By Scott T. Sterling
Roger Waters has never been shy about sharing his political beliefs, and this week the former Pink Floyd frontman has written an op-ed piece for the Daily Mail decrying the “institutionalized brutality” of U.S. detention camp Guantanamo Bay.
Waters also takes aim at his home country of England, citing the “national disgrace” over “the mounting evidence that our own intelligence and security agencies may have colluded with the CIA in rendition, torture and a disregard for international human rights law including the Geneva Conventions.”
Waters illustrates his position by sharing the story of 46-year-old British citizen Shaker Aamer, who he says has been detained at Guantanamo Bay since 2001 without ever being charged or tried for a crime.
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The singer goes on to share how he was alerted to Aamer’s plight through a letter the detainee wrote to famous British lawyer Clive Stafford Smith detailing how his plight was reflected in the lyrics to Pink Floyd song “Hey You,” found on the band’s legendary 1979 double-album, The Wall.
“I was profoundly touched that ‘Hey You’ had had such a resonance with him,” Waters writes. “Other parts of his letter reinforced how much this man was suffering.”
Related: Roger Waters Writes Poem in Honor of Children from Gaza Strip
The singer shares Aamer’s back-story as a nurse from Saudi Arabia who moved to England and started a family before relocating to Afghanistan to work for a “humanitarian charity” (according to Waters, Aamer is being held because American officials believe he moved to Afghanistan to fight for Al-Qaeda).
“Shaker has never been allowed to defend himself in a court of law. In effect, he has been held purely on the whim of the U.S. authorities,” Waters says. “This abuse of power exhibits all the hallmarks of despotism. Either we believe in freedom to live under the law, including the law of Habeas Corpus, or we don’t. Either we, the so‑called enlightened West, are law-abiding or we are a tyranny.”
The singer ends the piece by sharing that he attended a gathering in London’s Parliament Square in support of Aamer’s freedom, and he “was proud to be there, standing as I did alongside other Brits who still care about the law, about standards, about justice, about fair play.”
Waters has previously been vocally against foreign policies in Israel and supporting the freeing of the Gaza Strip, among other initiatives.
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