FREEDOM FROM TERROR

I bear testimony regularly to the reality of a loving father in heaven and his son Jesus Christ, but the story in Saturday’s New Zealand Herald about the hunger strike taking place in Guantanamo, has made me question how much I know about that reality.

Guantanamo is the infamous detention centre run by the USA where terrorists are held.  Five years after Obama said he'd shut it, over 100 prisoners are still chained inside, and when Herald reporter, David Jones, visited last month he was horrified by what he found there.

Mr Jones first visited Gitmo (as it is nicknamed) in November 2002 when “memories of the Twin Towers atrocity were still raw.”  Today he writes, “Few doubted Bush [in 2002] when he told us that the men who were flown there had been caught in the act of waging war on America and its allies, and that among them were the worst of the worst.  More than a decade on, we know the truth to be very different.”

“Only a handful of the 779 detainees who have passed through Gitmo have been put before the dubious, perpetually delayed military commissions staged in Camp Justice, the hill-top courthouse.  They include Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his cohorts in the so-called 9/11 Five who, it seems certain, plotted the World Trade Centre attack.”

“These rock stars of Gitmo, as one young serviceman ill-advisedly described them, are held in Camp 7, an unreachable, unmapped secret prison on the naval base, which officially doesn't exist.  As for the others, nine have died (seven by suicide, two of natural causes) and almost 600 more have been freed without charge to return to their own countries or others that have agreed to take them off America’s hands.”

Today 100 men are dying inside Gitmo as a result of a hunger strike that began on February 6^th. 

What is happening in Guantanamo is an utter disgrace, and as a Christian I oppose the USA and its allies continuing their criminal War on Terrorism. Our leaders have averted their own eyes and done their best to stop our eyes from seeing the unfolding tragedy, but they have failed.

Now that media such as the Herald have obtained first-hand reports of it, we can see how hopelessly stained with innocent blood our own hands, hearts and souls are. Will we hear the warning words of the prophet Ezekiel to ancient Israel over its idolatry and militancy and tremble for that of our own?

February 6^th has always meant Waitangi Day for me, but from now on it will also be a symbol of the reign of blood and horror perpetrated in the name of ‘freedom from terror’ upon these men who still feel to pray to the God of their understanding.  They know more about the reality of God than I may ever.