U.S. Shows Hypocrisy on Prisoner Treatment
March 27, 2003
This is why it matters.
Americans are outraged that U.S. prisoners of war in Iraq might not be afforded the protections of the Geneva Conventions. Pictures of captured soldiers tell the story behind the slogan, war is hell. These are a violation, we shout.
Much of the rest of the world snickers back at us.
The administration says mistreatment of American POWs might constitute a war crime. The loquacious defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, declared that it's "illegal" to humiliate prisoners.
OK, Mr. Secretary. How about homicide?
That is the cause of death listed by U.S. military coroners for two prisoners in American custody at the Bagram air base, north of Kabul. The coroners found the men had been beaten; one had a blood clot in his lung. The investigation is continuing.
How about standing naked, hooded and shackled - kept immobile for long periods and deprived of sleep? Former detainees have described their detentions this way. Unnamed administration officials have boasted to The Washington Post that upon capture in Afghanistan some are beaten and confined to tiny rooms, blindfolded and thrown into walls, bound in painful positions and kept awake.
Then there are the "renderings." This is what can happen to those deemed uncooperative. They are sometimes sent to countries - Jordan, Egypt and Morocco are favorites - where torture is practiced. For example, here is what the State Department has to say, in its own human rights report, about Egypt: "In combating terrorism, the security forces continued to mistreat and torture prisoners, arbitrarily arrest and detain prisoners, hold detainees in prolonged pretrial detention and occasionally engage in mass arrests."
Why did we believe it would never matter? Why do we think we, and we alone, can flout the rules of international conduct and somehow not be sneered at when we correctly - and inevitably - seek to have these very standards applied to our own?
A year ago the Bush administration announced, flatly and emphatically, that the United States would not abide by the Geneva Conventions at the military facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where hundreds of Afghan fighters who defended the Taliban government and suspected members of al-Qaida are imprisoned.
President George W. Bush reversed himself only after shocked complaint from the world community and grousing from Colin Powell. Then the administration decided to pick and choose just which parts of the conventions it wants to apply.
It said it would apply the conventions only at Guantanamo but not at detention centers in Afghanistan. And so the International Red Cross and others have said food, medical care and other basics are available at Guantanamo. But no observer has been allowed to peek inside the Afghan centers.
None of the thousands we've swept up in the war on terror has been granted POW status, not even Taliban fighters who were conscripted to defend what was the Afghan government. Those who were handed over to U.S. authorities by regional warlords have not been given hearings to determine what, exactly, their status is. Some claim to be taxi drivers or farmers or students who never fought for anyone. Eighteen apparently innocent Afghans were released from Guantanamo earlier this week, after months in the pens.
The Geneva Conventions say that in cases of doubt about a prisoner's status a "competent tribunal" must be convened to decide it. The United States held more than 1,000 such tribunals during the first Persian Gulf war. "The U.S. government has never before balked at this very straightforward requirement of the Geneva Conventions," said Wendy Patton, director of U.S. advocacy at Human Rights Watch.
Tony Blair was pressed in Parliament about American hypocrisy - how can pictures be such a horrible breach, when Guantanamo is not? The British prime minister replied that eventually "the situation" at Guantanamo will have to end. The White House has no such plans.
We can say, as we so often do, that the United States is always right and the international nitpickers wrong. But this has fattened a very large chicken. It comes home, now, to roost.
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