HARD REALITIES
Copyright © James Henry Graf, 1996
Hard realities sink in slowly. The mind rejects anything that challenges its basic assumptions. Who is prepared to learn that America would abuse and torment its own people, and even thwart their escape to foreign lands? Who could possibly imagine that three of the best governments on earth would reject an American's application for political asylum, aiding and abetting the United States in violating its own laws, their laws, and international law? Who but the victim, stripped of illusion, educated by bitter experience, could accept such realities? The victim, then, must tell his story honestly and with conviction, trusting truth to act as its own prosecuting attorney.
A whistleblower (1) who supports the human rights of all, I have never used or advocated violence. I am a lifelong liberal Democrat who demonstrated against the War in Vietnam, wrote letters in opposition to the Nixon Administration, and protested American policy in El Salvador. No nation has ever charged me with a crime.
Nevertheless, because of what I believe, say, and write, because of what I know and have tried to communicate, my country has subjected me to nearly six thousand days of surveillance, defamation, persecution, terrorism, mental torture, and more, without recourse or effective remedy (2). The media will not reveal the truth of my experience. No lawyer will represent me. No major human rights organization will speak for me. No legislator will respond. No law enforcement authority will investigate. I am a non-person, ignored or rejected by all.
I have charged the United States of America with multifarious human rights crimes dating back at least to 1982. Though generally dismissed with a condescending smirk, I have also made allegations of torture, starting in 1987, with an electromagnetic device. Among other capabilities, the torture weapon can read human thoughts (3). This is not a delusion. I am sane and very intelligent. The technology really exists (4).
How often have discontented Americans heard the advice "If you don't like it here, go somewhere else?" The assumption that those of us who know some of America's dirty little secrets are free to leave the country is universal. The hard American reality is that some of us can't leave.
There is a new Berlin Wall, a new Iron Curtain. It is not physical, but virtual -- a barrier of surveillance, harassment, interference, disinformation, intimidation, and corruption that pervades and surrounds the United States and infiltrates the territories of other sovereign states.
Such a wall is deemed necessary by an American government utterly contemptuous of its own law, Constitution, and treaty obligations, a government that violates human rights with impunity, corrupts the agencies mandated to expose such violations, and deprives the victims of all recourse, all support, all relief.
The United States is unquestionably the most powerful and influential country in the world. So great is this nation's economic and military power, so pervasive the influence of its diplomatic and intelligence forces, that countries deeply involved with the USA as military allies or trading partners are unwilling -- or simply afraid -- to do anything that would displease or embarrass American officials. However sincere the asylum-seeker, however well founded his fear of persecution, if he comes from the USA, he is likely to be rejected, and may, in fact, be illegally repatriated. I was, three times, by three different European countries.
My first attempt to escape from America began on August 28, 1991 with a flight from New York to the beautiful city of Amsterdam. Though disabled, I had with me about three thousand dollars in traveler's checks and a cashier's check for over eighteen thousand dollars (my share of marital assets after divorce). On or about September 3, I applied for political asylum in the Netherlands, explaining that American authorities had subjected me to persecution and mental torture because of my political beliefs and because of my having "blown the whistle" on police corruption.
The interviewer accepted my application, but another official communicated a hard Dutch reality: "We have good relations with your government and we do not wish to do anything to jeopardize those relations." He instructed me to report to the Social Service office on the other side of Amsterdam. An official there revealed that the government had ordered him not to process my application further. The woman who next interviewed me was more specific. Verging on tears, she said that Dutch authorities would not send me to a refugee reception facility or provide me with housing, food, or medical care. She would not help me obtain fresh medication for my hypertension, despite my willingness to pay for it. Because of my national origin, the Netherlands thus withheld from me all the social services normally provided to refugees.
Devoid of help or advice -- staff at Amsterdam's Amnesty International office had told me to seek psychiatric help -- I withdrew my application for political asylum on or about September 4, 1991. Before returning my passport, immigration authorities required my signature on an untranslated statement in Dutch indicating that my decision had been voluntary. I complained verbally of coercion, but signed anyway. They gave me seven days to leave the country, even though an American passport normally entitles one to a three-month automatic visa in the Netherlands.
On the night of September 12, 1991, the train to Denmark carried my petition to a different venue, also beautiful, but even less hospitable. At Copenhagen's immigration office six days later, when the officer heard my request for political asylum as a victim of persecution and torture in the United States, he laughed out loud. I asked him why. He apologized and said "We don't get many Americans here."
Once officials determined that my passport was genuine, they sent me to the Sandholm Refugee Center in Birkerød, about 20 miles north of Copenhagen. When the officers at Sandholm's front gate saw my passport and heard my request for asylum, they also laughed in my face. I told them that my own government had subjected me to persecution and torture while denying me the equal protection of American laws. They laughed again, brutally. This time there were no apologies. One of them emerged from the booth and led me to a small building behind a locked gate. On the way, he berated me, saying "Do you have any idea how much money this is costing? You're stupid, stupid!"
I was the last of several refugees registered that day. Hearing that two trunks to be shipped from the Amsterdam train station contained extremely important documents relevant to my case, Mr. Regnar Rasmussen remarked "We'll have to get those trunks." Perhaps they did, perhaps not. I never saw my trunks or the documents contained therein during my stay in Denmark. Both the police and the Danish Red Cross flatly refused to help me secure them.
The next day, as instructed, I gave Mr. Poul Madsen all the money in my possession. He told me that the police would convert my American currency and traveler's checks to Danish currency and hold the funds on account, then use the cashier's check to open an account in my name at Bikuben Bank in Allerød. My asylum application, he said, would be processed under "normal procedure." The police would charge me for expenses, but not in excess of the interest earned by my money at the bank.
No such account was ever established. As of September 19, 1991, my available cash totalled 1500 Danish Kroner (around $200). The bank claimed in November that the check had not cleared. The police displayed no interest or concern. In December, they gave it back to me, claiming that it had bounced. This was an insulting lie.
Sandholm was a playground for American and other agents, who attempted to diminish my credibility by impugning my sanity. Other refugees, as well as Danish Red Cross personnel, questioned me repeatedly about my reasons for being there. Some of this was in earnest, but much of it represented attempts to provoke anger, instill fear or anxiety, or induce depression. Several persons told me, "off the record," that an American had little or no chance of obtaining asylum there. One said that granting me asylum would be like slapping George Bush's face. Persons who had no business even being there also instigated blatant sexual provocations involving several young women and at least two young girls. Though I was not fully aware of it at the time, American agents were engaging in gross, unconscionable exploitation of young females.
On October 28, 1991, at the police post in the camp, Mr. Benny Nielsen, with the assistance of J. Kheir as translator, read to me the decision of October 25, 1991 by Erling Vestergaard of the Directorate for Aliens, who found my application "manifestly unfounded" and denied me any right of appeal, despite the explicit "formfilling" statement I had made and the documentation included with it. Mr. Kheir told me that my allegations, even if proved, would constitute only "light reasons" for granting asylum. Torture is a "light reason" in Denmark. That is hard Danish reality.
On October 31, 1991, I composed a communication to the United Nations Committee Against Torture, charging the Netherlands and Denmark with refusing to comply with the UN Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment. There followed, on November 4, a complaint against Denmark directed to the UN Human Rights Committee. Both were mailed from the post office in Allerød, and the Danish police received copies. I have never been able to obtain any information regarding their disposition. United Nations reality can be hard, indeed. (5)
The Danish authorities subsequently denied my application for a temporary residence permit on humanitarian grounds. On the morning of December 19, 1991, police pounded on my door, took me into custody, and forcibly repatriated me after charging me more than two thousand dollars for expenses. The trunks containing my documents and other personal effects, having allegedly arrived in Copenhagen from Amsterdam on the very morning of my deportation, did not find their way back to me until June 3, 1992, after I paid two hundred dollars for shipping charges. A stereo microphone, several compact disks, a small electronic keyboard, a pair of hiking boots, and possibly other items had been stolen. My files, though obviously examined, appeared intact.
United Jersey Bank honored its cashier's check without dispute. The money financed my stay in the United States and my two subsequent attempts at obtaining political asylum. Obviously, the Danes had withheld these funds from me in order to prevent me from hiring an attorney and remaining in Europe.
Throughout the first nine months of 1992, no person or agency, domestic or foreign, proved willing to provide guidance or advocacy. Having spent much of my money, not knowing where else to go, I returned to the Netherlands on October 19, 1992. American agents in Amsterdam were waiting for me with a program of harassment that included several acts of petty thievery. The most important of these was the theft on October 22 of a briefcase containing, among other documents, all those papers intended for submission to the Dutch Ministry of Justice in support of my asylum request. Waiting at the Amsterdam Police Headquarters to report the crime, I heard Dutch police officers laughing about the CIA.
I got my briefcase back, with a few items missing, but not until after my interview with the Ministry of Justice, which I faced without legal representation and nearly bereft of documentation. My copy of the resulting negative decision, dated November 17, 1992, has since disappeared.
Unlike Denmark, the Netherlands granted me legal counsel and the right of appeal. I appeared before a Dutch court in Den Bosch on December 16, represented by Mrs. C.H.A. Huisman. The Court's decision, never translated into English, listed nearly all the issues I had raised. Who knows on what basis my appeal was rejected? (6) When Mrs. Huisman met with me on January 25, 1993, she stated frankly that my nationality was "the problem." Confronted with my vigorous insistence that such discrimination violated both the Geneva Convention and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, she became impatient, terminated the interview, and had no further contact with me (7).
As in the Danish camp a year earlier, agents at Bethanië Refugee Camp in Rijsbergen engaged in harassment and provocation. Petty thefts like the ones in Amsterdam began to happen in the camp. On New Years Eve in Breda, as I sat waiting for a bus, two men with Irish accents stood about eight feet away, facing me. One said "We'll get you the way we got [unintelligible]." They later chatted with me as if it had never happened. In January, as I exercised in the camp's gym, an American agent commented "You think this is healthy?" I replied "Yes, I do." He said "I don't think so," and walked away. Not many days afterward, on the road from the camp to town, a motorcycle rider, helmeted and visored, drove straight at me, veering away only at the last second.
My final week at Bethanië found me distracted by a shocking crime. In the camp were two young girls, apparent victims of mind-control programming. "Refugees" -- probably American agents -- were using them as prostitutes, having them perform oral sex on command. One of them, a ten-year-old known as Jalilah, had been at Sandholm in Denmark the year before and also in Elizabeth, New Jersey, that summer. The man presenting himself as her father had lived one floor above me on West Grand Street in Elizabeth, while Jalilah may also have lived somewhere in the neighborhood (this was one of several such "coincidences"). Too upset even to plan my next move, I reported the abuse to camp officials.
Upon hearing in October that the Danes had sent me back to the USA against my will, staff at the camp had assured me "We don't do that here." On February 1, 1993, however, they did exactly that. Dutch Immigration Police seized me and once again forcibly deported me to the country of my torturers.
My mind could not accept this hard Dutch reality, imagining that there must have been some secret purpose in it all, possibly involving investigation and prosecution of the child-prostitution ring at the camp. Using more than half of my remaining money, I returned to Amsterdam on February 4, 1993 and declared at the airport that I had been illegally repatriated (8) and was re-applying for refugee status. Authorities put me up for the night in the secure airport holding facility. The next day, however, they advised me that the original decision by the Ministry of Justice would stand, that they would not allow me to enter the country.
In lieu of repatriation, the Dutch allowed me to use my remaining money to fly to Belgium, where the hardest reality of all awaited me. It was a sick American refugee who landed in Brussels that day, suffering weakness and severe cardiac arrhythmias due to stress, possible poisoning, and probable electromagnetic assault with a deadly "biological process control" weapon (9). After completing my initial application for political asylum, I asked to see a physician, who sent me by ambulance to Van Helmont Hospital in Vilvoorde. My heart nearly stopped in the Emergency Room.
Jalilah, one of the two girls abused in the Netherlands, was probably in the same hospital. On my second day there, one of the social workers, using the lobby telephone, mentioned a young girl by that name. The room next to mine, I later noticed, contained drawings and decorations made by a child.
Distressing symptoms, possibly the result of medical experimentation with psychotropic medications, marked my first week at the hospital. Strange occurrences led me to the conclusion that my oppressors were not far away. A night nurse on the first floor, for instance, treated me with contempt and refused to administer first aid after I stepped on a small piece of glass from a broken thermometer.
I left Van Helmont on February 15 to pursue my asylum application at the "Little Castle" in Brussels. In comparison with Danish and Dutch refugee reception centers, conditions there were appalling. Though served by respectful staff persons, the meals were nutritionally inadequate. The sleeping quarters, large rooms containing about fourteen beds each with no locks on the doors, provided no security. Toilet facilities were distant and in disrepair; showers were located in a separate building, through an alley with water dripping.
That evening, about ten feet from my bed, a group of East European "refugees" -- probably CIA operatives -- played cards and engaged in raucous conversation, including a few words in English. They laughed about someone they called Jalilah. They seemed amused that someone had drunk "yellow cappuccino." I complained at the office that their behavior made me uneasy, asking to be housed with African refugees instead. The group disbanded.
I slept fully dressed, not willing to remove my sneakers for fear they might disappear. At night, the mice came out of their nest in a locker less than a yard from my head. Awakening to find a rat advancing toward my bed, I scrambled to pull the edge of my blanket out of its reach. In the morning, still very weak physically, and emotionally traumatized as well, I washed and prepared for my interview. The long wait in a crowded room was very difficult.
After a perfunctory interview, Belgian authorities denied my asylum application with no apparent acknowledgment of the issues. The decision, they informed me, ordered me to leave the country by February 22, 1993 and never again return to Belgium, the Netherlands, or Luxembourg. Like the one handed down by the Dutch Ministry of Justice in November, 1992, this decision has since disappeared from among my records, along with airline tickets, hotel receipts, and other papers.
Michel, a staff person at the Little Castle, explained that I could file an appeal, but would have to stay at that facility pending a decision. I broke down, telling him that my health would not permit me to stay there, begging to be sent back to the hospital. He arranged my readmission.
During my eight-month stay at Van Helmont Hospital, I experienced gastrointestinal disorders, deep venous thromboses, visual disturbances, anorexia, mental confusion, severe mental depression, ejaculatory disorder, and neurological deficits (for a time, I could write only with difficulty and did not have sufficient coordination to shave or brush my teeth). No-one helped me file an appeal of my negative asylum decision. A planned repatriation under the auspices of Catholic Charities could not be carried out because the pain in my legs was such that I could not even sit on the edge of my bed. The possibility that I might remain in Europe was not even under consideration.
It is hard to say how much of this may have been the direct result of actions taken by American or other agents. The long-standing campaign to impugn my sanity was certainly part of the agenda. During my hospital stay, someone apparently rendered an arbitrary medical diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia or delusional disorder (10). This spurious diagnosis -- an obvious act of malicious psychiatric discreditation worthy of the KGB -- haunts me to this day.
One day I saw, with her brother, the little girl known as Jalilah, whom agents of my country had degraded and exploited. This was the fourth country in which our paths had crossed. The children were in the custody of someone other than the man who had acted as their "father" in Holland. We didn't speak, or even give a sign of recognition. It concerns me, though, that their sister was not with them.
On another occasion, I saw Jalilah sitting alone in a waiting room. She smiled at me, but seemed to be looking right through me. What was done to this child?
I am very proud of having informed Dutch authorities of the shameful exploitation of these, and possibly other, children by heartless and satanically soulless Americans. Despite the risk and the consequences, I would without hesitation do it all over again.
On October 12, 1993, hospital administrators turned me over to the Belgian police, who imprisoned me as an illegal alien without formal arrest, appearance before a judge, or legal representation. At St. Gilles in Brussels, prisoners were confined 23 hours a day, with no running water. After a day or two, the authorities transferred me to Merksplas, where I soon found myself in a prison psychiatric ward (I had no idea why). Through a hunger strike, I was able to secure transfer to a regular medical ward. At the prison in Leuven, my third place of incarceration in as many weeks, a guard examining the contents of my wallet noticed an identification card from the State of New York, my employer from 1975 to 1988. Reading "Department of Mental Hygiene," he stupidly presumed that the card identified me as a mental patient, showing it derisively to at least two other prison employees.
I had my first cell at Leuven all to myself. There was no bed -- just a mattress on the floor. When I unwittingly retired before the appointed time, a guard entered my cell and shouted at me to get up. Despite a strong smell of insecticide, two fleas hopped onto my mattress. I killed one, but the other escaped. Sleeping without a pillow seemed, in that cell, to inflict particular stress on my arthritic spine. A bright light burned above my head. During my stay, Belgian or American agents stole some of my possessions, most of which have since mysteriously reappeared on this side of the Atlantic.
On or about October 30, 1993, Belgian officials woke me at five in the morning, brought me to Brussels Airport, and offered me the choice of returning to the USA or returning to prison in Belgium. Like the Dutch two years earlier, they required me to sign a statement, this one consenting to repatriation. Realistically, was I in a position to object? What other options were open to me? I thus flew "voluntarily" to my native land, penniless and disheveled, not having had a haircut all year. Still weak and without a home, a much-resented "guest" in my former wife's home, I attempted suicide on November 3, 1993. The hospitalization that followed put the finishing flourishes on a campaign of psychiatric discreditation dating back to 1984. Doctors now regard me as a victim of Delusional Disorder.
Throughout my final expatriation, I had been nothing but a prisoner of circumstance, confined in a hospital and later in a prison, without the strength, connections, or resources necessary to determine my own future, thoroughly disabled and disempowered by American, Dutch, and Belgian agents and their governments. In truth, considering America's obscene interference with my every sincere and legitimate effort, had I ever known real liberty or autonomy in any of my travels since 1991? Was I ever not a prisoner? Have you ever seen how a cat plays with a mouse?
We are dealing here, of course, with professional mind-molesters, intelligence agents and psychological warfare experts and their associates. With no regard for human rights or concepts of dignity and decency, they routinely turn other human beings into toys, tools or weapons. In particular, my torturers and oppressors seem to derive special pleasure from corrupting innocent children, teaching them to serve what is evil -- sometimes sexually -- and to sneer at what is right.
It appears that Dutch and Belgian authorities covering up the sex scandal in Rijsbergen may have spread malicious gossip to the effect that I, allegedly a psychiatric patient, was somehow responsible, possibly a perpetrator. In fact, I broke no law, in Holland or anywhere else - threatened no-one, endangered no-one, assaulted no-one, exploited no-one, molested no-one. I was, as always, the sane, upright, decent, law-abiding advocate for human rights and human dignity.
Here I am now, trapped in America, a captive seized in heaven, held hostage in hell, trying to bear a sea of secrets in baskets woven of words. I am too poor and too sick now to attempt another escape. I get no meaningful response here, find no effective advocacy.
Something must be done about the United States of America. No nation should get away with such crimes as I have experienced and witnessed. No government should have this much influence over other sovereign states, this much power to corrupt and obstruct the processes of truth and justice. For humanity's sake, something must be done.
Let all who read this demand that the United Nations, the United States of America, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Belgium address the issues I have raised, investigate my charges, prosecute the satanic monsters responsible for my ordeal, and provide effective remedies. Throw open the curtain that hides from the world's eyes the horrible hard reality of America's crimes. Let the truth at last be known. Let justice at last be done.
Notes