Our 23 Seconds at the Oscars

For 23 seconds at the Oscar ceremony we drew attention to 266 HIV-positive Haitian refugees being held by the U.S. military at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

We understand that there are those in the film community and elsewhere who feel that what we did was inappropriate (“Oscar Officials Slam Presenters’ Political Plugs,” Calendar, March 31). Because of this, and because the substance of those 23 seconds has been distorted in the media, we want to set the record straight.

Here are the facts: According to Amnesty International, the Center for Constitutional Rights, Doctors of the World and countless other human rights institutions of international acclaim, 266 Haitian refugees who fled persecution in their homeland are currently imprisoned in substandard conditions at a U.S. Naval Base. Men, women and children are held behind barbed wire, with inadequate toilet facilities and no sanitation. Rats and vermin run rampant. Many have endured a six-week hunger strike in the hot sun in an attempt to bring their plight to the world’s attention.

Last week, a federal judge in Brooklyn ordered that those with a T-cell count below 200 be allowed into the United States. The others, who have tested positive for the HIV virus, remain at the camp with no indication of release.

President Clinton promised in his campaign to both end the Bush policy of interdicting Haitian refugees and to reverse the exclusion of all immigrants with HIV, and has since backed off. We, along with many others, have been working for months to call attention to this crisis. We’ve sent press releases, held press conferences and actively protested by getting arrested for civil disobedience. Yet, despite these efforts, the Administration hasn’t budged.

There is nothing new about artists speaking publicly about burning social issues and speaking on behalf of those whose voices go unnoticed. And there is nothing new about the criticism and condescension those artists face in the media for stepping out of their “roles.”

Artists who spoke out about human rights abuses in El Salvador for years endured attacks in the press for trying to distribute information the press wouldn’t print. And now, eight years after the fact, the United Nations and the State Department have finally admitted that these claims of human rights abuses in El Salvador are true.

What is the responsibility of knowing? Are we responsible for the deaths of thousands of Salvadorans, of the rape and murder of Catholic nuns and the assassination of Archbishop Romero because these acts were financed and directed with our tax dollars? We hope not. But the information was there. Those attempting to inform the American public about the situation were criticized, harassed and the target of an official program of domestic spying by the FBI.

Likewise, the situation in Guantanamo has critical implications. It begs the question of whether we will begin testing the health of all immigrants. Where does one draw the line? Does this mean we exclude those with diabetes, those with indications of heart disease, the elderly, because they will be a drain on our resources? Must we chip away the stone at the base of the Statue of Liberty and re-carve the words: “Give me your young, your healthy, your able-bodied, your pure of blood”?

People are dying in Guantanamo. The immediate issue confronting us last Monday night was whether we could, possessing the information we had, ignore it and ignore the pleas of those who are dying, to call attention to the crisis.

The above is obviously more information than we presented on Oscar night. We felt a responsibility to the academy to be concise and polite and to take up as little time as possible. Our 23-second appeal was a small fraction of the total time of the show. Certainly we can tolerate information if we tolerate so many commercials.

Was what we did inappropriate? We think that silence in the face of cruelty is truly inappropriate.