Lessons from history?
Dec. 3rd, 2003 10:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sombrefanFrom The Guardian's special investigation into the Guantanamo prison camp.
"Louise Christian, a British lawyer representing three of the Britons held in Guantanamo, said the US today looked more like Britain in the 1970s than in the 1940s. 'It's the same thing that happened in this country when we had mainland bomb attacks from the IRA, that the tremendous panic and fear just replaced everything else. There was no understanding in this country of how we were viewed outside,' she says. 'We locked people up arbitrarily. We ignored the fact that people were being coerced into making confessions. But I think also the daily experience of internment, seeing your best friends and neighbours locked up without cause, led to great bitterness, and the continuing of the conflict in Northern Ireland, because of feelings of injustice. Obviously there were people who did do terrible things. But if the government response is to criminalise a whole category of people, all we do is increase support for people who are guilty.'"
"Louise Christian, a British lawyer representing three of the Britons held in Guantanamo, said the US today looked more like Britain in the 1970s than in the 1940s. 'It's the same thing that happened in this country when we had mainland bomb attacks from the IRA, that the tremendous panic and fear just replaced everything else. There was no understanding in this country of how we were viewed outside,' she says. 'We locked people up arbitrarily. We ignored the fact that people were being coerced into making confessions. But I think also the daily experience of internment, seeing your best friends and neighbours locked up without cause, led to great bitterness, and the continuing of the conflict in Northern Ireland, because of feelings of injustice. Obviously there were people who did do terrible things. But if the government response is to criminalise a whole category of people, all we do is increase support for people who are guilty.'"
