Desmond Tutu is taking his off-Broadway debut in his stride. ”I’m just waiting for my Tony nominations now,” he says from his New York hotel. Tutu (72) is relaxing for a few minutes after two performances in Guantanamo: Honour Bound to Defend Freedom. Then he is on his way to Rochester, Chicago, Philadelphia and back home.
Guantanamo, written by Gillian Slovo and Victoria Brittain, is a docu-drama based on interviews with those detained at the United States military base in Cuba.
Tutu was asked by Slovo if he would perform the role of Lord Justice Steyn, a law lord who delivers a damning judgement on US abuse of human rights at Guantanamo.
So Tutu brought forward his trip to the US to accommodate his performances in Greenwich Village.
Tutu serves on the Guantanamo Human Rights Commission, which was set up with the aim of ending all forms of internment without trial. He describes the play as ”stark” and ”devastating” and says it reminds him of his time heading up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).
Tutu talks about the people held without trial, bent over double with bags over their heads; he talks about the sexual abuse and rape allegations and asks, how can a country call itself a democracy if it only acts democratically when it chooses to do so?
”It is inhumane and it is a blot on the West, which claims such high standards of justice and fair play. The justification that the administration has given here is that we are at war. Now if you’re at war, those whom you capture and the enemy must be prisoners of war.
”But these are not prisoners of war, they are a new category — enemy combatants, meaning they don’t fall under any conventions that seek to protect the rights of prisoners of war.”
The fact that this is not a regular war, he says, does not mean the West can lower its standards of justice.
”For me, the shattering thing is discovering how there is a sense of dÃ