The Road To Guantanamo

I saw Michael Winterbottom's The Road to Guantanamo the other night, and it was pretty gut-wrenching stuff.

It's the story of the Tipton Three, a group of British Muslims who head to Pakistan where one of them is to get married. While there, they decide to head to Afghanistan to see the place for itself and help out other Muslims in the process. To understate it substantially, this turns out to be a mistake, and they decide to head back to Pakistan. It is then, without giving too much away, they end up being detained in US Custody, in one of their infamous interrogation camps.

It's hard to watch the treatment of these three at the hands of British and American soldiers and not feel outraged. The army, so often romanticised in adverts and films, is shown as a group of spineless bullies here, as they are afraid to approach the prisoners in anything other than full riot gear. The whole thing highlights the misdirected zeal of the two countries of interest at the moment: These three were arrested purely because of their nationality. It would seem that in attempt to stand up and rid themselves of terrorists, Britain and America are at once on their knees, such is the current climate of fear that these two powers live in. The interrogation sessions were funny in a macabre kind of way: The three were accused, without any proper foundation, of being members of Al-Queda, which is the kind of thing you'd expect in a racist-by-numbers sketch of someone shouting something across the street at a Muslim.

It invokes new anger with biggest-cunt-for-US-president-EVER Bush, and just as much for Britain, who are right up there in their participation of the managment of these camps. Apparently a civil suit is being taken by the three against certain state figureheads, amongst whom are Rumsfeld and Cheney, if I'm not misinformed. I hope they sue them for the roof over their heads.

Go see this. If you can't, download it here. £5 for something like this is small change.