Taxi To The Dark Side

Another film festival on the way; I have not written about what I have seen during the previous one, IF Istanbul, an alternative film festival-as the name suggests- in Istanbul. Rush hours in theaters, lines in front of doors, human deadlock in the buildings because of poor timeline management for films. Still, unique opportunity to open new windows in one's brain. There is so much we are not even aware of. Feels like impossible to catch on.

Taxi To The Dark Side; an Oscar winning documentary directed by Alex Gibney about an Afghan taxi driver who has been arrested as Taliban member and transported to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, where he died in custody, after five days. A letter sent to Dilavar's (his name) family in English to inform them about his death. The whole thing seems absurdly tragic. A family living in mud bricks with goats and cows, with dust and absolute nothingness in the middle of nowhere receiving a letter in English from the US Military. They knew what happened to their son only after the journalist who was investigating the whole thing explained them what happened. The documentary mainly focuses on torture techniques used to make detainees talk, supposedly admit they are indeed making part of Taliban. Then it links the story to Ebu Ghareyb, another prison in Iraq from which the pictures were released and shocked the whole world. Not as popular as Ebu Ghareyb, Bagram Air Base seems not to be very different.

Approved CIA techniques for detainees were performed by young soldiers who think they should only follow the guidelines they were provided with, lacking, however, clear lines, limitations and "not to do's" about how far they would go to make the detainee speak. This is a familiar story, which we know from Guantanamo where detainees are held violating their primary rights granted to them by the rules of Geneva Convention: a right to tribunal.

This is a shameful story for humankind. A denial of all we have accomplished in the name of democracy and human rights, and the idea that everyone in this planet-taliban or not-has to be heard in a court before final judgement and the punishment which will follow. Dilavar's may be was a taxi driver, who was so excited the day he was arrested about his new work, or he was a brainwashed Taliban murderer. We will never now. In both cases, he is dead in custody, like many others, after hours of starvation, sleeplessness, humiliation, sexual harassment, brutal treatment and constant shock. And this, is our primary failure. We will never know whether a human being was innocent or not. And this, is the failure of law, basically going back to state of nature.