Chicago Faith Leaders Urge a Public Accounting for Torture
Holly Shulman|Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Chicago – More than twenty Chicago faith leaders joined together, calling on Representative Jan Schakowsky to help ensure that Congress not only investigates accountability for Bush-era torture, including new allegations of forced human experimentation on detainees, but also makes the findings public.
More than twenty Chicago faith leaders from diverse faiths join the National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) in asserting that the American people need to know the truth about horrific acts of government-sponsored torture and human experimentation to make sure that is does not and cannot happen again.
“Human experimentation conducted by medical professionals was one of the horrific acts committed by Nazis in the concentration camps”, said Rabbi Peter Knobel, Rabbi Emeritus at Beth Emet The Free Synagogue in Evanston. “The international community condemned such abuses and established prohibitions, such as the Nuremberg Code, to prevent such atrocities from being repeated. Only by knowing the full truth behind these new allegations can we move forward and commit ourselves to ending the use of torture.”
These Chicago-area faith leaders, many of them in Rep. Schakowsky’s district, are asking the congresswoman to continue her anti-torture leadership and use her position as chair of the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation to ensure that Congress thoroughly investigates government-sponsored forced medical experimentation. They sent a letter to Rep. Schakowsky today urging her to ensure that the findings of congressional investigations be made public.
“We need our elected officials to stop sweeping this issue under the rug and instead demand that the findings of the investigation be released to the public. The morality of our nation depends on it,” said Br. Michael Gosch, CSV, of the Arlington Heights-based Provincial Council of the Clerics of St. Viator (Viatorians) and a member of the NRCAT-affiliated Illinois Coalition Against Torture.
This summer, 20 national religious groups joined NRCAT and other human rights organizations in filing a complaint with the Office of Human Research Protections (OHRP) asking for an official investigation of the Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) report indicating that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) engaged in illegal and unethical human subject research and experimentation on detainees after 9/11.
The Chicago faith leaders’ initiative follows a recent decision by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to refer the investigation of the OHRP complaint to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) itself. The allegations that the CIA used forced human experimentation to legally justify and hone its torture techniques raise serious questions of potential additional legal liability for the CIA and Bush-era officials.
“The CIA has already publicly denied these allegations and declined to investigate, so it makes no sense to refer the complaint to them,” said Rev. Richard L. Killmer, Executive Director of NRCAT. “The faith community will continue to ask the government to investigate these newest allegations of forced human experimentation and to create a Commission of Inquiry to investigate all acts of torture committed by the U.S. government since 9/11. Both our national security and the soul of our nation depend on it.”
“We must not avoid issues that are painful for our nation – we must confront them,” said Rev Ann-Louise Haak of Lake Street Church in Evanston. “As people of faith, we must shed light on this terrible chapter of our history. Torture should never happen again.”
The Physicians For Human Rights report last month uncovered evidence that indicates the Bush administration apparently conducted illegal and unethical human experimentation and research on detainees in CIA custody. The apparent experimentation and research appear to have been performed to provide legal cover for torture, as well as to help justify and shape future procedures and policies governing the use of the “enhanced interrogation techniques.” The PHR report, Experiments in Torture: Human Subject Research and Evidence of Experimentation in the 'Enhanced' Interrogation Program, is the first to provide evidence that CIA medical personnel engaged in the crime of illegal experimentation after 9/11, in addition to the previously disclosed crime of torture.
“Our country is trying to work its way out of the dark era when we allowed torture and human rights abuse to be done in our name, but such horror requires hard and tenacious efforts to overcome,” said Dr. Zaher Sahloul, Chairperson of the Council of Islamic Organizations of Greater Chicago and a physician at Advocate Christ Medical Center. “The only true path to healing for all those affected by torture – survivors, perpetrators, those who authorized it and those of us who allowed it to happen in our name – demands full revelation of all that happened.”
