What do the other prisons in Palestine and Iraq hide?
Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban
11 May 2004 (Daily Star)
The Photos a soldier was able to divulge from the prison of Abu Ghraib aroused the international community’s revulsion and incurred its condemnation for the dreadful abuse of human dignity and basic human rights effected by the troops who claimed to have crossed the seas to save the world from the hidden weapons of mass destruction, which proved inexistent to begin with, and to save the Iraqi people from the inhumane practices they suffered and to give them “Freedom and “Democracy”. It is not the first time where such a disclosure takes place. There have been thousands of similar photos passing around among the occupying officers and soldiers, the media people and the human rights activists. However, it is the first time where such photos reach the American media or where the American media shows interest in them. In December of last year, during my visit to Washington D.C., some human rights activists exchanged e-mails on no less abhorring and criminal abuses against Iraqi women. However, no one was able to convince the people in charge of such files to pay head to what was happening. Now stands the U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, announcing to the world that “he didn’t read” the army’s report about the crimes carried out by his soldiers and officers against the Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib. It is possible that he “didn’t read” the many other things that meant death and tragedy to the many Iraqi families suffering the occupation that he himself and the current American administration led. In his arrogance, Rumsfeld “didn’t apologize” to the victims of the American torture carried out against Iraqi war prisoners over the last year of occupation.
It is rather interesting that the American administration paid prompt attention to the subject only after the photos were publicized in the United States in order to contain the scandal’s repercussions on the political future of the Bush administration. The Iraq people and anyone who visits Iraq know very well the American soldiers’ blatant disrespect for Iraqi lives and values, protected by the immunity their government guarantees against internationally accountability for any crime they commit. The question is: what are the other criminal practices that haven’t been leaked to the media and of which no one is aware yet? What are the other criminalities which have victimized thousands and of which the international opinion hasn’t heard yet to be able to stand for the victims’ rights and alleviate their suffering? The question is about the thousands of war prisoners who haven’t been registered by the occupying authorities, and the question is about the thousands of innocent civilians, women and children and men, who are getting killed by the occupying soldiers and “foreign mercenaries” recruited by the occupying authorities from among the former apartheid army, the massacres’ perpetrators in Kosovo, Guantaónamo Bay and Israeli death squads. Could this be the secret behind the American officials’ insistence on repeating the expression “foreign sneaking elements” in their declarations? Could it be just a cover-up for the American authorities’ recruitment of “foreign mercenaries” to do the dirty works of torture, bombings, massacres and rape in Iraq?
President Bush hastened to appear on the Arabic TV channels to assure the Arabs, with his usual arrogance, that those were individual practices that “don’t represent the American Army”. This is in spite of the fact that the perpetrator responsible for the torture said: “no one asked me to treat the prisoners in a different way,” so this way of treatment was normal for him. The American President’s media appearance came to defend the reputation of his administration, and not in solidarity with the victims of torture and massacres or with the families, parents and the community of Iraqi tortured prisoners. We did not hear not even one word of sympathy or apology for the victims and their families. We did not hear any word describing these criminal acts as war-crimes or their perpetrators as war criminals that should be severely punished. The American President resigned himself condescendingly to the say that the perpetrators “didn’t represent America,” while the “Neo-Cons” easily considered the perpetrators of September 11 to represent Islam, the Arabs and the Muslims. The event was as such dealt with in a superficial way in an attempt to control the negative effects of the photos exposed by the American media, instead of taking practical measures in denunciation of this criminal phenomena that must be more widely-spread and more painful than what was revealed by such minor leaks. What those photos reveal is certainly a minimal representation of the torture, humiliation, violation of dignity and deprivation of sovereignty and liberty that the Iraqis go through under the American military occupation.
Reading through the little that has been leaked with great difficulty calls for a thoughtful reconsideration of the information released by the Bremer authorities more than two weeks ago. The information claimed that a rocket had fallen on the prison of Abu Ghraib and killed more than twenty prisoners. It is very strange that the Iraqi resistance would target their own people imprisoned there. Could it be that those prisoners died under torture and that the officials faked news to evade the responsibility for the prisoners’ death on the hands of violent, obsessed and immoral executioners?
Reading through what have been disclosed confirms the danger of the prohibition imposed by the occupying troops on media activities in Iraq. No one can thus know the real facts of the massacres committed in Fallouja, nor what actually takes place in the other cities in Iraq, the country which has turned since occupation into a huge prison for the Iraqis. We don’t know at all the extent of the tragedy and distruction suffered by the people of Falluja from the air bombing of civilian quarters and the shootings carried out by the “foreign mercenaries” recruited by the Bremer authorities. This confirms the dangerous common wisdom that committing crimes against the Arabs in Palestine and Iraq is permissible as long as it is not leaked to the media. When a mistake happens, and something gets leaked, those concerned hasten to assuage the damage that could befall the reputation and credibility of the criminals by covering up for their crimes and protecting them from public prosecution, while their seniors won’t apologize for the crimes no matter how horrific they were. The other dangerous fact is the condescending perspective promoted by the American administration towards Arabs and Muslims, especially after September 11th and the racist campaign against Islam and Muslims in Europe. Such condescending view and the military instructions passed to the soldiers and “foreign mercenaries” in Iraq can only lead to such crimes, which in essence are nothing but horrible humiliation to human dignity, and which are similar only to the deliberate distortion of Islamic values and Arab history and culture carried out by Neocons within the framework of the hostile ideology they are spreading now in the West. Demeaning certain peoples, religions or countries will eventually lead to racist crimes as such, because some believe in the inequality of human dignity Some might also believe that Arabs and Muslims don’t have the same human feelings their jailers and occupiers have, just as the Nazis in Germany, the Whites in Apartheid South Africa, the Whites in the United States before the end of slavery, and the Likud extremists once believed. They, therefore, can carry out the most brutal crimes against them, as has been taking place in Guantanamoin, Abu Ghraib and the other American prisons in Iraq when the Bush administration decided to place them out of the international legal framework of imprisonment and arrest.
These practices remind us of the Israeli crimes committed in the infamous prison of Al-Khyam, and the crimes that are being committed daily by the Sharon regime in the Israeli prisons, and of which we hardly know a thing. Such crimes are carried out against thousands of Palestinian young men and women, whose only guilt is to resist the Israeli occupation of their homeland Palestine, and against whom and whose fellow civilians all kinds of unethical, illegal and sacrilegious offenses are committed daily in punishment for their pursuit of freedom from the Israeli enslavement and in reach for the liberty, democracy and sovereignty that “the NeoCons” claim to want to grant to the people of the region. Is occupation and settlement not a crime? Is shooting a child in the head not according to all laws and religions? Nevertheless the absolute public support given by president Bush and his administration, as well as the presidential democratic candidate, to the Israeli occupation, the Israeli settlements and the war crimes committed by the that Sharon blood-thirsty regime against the armless Palestinian children, women and men gives the impression to the American soldiers that such practices are acceptable to their government who grants immunity the Israeli perpetrators of soldiers and officers even when the victim is American.
Violating human rights, contempt for the culture, the religion and the civilization of nations, breaking the international laws, ending the peace process and backing the foreign military occupation in Palestine and in Iraq, they all contribute crucially to the spread of the law of the jungle, the obsoleteness of ethical and legal standards, and the prevalence of contemptuous and racist look towards Arabs promoted by the NeoCons in the West and the Western media. There is no doubt that all of this has lead and will lead to the shameful abuses committed by the American occupation soldiers and their “foreign mercenaries” against the war-prisoners in Iraq.
The truth of the matter is even far more dangerous than this. At core, it is a daily war of elimination and ethnic cleansing against the armless Palestinian, while Iraqis are bleeding for the consequences of the greed for their resources, humiliation for their lives and dignity, and the hostile racist look towards Arabs and Muslims. Could the decision- makers in Washington now hasten up to take a moral and legal stand against occupation, settlement and killing before they leave behind a legacy of crime and shame to their coming generations. Then it would be too late for all the newspapers and the TV channels in the world to whiten up their dark pages■