Manning, Assange and the Use of Solitary Confinement
TRANSCEND MEMBERS, 15 Apr 2019
Dr. Emanuel E. Garcia – TRANSCEND Media Service
9 Apr 2019 – Chelsea Manning is, I understand, in solitary confinement, after her recent refusal to testify to a grand jury. Julian Assange has for years been holed up in the Ecuadoran embassy in London and for the past year has been prevented access to the internet and nearly all visitations, in what amounts to ‘near total isolation‘.
I will not address what I believe to be the horrifically gross injustices of incarceration here, but will instead direct my focus on that extra twist of the knife. It is not enough to have deprived these two individuals of their liberties. No: the all-powerful State must also inflict a torture upon them while they are incarcerated. To say that insult has piled onto injury would itself be insulting because it is far more: it is heinous, despicable, cruel and totally unwarranted.
I was about to describe them as heroic, but heroism is not the point either: it is estimated that eighty to a hundred thousand prisoners are held in solitary confinement in the United States.
When indeed is solitary confinement ever warranted? Almost never. Is there, or has there ever been, any individual who is so dangerous as to warrant further and ongoing confinement in a prison that has already stripped away from him or her clothing, implements and anything approaching the functionality of an actual weapon? Yes, but very rarely, very exceptionally. Depriving a person of the society of others – if desirable to them – is second only to capital punishment.
In psychiatric hospitals there are rooms used for secluding patients who are in the throes of an agitation so severe that they may indeed present a danger to staff and/or themselves. As a psychiatrist I saw first-hand that seclusion was unnecessary in all but a very small minority of instances, and then only for a very brief period of time. In fact, I know that it is possible to eliminate seclusion altogether, through a combination of skilled nursing and medical staff, deft clinical treatment and appropriately constructed facilities.
Chelsea Manning courageously exposed war crimes. Julian Assange published her findings and many others that reveal the fetid and rank underbelly of Power and its lawless disregard for truth or human life. Their imprisonment is criminal, but their unnecessary isolation in their respective prisons is sadistic, cruel and deplorable. It is a peculiarly atrocious form of torture. In a truly civilised society, this should be wholly unacceptable.
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Dr. Emanuel E. Garcia is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment, an American poet, novelist and physician who now resides in New Zealand. He may be contacted at emanuelegarcia@gmail.com.
Tags: Activism, Assange, Big Brother, Democracy, Journalism, Media, Military, NATO, Nonviolence, Surveillance, UK, USA, Violence, War, Whistleblowing, WikiLeaks
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 15 Apr 2019.
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This small essay was written just before the deplorable expulsion of Assange from the Ecuadoran embassy into the hands of the British state.
It’s getting harder to breathe “in here”. Dr. Garcia’s intelligence, expressed with clarity and coherence, is deeply appreciated by this one. The last sentence caught the mind. I would send it back to re-write with one word changed: “In a truly civilised society, this would be wholly unacceptable.” However, as John Trudell observed in the 2005 documentary, “Trudell” speaking about “modern” society,
The great lie is that it is civilization. It’s not civilized. It’s been the most, it’s been, it has been literally the most bloodthirsty, brutalizing system ever imposed upon this planet. That is not civilization. That’s the great lie, is that it represents civilization. That’s the great lie. Or if it does represent civilization and that’s truly what civilization is then the great lie is that civilization is good for us.
https://youtu.be/Du0jKPFYXxM?t=269