W SŁUŻBIE MROKU
udział lekarzy i psychologów
w torturach „wojny z terrorem”

Doctors of the Dark Side

a documentary by Martha Davis

 

Prod. USA, 2011, 75 minutes, Polish subtitles

Polish title: W Służbie Mroku – udział lekarzy i psychologów w torturach „wojny z terrorem”

www.doctorsofthedarkside.com

After the screening a panel will answer questions from the audience (with interpretor).

 

The horrific pictures of torture in Abu Ghraib received world-wide attention. Not everyone knows however, that in the archipelago of CIA black sites located in many different countries -presumably also in Poland, in Stare Kiejkuty – prisoners were treated in a similar way. Even less people know that doctors and psychologists have played a crucial role in the preparation and implementation of those tortures. Instead of protecting the prisoners, they became accomplices of the torturers, meticulously registering the effects of each type of torture and keeping prisoners alive merely to be able to inflict further suffering on them.

 

This film does not flaunt torture, as does the American feature film 'Zero Dark Thirty'. It is enacted, in a much milder form than reality, while human rights specialists explain the unethical role of medics who have dishonored their Hippocratic oath, like their nazi predecessors who were tried in Nuremburg or those who tortured political prisoners in the Soviet Union. By the same token, they bring home to us how our world has entangled itself in practices unworthy of a 'civilized and democratic' society and that the –predominantly innocent- victims are still waiting to be liberated, publicly rehabilitated and offered compensation for their unlawful imprisonment and suffering, inflicted also on their families.

 

The author of the film, clinical psychologist Dr Martha Davis, will take part in the screenings in Warsaw, Kraków and Wrocław.

 

The film features among others:

– American lawyer Ramzi Kassem, professor at CUNY university who represents several prisoners in Guantanamo and Bagram and who will participate in the screenings in Łódź, Poznań and Gdańsk

– Military lawyer Eric Montalvo, who highlights the case of one of the under age boys held in Guantanamo

– Nathaniel Raymond, former staff member of Physicians for Human Rights

– and many other American military and civilian experts.

 

After each screening a Q&A session will include either Dr Martha Davis or Ramzi Kassem, as well as one or more Polish experts, including among others:

– Dr. Adam Bodnar, Vice President of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights

– Irmina Pacho, Strategic Litigation Program of the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights

– Draginja Nadaždin, Amnesty International Polska

– Lawyer Mikołaj Pietrzak, who represents Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri

– Lawyer Bartłomiej Jankowski, who represents Abu Zubaida

– Senator Józef Pinior

– Psychiatrist professor Zdzisław Ryn

REVIEWS

Doctors of the Dark Side is an extraordinarily valuable film because it probes the behavior and motivations of American psychologists, psychiatrists and other physicians who colluded in torture, as well as the effects of that torture on specific human beings. The film provides breakthrough documentation of what has become a crucial ethical issue for our country.

Robert Jay Lifton, author of The Nazi Doctors and Witness to an Extreme Century: a memoir.

 

“...a compelling documentary about a little-known aspect of America’s worst human rights scandal in decades....Doctors of the Dark Side raises profound questions of the capacity of professional bodies to govern their members, of institutions to achieve justice, and of humanity to morally devolve.

Georgetown Law Weekly

 

I would really like to thank you sincerely for the opportunity you gave to us.  So many people who have been tortured came to look at [Doctors of the Dark Side]. Many of them have never told their stories and still live with the trauma. For example, one man spoke of how he was in solitary confinement…he was a freedom fighter… and during this time of his confinement he was forced to look at dead bodies [including of his brother and his girlfriend].  He did not speak of this trauma for two decades. Your DVD made it possible to bring these incidents to light, to talk more.  There is no way to thank you enough.

Host of a screening in a country surviving decades of oppression

 

– Polish Radio (in english)

COOPERATION

The film tour is organized in cooperation with:

– The Polish edition of Le Monde diplomatique

– The medical publisher Medycyna Praktyczna

– Krytyka Polityczna

– Stowarzyszenie Ślimak - Centrum Wolnej Myśli Politycznej im. Güntera Grassa