase over 2007 and going up again this year.

Inspirations, on the other hand, included two powerful, beautiful people whom we had the chance to interact with. One is Huong, a petite and vivacious Vietnamese woman who survived the War in her country and now paints for peace. She paints in oils and vibrant colors on all sizes of panels depicting the horrors of war and torture, the war criminals like Rumsfeld, and images of beauty, doves of peace, people at peace. We saw her huge collection at a gallery in Georgetown. From the size of it, I think she hardly sleeps.

The other person is Hector Aristizabal. As an actor and theater director he presented his one man play based on his personal story as a torture survivor from Colombia. It was moving beyond words, as Hector is a talented actor with tremendous energy. The experience of torture and later of losing his brother who died under torture by the Colombian army has not curbed his spirit, and he insists that we join him in play and laughter, dancing and creating visions of human harmony. Hector travels the country performing and teaching improvisational theater exercises to school kids, prisoners, teachers, etc.. He and Huong are a gift to us all.

I was inspired by fellow faster, Anne Montgomery, an 82 year old nun who sailed on the first rickety ship to go to Gaza last summer to break the Israeli blockade. She is an active member of the Christian Peacemaker Teams and continues to do three month tours of duty with them in the barren hills of southern West Bank, protecting children from settler attacks. Anne is so thin that one would think fasting out of the question.

President-elect Obama reached out to the Muslim community one week before the inauguration and asked if they would organize celebrations too, and more than 40 organizations across the country held substantial parties. As one Muslim speaker at an MLK event said, Muslims campaigned hard for Barak, but could not be seen with him, nor he with them....

There were more activities in these ten days of fasting, vigiling and building momentum for closing the hell-hole that is Guantanamo and ending torture. I have just given some highlights as I lived them, hoping that in recording them, they will help me stay on course, and hoping that you too will do all in your power to end torture and war.