One of the things we do here besides running Irregular Times is to host a web site called Torture Awareness. It’s a pretty spare web site, compared to Irregular Times, but it has a very basic mission: To provide a portal through which people can connect to anti-torture activism.

I started the Torture Awareness site about this time last year because, although 2006 had seen a strong effort to organize around the annual event of June as Torture Awareness Month, as the spring of 2007 progressed, it was becoming increasingly clear that there was no strong central location online through which information about Torture Awareness Month activities could be easily found.

The previous year’s Torture Awareness Month web site had gone fallow, with no updates for 2007 at all. So, I quickly put our own Torture Awareness site up, to try to fill in the gap.

I am sad to say that in 2008, although evidence for torture, and for the coordination of torture by George W. Bush himself, preparation for Torture Awareness Month is even in worse shape than it was last year.

Some organizations, like actagainsttorture.org, are now completely gone. Other anti-torture organizations, like the Quaker Initiative to End Torture (QUIT), have, well, quit doing anything, while maintaining a ghostly presence online.

QUIT explains, “There will be no national QUIT conference in 2008. We will publish information here about upcoming regional conferences and seminars sponsored by Friends and others.” Alas, there has been no information about regional conference and seminars, if any such activities have taken place.

The National Religious Campaign Against Torture appears to have no activities planned for Torture Awareness Month, other than requesting that people hang anti-torture banners in their churches… which accomplishes… a prettier church?

Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International and Amnesty International are still on the job.

We as individuals can step up to fill in the gaps too. We can attend the TASSC 24-hour protest against torture outside the White House from June 28 to June 29, or we can organize local events where we are.

It’s not too late to make 2008’s Torture Awareness Month something worth remembering – and something that makes the United States Congress and presidential candidates take note.

Tags: exhaustion, torture