[Ppnews] Sundiata Acoli: Statement to the Human Rights Conference on Torture

Fri Apr 29 13:20:03 EDT 2005

Statement to the Human Rights Conference on Torture
Other statements are available at www.attica2abughraib.com

by Sundiata Acoli

Greetings, IHRI (International Human Rights Initiative) conference!
[]

Sundiata Acoli

First I want to congratulate the keynote speaker, the Honorable 
Congresswoman Sister Cynthia McKinney, on her triumphant return to 
Congress. But more so I want to personally thank her as being the only 
Congressional official who had courage or concern enough to make a 
determined effort toward my release when I was rounded up on Sept. 11, 
2001, and held incommunicado from my family, my attorneys and the entire 
outside world.

Meanwhile, prison officials torturously interrogated me, looking for any 
connection on my part to the destruction of the World Trade Center or the 
later spread of anthrax through the postal system. They openly threatened 
to hold me in total isolation for the rest of my life, and their implied 
threat was to seek the death penalty.

So torture is nothing new to U.S. Political Prisoners and POWs, nor to 
everyday people of color and others oppressed in the ghettoes, barrios, 
reservations, towns and cities throughout Amerika. They don't call the 
Bronx's 44th Precinct "Fort Apache" for nothing or because they serve "tea 
and cookies" there. They call it "Fort Apache" because they whip heads 
there, bust lips, knock out teeth, blacken eyes, break ribs and even rape 
and kill there ... and it goes on to one degree or another in every police 
station across the country, big or small.

Abu Ghraib is not an aberration. Most U.S. prisoners instantly recognized 
Amerika's fingerprints all over Ghraib; they match its prints in U.S. 
police stations, jails and prisons. The Ghraib perversions trace a straight 
line back home to White amerika's psychotic obsession with the genitals of 
Blacks it lynched. The same perverted grins seen at Ghraib can be found in 
the faces and photos of White lynch mobs in the U.S. swarmed around Black 
bodies hung from trees.

It's a perversion born in this country's racial-sexual degradation of its 
Black slaves and others of color since its beginning, and the lies told 
since then to cover it up. That same "cover-up" mindset also keeps most of 
the Amerikan press silent about the many Iraqi women and children, young 
boys and girls, who were also raped, and probably still are being raped, at 
Abu Ghraib. Photographic proof exists and the San Francisco Bay View 
newspaper has it. For those adults who have legitimate need for such proof, 
the photos are available upon email request for them at editor at sfbayview.com.

Now for some of my personal experiences with torture:

In 1969, New York cops kicked in my door for two other Panthers, Sekou 
Odinga and Kuwasi Balagoon, and without saying a word beat and stomped me 
unmercifully. Then they took me to the 32nd Precinct, Harlem, and threw me 
in the holding tank with Joan Bird, another Harlem Panther, whose lip was 
so busted and swollen, and eyes so blackened and swollen shut that I barely 
recognized her. She said that at one point during her beating they hung her 
out of the third floor window by the ankles, made sexual taunts and 
threatened to drop her if she didn't tell the whereabouts of Sekou and 
Kuwasi. They didn't find them, and after holding us in jail for a month 
they released us.

In 1970 during the New York Panther 21 trial, we defendants were assaulted 
numerous times while cuffed by Riker's Island jail guards who transported 
us back and forth to court each day.

In 1973, after my arrest in the New Jersey Turnpike case, I was held in 
strict isolation at Middlesex County Jail, N.J. Because of my placement 
there, and even though I was allowed no visitors except my lawyer, the jail 
implemented harsh visiting rules on all visitors, which caused the 
prisoners to protest by refusing to lock in their cells.

New Jersey state troopers came in with shotguns, shot prisoners in the face 
and torso with bean-bags that broke noses, blackened eyes and bruised ribs, 
shot teargas that choked, blinded and burned, and drove prisoners back into 
their cells. I was already under 24/7 lockdown so they simply shot teargas 
into my cell, turned the water off and heat on, in mid-summer, which left 
me and similar prisoners to wallow in pain from the sweat-reactivated tear 
gas, which we had no means to wash off.

In 1976 at Trenton State Prison (TSP), NJ, I and other Management Control 
Unit (MCU) prisoners were subjected to two hours of gunfire by Jersey state 
troopers raking the Unit back and forth, trying to shoot into our cells. 
John Andaliwa Clark was killed by a double-ought shotgun blast to the 
chest, and another prisoner, "Gunner," who came out with his hands in the 
air, was shot by an M-14 rifle that was aimed at his head but tore through 
his elbow instead. I and numerous other MCU prisoners were hit by shrapnel 
from bullets that ricocheted off the bars into our cells.

In 1977, MCU guards suddenly began demands to probe the anus of random MCU 
prisoners during their normal strip-search of us each time we were taken 
out or returned to our cells. And of course, we refused to submit willingly 
to such a degrading and asinine demand. All who resisted were jumped by the 
guards, beaten, wrestled to the floor and anus probed, then charged with 
assault on the guards, which carried an additional seven-year sentence upon 
conviction.

To avoid further anus probes, for the next seven months we refused all 
family visits, attorney visits, doctor, dental visits or anything else that 
required us to leave our cells. Prison officials then instituted a policy 
of "random" mandatory cell-changes so that they could continue to subject 
selected prisoners to "random" beatings, abuse and forced anal probes under 
the guise of changing our cells. The situation became so volatile and our 
families, attorneys and friends were so alarmed that a federal judge 
stepped in, forbade the prison to continue anal probes, declared that a 
metal detector was just as effective as a search tool and that it be used 
instead of the anal probe and then summarily dismissed all assault charges 
that had been filed against us MCU prisoners.

In 1983, at USP Marion, Ill., a federal penitentiary, guards locked down 
the prison and went on a six-month rampage, roaming the prison and beating 
prisoners at will and randomly subjecting some to forced anal probes. 
During that period I was sent to "the hole" whose floor and walls were 
covered with feces thrown by prisoners who had been beaten and anal probed. 
It was mid-summer, the heat was intense, the smell incredible, the windows 
were closed and I was confined 60 days there without fresh air or relief.

Later in the summer of '83 I was taken by bus in chains to testify at Sekou 
Odinga's trial in New York where he and other comrades were charged with 
robbery of a Brinks armored truck and with liberating Assata Shakur from 
prison. After I dressed out for the bus ride, the guard put a black box 
over my handcuffs, which is supposedly for high security prisoners.

Any prisoner who's ever worn it will tell you that after a half-hour the 
box gnaws into your wrists and sets them on fire with pain. I had to endure 
the three-day bus ride with the black-box gnawing into my wrists all day, 
plus no smoking was permitted on the bus nor at any of its stopovers along 
the way, which in itself was also torture to me with a then 30-year 
cigarette habit.

At MCC-NY, the City's federal jail, they put me in isolation wearing only a 
T-shirt, pants and shower shoes, then turned the air conditioner to near 
freezing level so that I had no choice but to do push-ups day and night to 
keep warm. After three days of freezing and going without cigarettes, I 
testified in Sekou's defense and was immediately put back on the bus, 
cuffed in the black-box, for another agonizing three-day trip back to 
Marion, Ill.

In 1988 at USP Leavenworth, Ks., as happened on several occasions during my 
sojourn in prison, I was caught up as an innocent bystander during a major 
prison disturbance. In such situations bystanders and participants alike 
suffer the same abuse by the intervening guards.

This time it happened in the yard when a gang war broke out between the 
Texas Syndicate and the EMEs, two Mexican street organizations. In the 
ensuing melee, Rene, leader of the Syndicate, was stabbed to death, and 
both groups sustained numerous stab wounds. Tower gunfire stopped the 
carnage as guards moved in to teargas and handcuff everyone, including me 
and other bystanders, facedown on the blistering summer asphalt, then 
lifted us by the cuffs and threw us in the dilapidated and condemned 
"Building 63" without food or water until the whole thing was sorted out 
days later.

And last, in 2001, Sept. 11, at USP Allenwood, Pa., I was rounded up, held 
incommunicado and tortured four months with interrogations about the WTC 
and the spread of anthrax before being released back into prison population 
due to the efforts of Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, my attorneys and many 
other concerned people.

The "Attica to Abu Ghraib Conference: Human Rights, Torture and 
Resistance," presented by the International Human Rights Initiative (IHRI), 
was held Saturday, April 23, at UC Berkeley in Barrows Hall. Learn more 
about brilliant mathematician and heroic revolutionary Sundiata Acoli at 
http://www.afrikan.net/sundiata and http://www.assatashakur.org and write 
to him at: Sundiata Acoli, 39794-066, P.O. Box 3000, USP Allenwood, White 
Deer, PA 17887.

The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org 
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