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The use of #prisoners for #propaganda is as old as war itself. But there are a few recent examples you may recall. ISIS made extensive use of videos & pictures of imprisonment & execution. The Viet Cong & North Vietnamese alternated their approach. Sometimes they used American POWs as props to suggest that all was well in their camps & prisoners were being treated properly. (They were not.) Other times, they used images of American prisoners as tools to spread #fear.…

The goal is always the same, though: To use #prisoners’ bodies as weapons of political war & to do so against their will.

This is what evil, #illiberal regimes do.

Liberal regimes have standards for the treatment of prisoners. These standards are codified under the #GenevaConventions, which the #UnitedStates has signed & ratified.

Among the standards dictated by the Geneva Conventions is this: Prisoners may not be publicly exploited for purposes of #propaganda.

Another standard of liberal governments is that people who present themselves through #legal pathways as #refugees fleeing #oppression are vetted & provided #DueProcess, not disappeared into foreign gulags.

And yet, here we are.

A high-ranking American ofcl visits a prison on foreign soil which we are using to warehouse *enemies* of her regime. She appears in a fitted long-sleeve tee & active-wear slacks. There is a ballcap on her head & a pound of makeup smeared across her plasticized face. A gold Rolex Daytona—worth more than some of these men will make in their entire lives—sits proudly on her dainty wrist. Every piece of this visual is carefully engineered.

She visits the prison armory & shakes her head approvingly while inspecting the rifles. Then she pauses in front of a cage where #HumanBeings have been posed to her liking so that she can speak to the cameras in front of a powerful visual. She is sending a message on behalf of her country.

…It gets worse….

On Tues evening a masked group abducted a woman off the streets of #Boston. They wore no uniforms. Their faces were covered.…

The woman being abducted is #RumeysaOzturk, a #Tufts University grad student & Turkish national w/a valid #StudentVisa. She does not appear to have been charged w/any crimes. The US govt merely says that her student #visa has been *revoked* because she “supported Hamas,” but declined to give further details.

…Why was she handcuffed & pulled off the street? She had not committed a #crime; she did not present a danger. She could have been notified of the change in her #visa status by mail, given instructions to leave the country promptly, & given a deadline with which to comply.

But merely pulling #RumeysaOzturk’s visa wasn’t the point. Even having Ozturk leave the country wasn’t the point. The point was to arrest her.

The point is to create a climate in which agents of the state routinely wear masks to conceal their identities & street #abductions are not out of the ordinary.

As a fellow on BlueSky said, “If you’re a #police officer in America & you think you need to wear a mask to do your job, you shouldn’t be a police officer in America.”

That was true enough in the old #America.

After she was detained on Tues, #RumeysaOzturk’s atty filed a petition in federal district court in Boston challenging the legality of her #detention & asking she not be moved out of Massachusetts.

“(Ozturk) shall not be moved outside the District of Massachusetts without first providing advance notice of the intended move,” District Judge Indira Talwani…wrote Tues in an order. Talwani ordered the govt to respond to Ozturk’s petition by Fri.

But #RumeysaOzturk [was]…transferred to the Central Louisiana #ICE Processing Center in Basile, a #DHS spox said Wed.

It’s only been 8 weeks.

I cannot imagine what this country will look like in a year.

@Nonilex They'll take away your passports, I suspect.