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As the discernable reader may recognize, "may", "help us" are there
only to help it rhyme. I assure you we none of us will land in a habeas
corpus situation from chattering about it here.
First, let's get definitions out of the way. Habeas corpus is Latin for
"you have the body", or the man for the court to see. Known as the "Great
Writ", it requires a person detained by the authorities be brought before
a court of law so that the legality of the detention may be examined.
It does not determine guilt or innocence, but can be demanded by anyone
who believes they are unlawfully detained. Or any judge who wants to
determine whether a person is legally imprisoned.
If the charge against that person is considered to be valid, they must
submit to trial. If not, the person must be set free.
The Habeas Corpus Act was first passed by the British Parliament in
1679. It began as a weapon for the King, to ensure that the King's enemies
be brought to the court in person. Ironically, as the political
consciousness of the public increased, it became protection for the
individual against the state. In legal terms, it is the most fundamental
of human rights.
Habeas corpus writs are rarely used these days, which serves as a
testament to social progress throughout the world, and which makes what's
happening at Guantanamo Bay (a US naval base in Cuba) all the more
scandalous. Most of the prisoners held there were captured during US
anti-terrorism campaigns waged after 911 in Afghanistan, Iraq and
elsewhere. They are being held without charges, much less a chance of a
fair trial.
Yesterday, China issued the Human Rights Record of the United States in
2005, exposing widespread human rights abuses in the United States. This
report is made tit for tat in response to the Country Reports on Human
Rights Practices for 2005 by US State Department released a day earlier,
in which China, among other countries, is accused of the same abuses.
When two government propaganda machines orchestrate mudslinging like
that, truth is often the first casualty. But one thing is for sure,
neither China nor the United States is perfect in this regard and yet,
neither prefers to look at itself in the mirror. I'm sure you can find
your own evidence and so spare me the unpleasant job of going into all the
details, and often horrible details at that.
Five days earlier on March 5, the Reuters reported:
"The leader of
the world's Anglicans (people who follow the religious traditions
developed by the established Church of England) branded the US prison camp
at Guantanamo Bay an 'extraordinary legal anomaly' on Sunday and said it
set a dangerous precedent for dictators around the world.
"I think what we've got in Guantanamo is an extraordinary legal anomaly
... creating a new category of custody," Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan
Williams said in an interview with BBC television in Sudan during a visit
there with the United Nations World Food Program.
"These are people who don't have the sort of legal access we would
probably assume to be important," he said, referring to the nearly 500
foreigners held at the naval base in Cuba.
"Any message given that any state can just override some of the basic
habeas corpus-type provisions is going to be very welcome to tyrants
elsewhere in the world, now and in the future," Williams said.
"What, in 10 years time, are people going to be able to say about a
system that tolerates this?"
Very well said. I'm particularly fond of the fact that the Archbishop
uttered what's been done at the Bay with tyrants in the same breath,
because you see, as powers that be, all administrations tend to be alike -
dictator-like, that is.
In case I should be accused of bias one way or the other, let me make a
sweeping statement again: People with power tend to abuse that power,
anywhere, any time - be that power physical, political, or spiritual in
nature.
Even the Church has been capable of it - look at what happened to
Giodano Bruno (1548-1600) in the Dark Ages of Europe. At least Bruno gets
a trial, such as it is, by the Inquisition. He was burned at the stake for
heresy. In today's language, he paid his life for thinking science.
It's just human nature to accumulate power and (ab)use it. Hence the
constant call for balances and checks.
In China, one need look no further than the death of Sun Zhigang in
2003 to get the picture. Sun was detained for not having an ID card with
him and subsequently beaten to death while in cell, for no more serious an
offense than perhaps showing an attitude and being uncooperative with
authorities. He was perhaps ordered to be beaten just to be taught a
lesson. Perhaps no one thought he'd die from the beatings - he turned out
to be uncooperative to the very end.
I said perhaps, because the poor fellow never was charged with any
wrongdoing before he was dead and gone. His death triggered such an outcry
nationwide that the whole system governing people who are called
"wandering transients" is being revamped. Detention centers are being
abolished altogether in some cities.
Where habeas corpus is concerned, the Guantanamo scandal is more
atrocious, considering the moral high ground the United States always
claims to stand on, a position that has enabled it to invade countries and
bomb others with little regard for the loss of civilian lives.
Had lawyers from America and elsewhere not intervened, and the media
not made Guantanamo such a public relations black eye for the White House,
those prisoners might be jailed till they ceased to be, not to mention the
physical and mental torture they still had to go through while their days
were, literally, numbered.
Bush Administration lawyers have been continuing in its effort to make
enemy combatants into legal non-persons, so that perpetrators of torture
and even killings can have legal impunity.
Fortunately it does not escape other lawyers that this is a fundamental
violation of what Thomas Jefferson said in the Declaration of
Independence, that "all men are created equal, that they are endowed… with
certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the
pursuit of Happiness." In other words, men have life and liberty as rights
not revocable by the state.
These lawyers have put their shoulders to the wheel. Hopefully they'll
come up with something new so that courts of justice can be of help to
those at Gitmo.
Before the court can help them, many of them will still be described as
political prisoners who have been in the wrong place at the wrong time
(when they were captured). That's the only valid description acceptable
before the legal status is reinstated and who-has-done-what is determined.
Habeas corpus. Let the court help them.
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