How did human rights law get flushed down the toilet?
John Yoo’s notorious "torture memos" provided President George Bush with the legal justification for torture, paving the way for the abuse of detainees at the prisons of Guantanamo Bay, Abu-Ghraib, Bagram, and “black sites” around the world.
In their efforts to give legal sanction for torture, Yoo and others in President Bush’s Office of Legal Counsel violated several US and international laws protecting human rights. Among these, was the United Nations Convention Against Torture, ratified by the United States on June 26th, 1987.
Despite damning evidence of intentional professional misconduct, revealed in a Department of Justice investigation, John Yoo maintains his position as a tenured professor at UC Berkeley School of Law. Calling the DOJ’s report "shoddy and biased", he remains unapologetic. Recently, while promoting a book, defending his extremist ideology, Yoo claimed that the President is legally-permitted to use nuclear weapons against civilians and to "crush the testicles" of a suspect’s child. Most disturbing, as a professor at UC Berkeley, Yoo is teaching our next generation of lawyers.
Yoo Toilet Paper was created by artist Matt Cornell, with generous assistance from Spacejockey Design. Each roll contains text from the Convention Against Torture, with a reminder that the toilet paper was "made possible by" Professor Yoo.
On April 20th, 2010, the regular toilet paper at UC Berkeley was replaced with our Yoo Toilet Paper brand. This irreverent act of protest was meant to draw attention to the ongoing consequences, of the torture memos.
Get involved
For information on how you can get involved in the fight against torture, please visit the ACLU, the National Accountability Action Network, Boalt Alliance Against Torture, and Alliance for Justice.