GOOD NEWS: THERE'S STILL ROOM!!!!!

The Quaker Initiative to End Torture Conference will take place

June 2-4, 2006

at Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina

(Guilford College is at 5800 W Friendly Ave
Greensboro, NC 27410)

PLEASE JOIN US, TOGETHER WE CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE!

To see more information about the conference, click HERE

To obtain a registration form for the conference, click HERE

To obtain our updated schedule for the conference, click HERE

This conference has the dual intentions of education and action for the long term. We will have speakers to learn the basics of current legislation, international law, treatment of survivors and perpetrators, and the recent history of torture. Then we will focus on creating and choosing actions to end torture. We encourage Friends to send us ideas for workshop topics, and names of potential presenters.

We hope to draw on the work from many groups, among Friends and outside. We will have legislative updates from Friends Committee on National Legislation and reports on the torture in United States prisons from American Friends Service Committee staff.

In October of 1994, the United States ratified the United Nations "Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment". The American Friends Service Committee's Prison Watch Project has been in the forefront of monitoring abuse and torture in the United States prison system since 1975. We receive testimonies from prisoners and family members throughout the country describing the inappropriate use of sensory deprivation on prisoners, in many cases for years, even decades. Testimonies also include drawings and descriptions of the use of devices of torture. US prison practices have been cited by the UN Committee on Torture as being unacceptable. AFSC staff will amplify the use of torture occurring every day in United States prisons".

Please – Share this news and website with others- http://www.quit-torture-now.org. Check the website for updates. Consider giving your finacial support to this effort,see our Donations page for more information.

Help Spread the Word, click HERE to distribute our Flyer

or to Post in Your Meeting House!

A Call to the
Religious Society of Friends
To A Conference on the
Treatment and Prevention of Torture


January 2005


Dear Friends,

I believe the time has come for Quakers to create a conference on torture. Increasingly, there are corners without Light in American culture and places of American domination where there is no longer simply the threat of abduction, imprisonment or death, but also the likelihood that this includes torture. This calculated brutality has become so large a part of our culture that the U.S. president has “found” legal grounds to sidestep the Geneva Conventions on torture perpetrated by our military on captives. What was once small and secret is now widespread, public, and stated policy. Opposition would be the essence of Friends’ Peace Testimony, practice, and faith and would add to our history.

Because there is indication that torture will continue and increase, I believe it is time for Friends to study this with a conference. Let us become informed, spread information, and choose action in education, investigation, prevention, and treatment.

I know this is the most repulsive topic to conference on. It may only draw a small number of people at first. But the problem of torture is the most without Light aspect of the current spiritual condition of the human family. It is the ugliest act of our species, and it is a furtive American crisis at home and abroad. These negative features make it more urgent that it be examined. Friends’ history makes us a good group to begin that very hard work.

Approaching great wounds with even the least amount of light will draw resistance and trouble. An effective conference will involve very careful planning. If its purpose and program are explained well, it may draw the widest possible audience, including experts from a wide range of fields. Since taking in such information is a burden of some density, to avoid exhausting participants the schedule will keep to a measured, reflective pace. The topic calls us to learn new ways to carry this realm of ideas, whose horror is well beyond the relative simplicities of hunger, homelessness, disease, and simple violence.

With many thanks,
John Calvi