San José youth demonstrate to oppose torture

Placing a student volunteer on an inclined wooden ramp, his face was smothered with a cloth and water was poured over his nose and mouth every time he refused to answer a mock interrogator's angry question. Three other students held the "enemy combatant prisoner" in place as he struggled to breathe during the waterboarding procedure. Of course, it was a controlled simulation, but it was being demonstrated to the public to prove that the CIA interrogation technique is indeed torture.

When asked about the demonstration, a passing shopper said, "It certainly looks like torture to me. It's quite realistic."

About two dozen students from various area schools, including Leigh High School and Gunderson High School in San José and American High School in Fremont, participated in the demonstration at the Almaden Plaza Shopping Center in South San José on Saturday, May 17, 2008. They held signs demanding, "No war" and "Impeach." Some also carried signs from the antiwar organization World Can't Wait, saying, "Iraq: Get out. Iran: Stay out. Bush and Cheney: Drive out." Being a busy shopping day, the students handed out many flyers to passing shoppers and motorists.

Waterboarding is a technique that the Bush administration has admitted using to extract confessions from alleged "terrorists" held in Guantánamo Bay and secret U.S. military prisons overseas. Torture is illegal under U.S. law. For this reason, the White House has fiercely resisted closing the prison in Guantánamo Bay and bringing alleged "terror suspects" to U.S. soil for trial.

It is also prohibited under the United Nations Convention Against Torture, which assumed the force of federal law when it was ratified by the U.S. Senate in 1994. The U.N. Convention states that "no exceptional circumstances, whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."

Protests against torture are not new in San José. The student protest follows a long-running campaign against Jeppesen Sanderson, whose local downtown office is responsible for international trip and flight planning for extraordinary rendition flights by the CIA that have moved prisoners to secret locations where they have reportedly been tortured.