For a few years, I’ve been requested whether or not I may forgive those that imprisoned, tortured, and dehumanised me. It’s a loaded query; it’s by no means nearly private forgiveness, but additionally an invite to talk on behalf of all Guantanamo Bay prisoners. I normally reply that forgiveness isn’t easy, particularly when justice has but to be served.
I used to be held in Guantanamo for almost 15 years with out cost, subjected to remedy no human being ought to ever endure. I used to be considered one of numerous harmless folks kidnapped in the course of the world marketing campaign of america of revenge and terror after September 11, 2001, which justified the unlawful invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, unleashed and legalised torture programmes in CIA black websites and at Abu Ghraib, and turned Guantanamo right into a laboratory of dehumanisation.
In my cell, I as soon as opened a boxed meal to seek out the phrases “We Will By no means Overlook, We Will By no means Forgive” scrawled on the within of the field. I wrote again: “We Will By no means Overlook, We Will By no means Forgive, We Will Combat For Our Justice.” For this, the camp administration penalised me with “meals punishment” and solitary confinement, claiming that my message was a loss of life menace.
Right this moment, on the twenty fourth anniversary of the September 11 assaults, “By no means Overlook, By no means Forgive” echoes as soon as once more. These phrases are offered as grief and as a want to honour the reminiscence of these misplaced, however additionally they carry darker implications. As somebody straight affected by the aftermath of 9/11, I imagine it’s essential to think about what these phrases actually imply, particularly when they’re used as a rallying cry for revenge, retaliation, retribution, or vengeance, slightly than as a considerate enchantment for justice, accountability, and significant reflection. As soon as once more, the query of revenge and forgiveness circulates in public discourse, but not often do commentators pause to ask what forgiveness actually entails.
In instances similar to CIA black websites, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and the various different atrocities dedicated within the identify of combating “terror”, forgiveness can’t be diminished to a person act. The hurt was inflicted on a worldwide scale, touching tens of thousands and thousands: these tortured, these killed in drone assaults, the households left behind, and whole communities in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and Somalia, to call just some. I stay unwilling to step ahead and say “I forgive”, as a result of forgiveness will not be mine alone to provide. For it to hold weight, it should be supplied collectively, by victims, survivors, and even the useless. And the useless, in fact, can’t forgive.
Regardless of the dimensions of hurt in query, some voices have emerged claiming to forgive the atrocities they endured at Guantanamo. Whereas this may occasionally seem noble, it’s essential to grasp that treating forgiveness as a purely private selection ignores the huge hurt inflicted on tens of thousands and thousands within the so-called struggle on terror. In different phrases, when people prolong forgiveness for private achieve — whether or not for fame, recognition, or revenue — it turns into an act of betrayal.
To these providing such forgiveness, I ask: Who precisely are you forgiving? Torturers who by no means apologised? Governments that deny their crimes? Has anybody even requested in your forgiveness, or are you providing it freely to those that insist they’ve achieved nothing fallacious? Have you considered the households worn out in US drone strikes, erased straight away and forgotten? Have you considered those that by no means left CIA black websites — whose names stay unknown, whose deaths have been by no means recorded, whose our bodies have been by no means returned? When the equipment of violence stays untouched, what does forgiveness imply if to not consolation the responsible and erase the struggling of the victimised?
These questions level to a deeper downside: why is it all the time the wronged who’re requested to forgive? Why should the abused carry the ethical burden of therapeutic a world that continues to brutalise them? Lengthy earlier than any investigation, accountability, and even acknowledgement of hurt takes place, the wronged are urged to maneuver on for the sake of peace and others’ consolation. This sample is obvious within the behaviour of the US, which marches ahead proudly, cloaked within the language of democracy and human rights, whereas the victims of its brutality are advised to attend, to be affected person, and to forgive.
This ethical double customary reveals all the pieces about who’s recognised as human and who will not be. When the US kills, tortures, or disappears folks, such actions are framed as vital, strategic, and even heroic. However when survivors communicate out, demand accountability, or refuse forgiveness, they’re portrayed as bitter, vengeful, and ungrateful. This hypocrisy isn’t any accident; it’s constructed into the very structure of oppression.
We can’t start a dialog about forgiveness earlier than justice or reparations. To debate forgiveness in such a context is nothing greater than an try and whitewash and justify crimes dedicated. Forgiveness will not be a one-sided act, a present from the wronged to the wrongdoer with none expectation of accountability. True forgiveness is inseparable from justice. Insisting on forgiveness earlier than justice will not be a path to therapeutic; it’s a technique to erase the reality. It calls for silence as an alternative of reminiscence, submission as an alternative of resistance. It turns the dialog about forgiveness into one more instrument of management, designed to absolve the responsible and disgrace the survivor.
True forgiveness can’t be granted whereas the techniques of oppression in query stay intact. The US has not formally ended the so-called struggle on terror. Guantanamo stays open, and the equipment of detention, torture, and extrajudicial killing continues in numerous kinds. The federal government has neither taken duty for the hurt it brought about nor acknowledged victims and survivors. There was no significant compensation, no effort to make amends.
How can we communicate of forgiveness when the identical imperial energy that claimed to be defending the harmless after September 11 now permits and companions in genocide, within the killing of tens of hundreds in Gaza? The moral failures that allowed Guantanamo to exist are mirrored right now within the assist for insurance policies that topic Palestinians to hunger and mass slaughter. Forgiveness will not be a blanket absolution for injustices dedicated. Some crimes might by no means be able to incomes forgiveness. Maybe the one principled response to such atrocities is to refuse to forgive and to refuse to overlook. By no means forgive. Always remember.
The views expressed on this article are the writer’s personal and don’t essentially replicate Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
