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New York United Methodist bishop says ?no to torture’

Bishop Jeremiah Park

“I hope that our church will be very clear on this issue ? yes to God and no to torture,” Park told United Methodist News Service.

In recognition of the United Nations Day for Victims and Survivors of Torture, Park was part of a June 26 press conference outside the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in midtown Manhattan. The event, which included a procession from Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, was sponsored by members of Witness Against Torture.

Park joined other religious representatives and social justice advocates behind a banner that read “Honor God, Say No to Torture.” Other participants carried signs asking the United States to “Shut Down Guantanamo,” the prison where the suicides of three detainees were announced on June 10.

In February, the U.N. High Commission on Human Rights called upon the United States to immediately close the detention center at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba. Its report stated that some of the treatment of detainees there met the definition of torture under the U.N. Convention Against Torture.

In Park’s opinion, the use of torture by the U.S. government is out of sync with its democratic ideals. “As a young man growing up in South Korea, I viewed the United States of America as a land of opportunity and possibility,” he told the gathering.

What triggered his desire to immigrate to America was not to gain material riches but a dream “of an open society,” he said.

“It is because my hopes have been so high that my sadness is so deep,” he explained. “This leads me to ask ? what has become to the America of my dreams?”

The bishop called upon the United States to provide humane treatment for all “because all persons are created in the image of God.” He stressed the need to leave vengeance to God and not let anger “lead us into evil.”

The Rev. Scott Colglazier of Riverside Church noted that growing evidence from Iraq, Guantanamo and Afghanistan shows that prisoners “have been treated in scandalous if not horrific ways.”

Iman Talib Abdur Rashid of the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood, an African-American Muslim group, declared that the war against terrorism “is no excuse for the violation of basic and fundamental human rights.”

Other speakers were Rabbi Melissa Weintraub, Rabbis for Human Rights; T. Paracha, a nephew of Saifullah Paracha, a prisoner at Gujantanamo arrested in Bangkok in July 2003; and Barbara J. Olshansky of the Center for Constitutional Rights.

In a “Message on the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture,” U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan noted that the prohibition against torture “is absolute and unambiguous. It applies in all circumstances, in times of war as in times of peace. Nor is torture permissible under different names: cruel and unusual punishment is unacceptable and illegal, whatever one may chose to call it.”

Several United Methodist leaders were among the signers of a June 13 New York Times ad calling for the elimination of torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment as part of U.S. policy. The ad was sponsored by the National Religious Campaign Against Torture, of which the United Methodist Board of Church and Society is a member.

*Bloom is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in New York.

News media contact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369-3759 or newsdesk@umcom.org.