Tag: Yale Law School

Call for UNH and Yale Law to Break Ties with Saudis

by Stanley Heller, Middle East Crisis Committee (MECC)

[As the PAR print edition goes to print, Newsweek has picked up this story of the universities’ collusion with the Saudi government. By the time you read this in PAR, we expect more investigation will have been done and publicized on an international scale. Congratulations, Stan Heller, for exposing this local world-wide connection!]

Ever more gruesome details emerge daily of the likely torture-murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi on orders of the highest officials of the Saudi government.  The Middle East Crisis Committee (MECC) has for years advised Connecticut institutions with relationships with Saudi Arabia to break ties with the cruel regime.  In view of the Khashoggi murder, we call on the University of New Haven, which has helped create a security studies program at the police college of Saudi Arabia and is apparently teaching forensic skills there, to immediately suspend all cooperation with King Fahd Security College. It should publicly explain what it is doing in its secretive program in the kingdom.

We have asked how they can justify doing work with a police college in a country with an absolute monarchy and a justice system known for prosecuting activists calling for democratic rights and full equality for women, one where suspects are tortured. We’ve been met only with silence.  We’ve also called on University of New Haven administrators to explain if any of the skills they are teaching in Saudi Arabia are being used by the Saudi military which is engaged in a brutal illegal war in Yemen.

The Middle East Crisis Committee also calls on Owen Fiss and Anthony Kronman, directors of the Abdullah S. Kamel Center for the Study of Islamic Law at Yale Law School, to speak out. This murder of Khashoggi is an outrageous violation of any legal precept and demands condemnation. It would be extremely beneficial if the Kamel Center hosted an emergency public conference of Islamic law scholars to examine the woeful state of the Saudi system of justice in a country that claims to strictly follow Islamic law.

The center was funded by Abdullah Kamel’s son Saleh Kamel.  Abdullah Kamel was detained by Prince Mohammed Bin Salman last fall on charges of corruption.  Reportedly $4 billion, most of Kamel’s money, has been forfeited without any due process.  Forbes magazine, which had estimated Kamel’s fortune at $2.6 billion, has removed him from its list of billionaires.

Updates will be posted at thestruggle.org and our Facebook page Middle East Crisis Committee.

New Haven Hosts Replica of Solitary Confinement Cell

by Allie Perry, Shalom UCC, NH and the National Religious Campaign Against Torture

What is it like to be isolated and segregated in a small prison cell 23/7 for days, weeks, years, and in some cases even decades?  The National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT) is clear.  It is not just like torture; it is torture. According to Juan Mendez, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, holding a person in solitary confinement for a period of time longer than 15 days is torture. On any given day, however, around 80,000 people in the United States are being held in solitary confinement.

To help people understand that prolonged isolation is a form of torture, NRCAT has created a replica solitary confinement cell. The NRCAT replica confinement cell has traveled around the country and is now coming to New Haven.

For three weeks, the cell will be on display at the New Haven Free Public Library, 133 Elm Street, for the first week, Monday, Jan. 30-Saturday, Feb. 4; at Yale’s Sterling Memorial Library, 120 High Street for the second week, Sunday, Feb. 5-Saturday, Feb. 11; and for the third week, Feb. 11-18, at the Yale Law School library, 127 Wall St.

Initiated by three New Haven United Church of Christ congregations (United, Redeemer, and Shalom), this project had engaged a powerful coalition of community, religious, and university organizations. In addition to the churches, organizers of this project include: the New Haven Free Public (Ives Memorial) Library, the Yale Undergraduate Prison Project, the Orville Schell Human Rights Center at Yale Law School, Dwight Hall at Yale, My Brother’s Keeper, The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, Wilton Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), the CT ACLU, Malta Justice Initiative, and Reclaiming the Prophetic Voice.

The project’s goals are to provide opportunities to experience a simulation of isolation; to educate the use of solitary confinement, including practices in Connecticut; and to equip people to advocate for limiting and stopping the use of solitary confinement, precisely because such prolonged isolation is cruel, unusual, and degrading treatment.  For the schedule of the extensive program of speakers, panels, book talks, performances, and films during the three weeks that the cell will be in New Haven, go to: www.insidetheboxnhv.org/events.