On June 13, 2008, PEN issued the following letter to President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice regarding reports that Chinese officials were permitted to interrogate Uighur prisoners at Guantanamo Bay.

June 13, 2008

President George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC  20500
Fax: (202) 456-2461

The Honorable Condoleezza Rice
Secretary of State
US Department of State
2201 C Street, NW
Washington, DC 20520
Fax: (202) 261-8577


Dear President Bush and Secretary Rice,

We are writing on behalf of the 3,300 professional writers who are members of PEN American Center to express our profound shock and disappointment over reports that the United States allowed officials from China, Uzbekistan, Libya, Tajikistan and Tunisia—countries notorious for their brutal treatment of prisoners—to interrogate detainees held at Guantánamo Bay, and that U.S. military personnel participated in possible mistreatment aimed at preparing the detainees for these interrogations.

As you may know, PEN is conducting a campaign to win the release of all Chinese writers imprisoned in violation of their right to freedom of expression before the Olympic Games open on August 8, 2008.  Among those are four Uighurs—Tohti Tunyaz, Nurmuhemmet Yasin, Korash Huseyin, and Abdulghani Memetemin—imprisoned solely for their writings. For more than a decade, human rights organizations have documented how the Chinese government has used anti-terrorism as a pretext to crack down on the peaceful activities of individuals in restive regions such as Xinjiang and Tibet.  Mr. Tunyaz, a historian who was sentenced to 11 years in prison simply for researching Chinese – Uighur relations, is a prime example of this practice.

PEN contacted the State Department in 2002 requesting the administration’s help in pressing for the release of Tohti Tunyaz and all other political prisoners in China. In a reply dated December 11, 2002, former Assistant Secretary of State Lorne W. Craner assured PEN that your administration would do so, and insisted that “the war on terrorism must never be an excuse to persecute minorities.”

It was therefore shocking to learn that even as Mr. Craner was writing these words, the U.S. government was not only allowing Chinese interrogators access to some three dozen Uighur detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, but also that they were seriously mistreated at the behest of China.

According to a report released by the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Justice on May 20, 2008, the FBI observed that “several Uighur detainees were subjected to sleep deprivation or disruption while being interrogated at Camp X-Ray by Chinese officials prior to April 2002.” In a hearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on June 4, Inspector General Glenn A. Fine confirmed that the military had indeed allowed Chinese interrogators access to the Uighur detainees and that sleep deprivation “was used…to put the Uighurs in a position to be interrogated by the Chinese government.” As the Center for Constitutional Rights reports,  U.S. soldiers even helped Chinese interrogators photograph a prisoner during his interrogation, “forcibly restrain[ing] him and [holding] his head so that the Chinese could clearly photograph his face.”

There is credible evidence that interrogators from China, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Tunisia all threatened to torture or kill their nationals and/or their families. Zakirjan Hasam, a former prisoner from Uzbekistan, attempted suicide after his interrogation. Every one of these countries is a well-documented violator of the essential rights of its citizens. In every one of these countries, PEN has been conducting campaigns to free writers jailed in violation of their right to freedom of expression. Many of these writers have been subjected to arbitrary detention and torture.

As we conducted these campaigns, we counted on the fact that our own government maintained a firm commitment to promoting international standards of due process and humane treatment. We now know that the United States was delivering an entirely different message to these rights-abusing governments behind the scenes: that it is acceptable to detain people without charge or trial and subject them to abusive interrogations, that we unapologetically engage in such abuses, and that we are willing not just to ignore, but to aid and abet such conduct by abusive governments, all in the name of fighting terrorism. It is a message that surely drowns out any U.S. diplomatic interventions on behalf of our colleagues unjustly detained and abused by these same governments.

Sincerely,

Francine Prose
President

Larry Siems
Director, Freedom to Write and International Programs