December Issue

Donate

In this Issue

	Making His List: Presidential Pardons and Torture
	Dr. Samantha Stewart Responds to Jon Lee Anderson's article on Zimbabwe
	The Year of Living Nervously: Asylum Seeker From Cameroon Lost His World but Gained a New Home

In Other News

Pass it on

Know anyone who might be interested in our newsletter? Click here to forward this email to up to 5 friends at once.

Making His List: Presidential Pardons and Torture

Tis the season. Santa had his naughty or nice gift list and checked it twice. President Bush is still working on his list-the one granting pardons. And while a Brooklyn developer at the center of a fraud scheme has already been scratched, will those who conceived and implemented this administration's torture policy make the final cut? As a physician who evaluates and cares for torture victims the prospect of such pardons is chilling to say the least. They would be pre-emptive pardons since no one responsible for torturing detainees in U.S. custody with the exception of 'a few bad apples on the night shift at Abu Grhaib' have ever been prosecuted. The pardon may be quite general-covering anyone, including the president himself, who fought the good fight in the war on terror.

Dr. Samantha Stewart Responds to Jon Lee Anderson's article on Zimbabwe

Jon Lee Anderson, in writing about the state of Zimbabwe, captures what colleagues and I witnessed when we travelled to the country in 2007 in order to document mounting preëlection violence (“The Destroyer,” October 27th). We recorded broken bones, bruises, lacerations, sleeplessness, anxiety, and depression. But the effect of witnessing repeated violence, misuse of resources, and human-rights violations doled out by a man who was originally called the country’s liberator and uncle isn’t so easily measured, and can produce a sense of powerlessness and a tendency toward internal division. I was surprised when the South African physicians we spoke to complained, “Why aren’t Zimbabweans taking to the streets, as we did?” It is far more complicated when the perpetrator of violence is not an outsider.

The Year of Living Nervously: Asylum Seeker From Cameroon Lost His World but Gained a New Home

It was July 12, 2006. The previous day, Njoya Hilary Tikumhad left his native Cameroon, a West African nation of 18 million people, carrying only his passport, an American visa, a small wad of money. “Are you running away from something?” he was asked by an immigration officer. “No,” he replied. The answer could not have been further from the truth. Mr. Tikum, entered the United States, hoping to be granted political asylum here. But Mr. Tikum feared that if he revealed the truth, he would be sent directly to an immigration detention center. Eventually, the officials pressed an entry stamp into Mr. Tikum’s passport — he was free to go. What Mr. Tikum did not know at the time, however, was that his quest for asylum would involve a new, nearly two-year ordeal.

On Oct. 1, 1998, Mr. Tikum, then 18, and other students planned a march to observe the 37th anniversary of the independence of Cameroon’s English-speaking provinces from Britain. But before they could parade, the students were surrounded by the military police and arrested. His subsequent political activities led to several arrests, among them a 10-day imprisonment in June 2002. During that time, he claimed, the police hit him with their guns, made him dance on broken glass and dripped hot candle wax on his legs and genitals.

Mr. Tikum’s claims seem generally plausible; the State Department, along with groups like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, report that security forces in Cameroon are known to strip, beat and torture prisoners. Dr. Allen Keller, director of the Bellevue/N.Y.U. Program for Survivors of Torture, where Mr. Tikum subsequently received counseling, said Cameroonian clients reported what he called “some of the most sadistic forms of abuse that I have heard.” Another Bellevue doctor said Mr. Tikum’s scars were consistent with the tortures he described.

Click here for full New York Times article.