New revelations of torture by US troops in Mosul
March 28, 2005
WASHINGTON, March 27. — Criticisms of the systematic application of torture by US troops in Iraq would appear to be an interminable history in which new revelations are appearing every day.
The USA Today daily – which, like other publications, replaces the word "torture" by "abuse" – revealed today that this practice against Iraqi prisoners was more extensive than had previously been reported.
The daily refers to official documents which reveal that torture was practiced on prisoners in the city of Mosul in December 2003 by troops from the 311th battalion of the Army’s 101st Airborne Division, a unit that had not been referred to previously.
According to USA Today, it is the first time that torture is reported to have been utilized in Mosul. The authors of the report specify that there is evidence that the 311th Battalion was involved in the physical torture of detainees in violation of the Geneva Convention, and clarify that no one was sanctioned for those acts, under the allegation that there was insufficient evidence against those who carried out the torture.
Amrit Singh, a defense lawyer for civil rights in the United States, indicated that the authors demonstrated that torture and abuse of detainees is something routine and accepted as practice by the US forces.
The
silence on the right
Taken from International Herald Tribune
Jeff
Jacoby / The Boston Globe
March 18, 2005
BOSTON:
In August 2003, when he was commander of the military base at Guantánamo
Bay, Major General Geoffrey Miller visited Baghdad with some advice for U.S.
interrogators at Abu Ghraib prison. As Brigadier General Janis Karpinski,
the military police commander in Iraq, later recalled it, Miller's bottom
line was blunt: Abu Ghraib should be "Gitmo-ized" - Iraqi detainees
should be exposed to the same aggressive techniques being used to extract
information from prisoners in Guantánamo.
.
"You have to have full control," Karpinski quoted Miller as saying.
There can be "no mistake about who's in charge. You have to treat these
detainees like dogs."
.
Whether or not Miller actually spoke those words, it is clear that harsh techniques
authorized for a time in Guantánamo - forced nudity, hooding, shackling
men in "stress positions," the use of dogs - were taken up in Afghanistan
and Iraq, where they sometimes degenerated into outright viciousness and even
torture. Did the injunction to "treat these detainees like dogs"
give rise to a prison culture that winked at barbarism? Should Miller be held
responsible for what Abu Ghraib became?
.
The latest Pentagon report on the abuse of captives, delivered to Congress
last week by Vice Admiral Albert Church 3rd, doesn't point a finger of blame
at Miller or any other high-ranking official. It concludes that while detainees
in Iraq, Guantánamo and elsewhere were brutalized by military or CIA
interrogators, there was no formal policy authorizing such abuse. (On occasion
it was even condemned - in December 2002, for example, some Navy officials
denounced the Guantánamo techniques as "unlawful and unworthy
of the military services.")
.
But surely, Church was asked at a congressional hearing, someone should be
held accountable for the scores of abuses that even the government admits
to? "Not in my charter," the admiral replied.
.
So the buck stops nowhere. And fresh revelations of horror keep seeping out.
.
Afghanistan, 2002: A detainee in the "Salt Pit" - a secret, CIA-funded
prison north of Kabul - is stripped naked, dragged across a concrete floor,
then chained in a cell and left overnight. By morning, he has frozen to death.
According to The Washington Post, which sourced the story to four U.S. government
officials, the dead man was buried in an unmarked grave, and his family was
never notified. What had the Afghan done to merit such lethal handling? "He
was probably associated with people who were associated with Al Qaeda,"
a U.S. official told the Post.
.
Iraq, 2003: Manadel al-Jamadi, arrested after a terrorist bombing in Baghdad,
is brought in handcuffs to a shower room in Abu Ghraib. Shackles are connected
from his cuffs to a barred window, hoisting his arms painfully behind his
back - a position so unnatural, Sergeant Jeffrey Frost later tells investigators,
that he is surprised the man's arms "didn't pop out of their sockets."
Frost and other guards are summoned when an interrogator complains that Jamadi
isn't cooperating. They find him slumped forward, motionless. When they remove
the chains and attempt to stand him on his feet, blood gushes from his mouth.
His ribs are broken. He is dead.
.
Then there is the government's use of "extraordinary rendition,"
a euphemism for sending terror suspects to be interrogated by other countries
- including some where respect for human rights is nonexistent and interrogation
can involve beatings, electric shock and other torture. The CIA says it always
gets an assurance in advance that a prisoner will be treated humanely. But
of what value are such assurances when they come from places like Syria and
Saudi Arabia?
.
Of course the United States must hunt down terrorists and find out what they
know. Better intelligence means more lives saved, more atrocities prevented
and a more likely victory in the war against radical Islamist fascism. Those
are crucial ends, and they justify tough means. But they don't justify means
that betray core American values. Interrogation techniques that flirt with
torture - to say nothing of those that end in death - cross the moral line
that separates us from the enemy we are trying to defeat.
.
The Bush administration and the military insist that any abuse of detainees
is a violation of policy and that abusers are being punished. If so, why does
it refuse to allow a genuinely independent commission to investigate without
fear or favor? Why do Republican leaders on Capitol Hill refuse to launch
a proper congressional investigation? And why do my fellow conservatives -
those who support the war for all the right reasons - continue to keep silent
about a scandal that should have them up in arms?
Former
US Commander: US Held Children at Abu Ghraib
Washington, Mar 11 (Prensa Latina) Former US commander of Iraq´s Abu
Ghraib prison, Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, has stated the US military detained
children at the center, including a boy less than 12 years-old.
Karpinski´s statements were made when interviewed by officials investigating prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.
"The boy told me he was almost 12 and that his brother was there with him, noted the former commander. He was crying and begging to see his mother".
Karpinski mentioned neither the motive of the boy"s detention nor his fate. But her statement is the first documented evidence that the US detained children in Iraq.
The recent declaration of the former commander is among hundreds of US military documents about Abu Ghraib obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit seeking records about prisoner abuse in Iraq.
China issues human rights record of the United States
Taken
from People's Daily, China
March 03, 2005
China issued the Human Rights Record of the US in 2004 Thursday in response to the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2004 issued by the US on Feb. 28.
Released by the Information Office of China's State Council, the Chinese report listed a multitude of cases to show that serious violations of human rights exist on the homeland of the United States.
"In 2004 the atrocity of US troops abusing Iraqi POWs exposed the dark side of human rights performance of the United States. The scandal shocked the humanity and was condemned by the international community. It is quite ironic that on Feb. 28 of this year, the State Department of the United States once again posed as the 'the world human rights police' and released its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2004. As in previous years, the reports pointed fingers at human rights situation in more than 190 countries and regions (including China) but kept silent on the US misdeeds in this field. Therefore, the world people have to probe the human rights record behind the Statue of Liberty in the United States," said the report.
The report reviewed the human rights record of the United States in 2004 from six perspectives: Life, liberty and Security of Person; Political Rights and Freedom; Economic, social and Cultural Rights; Racial Discrimination; Rights of Women and Children; and Infringement of Human Rights of Foreign Nationals.
This is the sixth consecutive year that the Information Office of the State Council has issued human rights record of the United States to answer the Country Reports on Human Rights Practices issued annually by the State Department of the United States.
American citizens are threatened by rampant violent crimes and severe infringement of civil rights by law enforcement departments."Violent crimes pose a serious threat to people's lives," said the record.
The record quoted the Department of Justice of the United States on Nov. 29, 2004 as saying that in 2003 residents aged 12 and above in the United States came across about 24 million cases of crimes, including 1.38 million violent crimes like murders and robberies, averaging 475 cases per 100,000 people.
"Police violence and infringement of human rights by law enforcement agencies also constitute a serious problem," the record said.
Chinese citizen Zhao Yan was handcuffed and severely beaten on Jul. 21, 2004 while she was in the United States on a normal business trip. She suffered injuries in many parts of her body and serious mental harm, according to the record.
Boasted as "a paragon of democracy," the United States' democracy is actually manipulated by the rich and malpractice, said the record.
Referring the elections in the United States are in fact a contest of money, the record said, the presidential and Congressional elections last year cost nearly four billion US dollars, some one billion US dollars or one third more than that spent in the 2000 elections.
According to the U.S.' official website www.opensecrets.org, the 2004 presidential election has been listed as the most expensive campaign in the country's history, with the cost jumping to 1.7 billion US dollars from 1 billion US dollars in 2000.
Poverty, hunger and homelessness have been haunting the United States, the world richest country, according to the record.
The report stressed the United States refuses to ratify the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural rights and took negative attitude to the economic, social and cultural rights of the laborers.
According to the statistics released by the US Census Bureau in 2004, the number of Americans in poverty has been climbing for three years. It rose by 1.3 million year-on-year in 2003 to 35.9 million, the report said.
Racial discrimination has been deeply rooted in the United States, permeating into every aspects of society, said the record.
The record said that the colored people are generally poor, with living condition much worse than the white. According to a report of The Guardian of Britain on Oct. 9, 2004, the average net assets of a white family is 88,000 US dollars in 2002, 11 times of a family of Latin American ancestry, or nearly 15 times of a family of African ancestry.
Racial prejudice is ubiquitous in judicial fields, the record said. The proportion for persons of colored races being sentenced or being imprisoned is notably higher than whites.
In accordance with a report published in Nov. 2004 by the US Department of Justice, colored races accounted for over 70 percent of inmates in the United States.
The situation of American women and children was disturbing. The rates of women and children physically or sexually victimized were high, said the report.
According to FBI Crime Statistics, in 2003 the United States witnessed 93,233 cases of raping. Virtually 63.2 in every 100,000 women fell victims. Statistics released by the US Labor Department in Jan. 2004 showed a woman who worked full time had the median earning of 81.1 percent of that for a man, according to the report.
In addition, according to the report, child poverty was a serious problem. A story released from AP Washington on Oct. 12, 2004 said that about 20 million children lived in "low-income working families" -- with barely enough money to cover basic needs.
Children were also victims of sex crimes. Every year about 400,000 children in the US were forced to engage in prostitution or other sexual dealings on the streets.
The atrocity of US troops abusing Iraqi POWs exposed the infringement of human rights of foreign nationals by the United States, said the record.
According to US media like the Newsweek and the Washington Post, as early as several years ago, in US forces' prisons in Afghanistan, interrogators used various kinds of torture tools for acquiring confession, causing many deaths.
The International Committee of the Red Cross believed that abuse of detained Iraqis in the notorious Abu Ghraib Prison was not a single case and it was a systematic behavior, the report said.
The report pointed out that the United States frequently commits wanton slaughters during external invasions and military attacks. A survey on Iraqi civilian deaths, based on the natural death rate before the war, estimates that the US-led invasion might have led to 100,000 more deaths in the country, with most victims being women and children.
Jointly designed and conducted by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University and the Al-Mustansiriya University in Baghdad, the survey also finds that the majority of the additional, unnatural deaths since the invasion were caused by violence, while air strikes from the coalition forces were the main factor to blame for the violence-caused deaths.
Despite tons of problems in its own human rights, the United States continues to stick to its belligerent stance, wantonly trample on the sovereignty of other countries, and constantly stage tragedies of human rights infringement in the world, said the report.
At last, the report said that the United States should reflect on its erroneous behavior on human rights and take its own human rights problems seriously instead of indulging itself in publishing the "human rights country report" to censure other countries unreasonably.
March 1, 2005
Its curious that the president of the United States, George Bush, who says he communicates directly with God from the Oval Office was not properly advised by his connections in heaven about a recent State Department report. Perhaps Bush's "divine line" was cut off or God would have told the president to avoid the recent publication of Washington's annual report on the situation of human rights around the world, a magnificent example of hypocrisy and insensitivity.
With all the atrocities being committed around the world, this report chooses to focus on countries like Cuba, where concern for human life begins before birth in order to guarantee rights like, that of life with dignity, decorum and a future.
Naturally the US report also harshly attacks Venezuela, which thanks to the social changes underway there is offering millions of people the chance for a new life after being marginalized, sacked and ignored by previous governments that, enriched themselves at the expense of the people with the wholesale selling off of the nation's natural resources which belong to all the people.
Oddly enough, Washington's massive report on human rights around the world forgets to mention several places where the most elementary human, social and political rights of thousands and thousands are systematically violated.
There are a few things that the supreme judge in Washington should keep in mind when taking stock of international human rights violations. Let's begin with the thousands of immigrants, especially Arabs, Asians and Latin Americans, who were detained after the September 11th attacks of 2001. They were jailed because of their religion or their race without the right to legal assistance, without any charges filed against them and without any court of law justifying their retention in prison.
And we are not speaking about Guantanamo, or Abu Graib, but about clandestine prisons located inside the United States, where these people are kept beyond the reach of any type of legal assistance and are submitted to unconstitutional and immoral interrogations without knowing if they will ever be released.
Who in the US State Department is responsible for protecting the human rights of these faceless human beings? The fact that they were arrested in the emotionally charged atmosphere after September 11, does not justify such brutality, says Nancy Chang, a lawyer with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights. In legal terms, we are talking about thousands of "detained and disappeared" persons, a practice of the worst Latin American dictatorships. Dictatorships, that we mustn't forget, were trained and supplied by US specialists in the latest techniques of repression and control of the population, which is today openly reproduced in that "paradise" of freedom and democracy, the United States.
People everywhere are asking how can such a government claim to pass judgement on the rest of the world? With the publishing of its "report" Washington is preparing the way for its yearly masquerade at the United Nations Human Rights Commission in Geneva, where traditionally the just are judged by the sinners.
