For those of you who don't know, I'll be cross posting at Donna's for a while until she gets herself settled in to her new home--I hope that I live up to the high standards you have come to know while reading Donna! --bfp
I just surfed over to bbcnews and found this teeny little blurb:
Guantanamo Saudi 'kills himself'
A Saudi Arabian prisoner has died in an apparent suicide at the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, the US military has said.
A statement by the US Southern Command said the inmate was found unresponsive and not breathing by guards, and attempts to revive him failed.
Two Saudis and a Yemeni prisoner were found hanged in an apparent suicide at the camp in June last year.
About 380 prisoners are held at the camp, some for as long as five years.
First off, what's up with the scare quotes around "kills himself"--I ask because the u.s. government has been particularly vehement about repositioning "suicide" as "terrorist actions" (as in, committing suicide is not a sign of depression and as such, an indicator of the horrible evilness that is Guantanamo, but rather a continuation of the terrorist mentality that got the person imprisoned to begin with) and I'm wondering if 'kills himself" will eventually be reworked to reflect the u.s. government strategy.
Second--why does this particular piece of 'breaking news' seem like it's going to die off really quickly? It's not even front page news at BBC--OR front page news in the "Americas" section.
And lastly--I realize that headlines are hard to come by some times--but there is just something patently wrong to me with the man in question being called a "Guantanamo Saudi". as if his nationality has been overwritten to such an extent he's no longer a Saudi, he's a *Guantanamo* Saudi. He's a forced citizen of a new nation/state.
A forced citizen of a new nation/state where the nation/state has the right to control when you can breath, sleep, eat, exercise or look at pictures of your children.
0 comments:
Post a Comment