From The Eight o’ Clock Ferry to the Windward Side: Seeking Justice in Guantanamo Bay by Clive Stafford Smith

From The Eight o’ Clock Ferry to the Windward Side: Seeking Justice in Guantanamo Bay by Clive Stafford Smith

There were many other examples of this convoluted language. One of the earliest clues that conditions at Guantanamo did not fit the serene picture painted by the US military as a spate of reports of suicide attempts by the captives. By September 2003 the official estimate of such incidents was thirty-two. The media reported an initial “ripple of concern at the number of Guantanamo detainees trying to take their own lives.” But then an odd thing happened: the Pentagon announced a radical reduction in the attempted suicide rate, cut effectively to zero. They emphasized the number of prisoners receiving treatment for depression and indicated that the prisoners were receiving medical care equal to that provided US soldiers, far better than most prisoners were used to getting back home. The implication was that everyone was on Prozac, happy now at Club-Med-in-the-Caribbean.
British journalist David Rose visited Camp Delta and soon detected the semantic deception at work behind these numbers:

The rate of suicide attempts has declined recently. This, however, has been achieved only because most of the detainees’ attempts to hang themselves have now been reclassified as “manipulative self-injurious behavior,” or SIB. Many SIBs would previously have been recorded as would-be suicides. They are running at two a week—about the same as the old rate for suicide attempts.

The military had reclassified suicide attempts as SIBs for fear of further negative publicity. (138-139)
Works Cited

Smith, Clive Stafford. The Eight o’ Clock Ferry to the Windward Side: Seeking Justice in
Guantanamo Bay. New York: Nation Books, 2007.
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