cris, your posts alone redeem these situations!
Last night I saw the play about Guantanamo Bay at the Tricycle theatre in
Kilburn, persuaded along there by a lawyer friend because it was a benefit
for Reprieve, the legal organisation that works against the death penalty
http://www.reprieve.org.uk/ Reprieve’s founder is Clive Stafford Smith, who
is portrayed in the play because he also represents some of the British
detainees at Guantanamo. After the show there was a discussion with Stafford
Smith, chaired by Victoria Brittain, one of the play’s compilers. (It is a
montage of quotations, from (British) detainees’ letters, verbatim
interviews with some of them (after release), some of their family members,
and also the brother of a woman killed in the WTC, politicians’ speeches,
statements and press conf responses, and comments from lawyers, both British
liberals and the American military lawyer who will defend in the forthcoming
tribunals to be held at Guantanamo. All very well handled and acted. The
play also draws a connection with the indefinite detention of people,
without charge or appeal or legal support, right here in London, at Belmarsh
prison, something I was ignorant of till very recently.) Stafford Smith
responded to various audience statements, cleverly and forcefully, like the
very smart lawyer he is, and sometimes with jokes. (Brittain had conveyed
tribute to his famed ability to ‘cheer up’ the families, of the detainees,
and indeed of death row convicts (his usual speciality -- Guantanamo
detainees are not on death row -- yet: the execution facility has been built
...). If I understood correctly, to someone from the Cuban embassy keen to
point out that the military base at Guantanamo is an imposition on Cuba, he
proposed a challenge to the American claim that US law doesn't apply outside
the US (which licenses what's happening at Guantanamo) by presenting a
Habeas Corpus case about it *in Cuba*, 'to test Castro's sense of humour'.
(Cuba vigorously exercises the death penalty, among other things.) An
immigration lawyer stood up to make a deeply feeling connection with the
workings of the British Special Immigration Appeals Council
http://www.barder.com/brian/1pointofview/SIACresignation.htm . Stafford
Smith’s response was to propose that one not be too earnest in dealing with
these issues, or more especially, these human beings, who wield power over
others with a Kafkaesque arbitrariness rather than according to such
principles of human rights and legal process that have so far been developed
and promulgated (if not adopted) internationally. What is being authorised,
encouraged, perpetrated, is (the word he used) ‘ludicrous’: that is,
outrageous, but also in a sense laughable. The perpetrators will debate with
you till the cows come home, they actually feed off being taken seriously.
What this caution, seriously to lighten up, might mean and lead to, would
remain to be worked out by any of us as an individual, but it felt like an
exhilarating swerve.
love to all
elizabeth
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