Torture survivors’ stories

As many of you know, I went to the TASSC’s demonstration against Guantanamo yesterday. I was also interviewed by Washington Post reporter Michael Birnbaum who wrote this article today in the Post entitled “Torture Survivors Still Live With Haunting Memories“;

Orlando Tizon, 66, sat on a bench in Lafayette Square yesterday, the sounds of a crowd of people washing over him, but in his mind he was in the early 1980s, a political prisoner back in the Philippines.

He thought soldiers were going to kill him one day on the beach, shooting bullets around him before they drugged and interrogated him.

Tizon came to the United States after the president, Ferdinand Marcos, was ousted in 1986. Since 2000, he has worked for the District-based Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition, a group staffed by survivors. The coalition provides psychological, legal and financial support for torture survivors and runs advocacy programs to protest torture.

Oddly enough, Birnbaum focused his story on past torture and survivors when the whole demonstration was about Guantanamo (as you can see for yourself in the pictures and videos). Even more odd, he didn’t use the story I told him of my own imprisonment and torture in a foreign jail. That may be because I made the comment that I thought the mock Guantanamo cell on the Mall looked like a room at the Holiday Inn compared to my own cell in that tropical paradise where I spent my time. Or, it may be the fact that I was an American held in a foreign prison and not some poor third worlder who used their experience to disparage the US’ policy.

Michael, maybe it wasn’t your fault…maybe your editor rewrote the story…but probably not. The reason citizen journalists have become a force in the the new information dissemination medium is because we provide a contrast to the media’s one-sided reportage.

Category: Media