DPRK Denounces US Human Rights Abuses in Iraq

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DPRK Denounces US Human Rights Abuses in Iraq

Systemic Abuse

CPHI & CPCST Condemn Torture in Iraq

Former Guantanamo Detainees Challenge US Interrogation Techniques

A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) said on Saturday, May 15, that the United States should fundamentally settle its cases of human right abuses before behaving as if it were a "world judge of human rights", recognised by none. In answer to a question put by the KCNA news agency as regards the US maltreatment of Iraqi POWs, a serious human rights issue now under fire worldwide, the spokesman referred to the fact that the US revealed its true colours as a ferocious aggressor, and an illegal and brutal tyrant and gangster in Iraq. The spokesman of the Foreign Ministry continued:

The crimes committed by GIs prove that the US is the world's worst human rights violator and a graveyard of human rights, as the crimes are a wanton violation of international law and universally accepted ethics and morality, as well as being a total negation of Islamic ethics and culture.

What matters is that the recent US human rights abuses in Iraq were not crimes perpetrated by individual GIs in violation of military discipline but deliberate and organised crimes committed by the top authorities of the US.

This case once again makes it clear that the US has no moral qualification to talk about the issue of human rights in other countries.

What happened in Iraq carries a serious lesson that a country has to defend its national sovereignty to protect the human rights of its people, and for this it is necessary that a sovereign country build a strong military deterrent to repel any aggression.

All countries that respect human rights, the DPRK Foreign Ministry spokesman said, should counter the shameless US human rights fraud with a just human rights offensive of their own.

Voices in the Wilderness* May 18, 2004

Like people around the world, Voices in the Wilderness is outraged by the systematic torture and humiliation - indeed the murder – of Iraqi detainees. This is true not only at Abu Ghraib, the Baghdad prison infamous under Saddam Hussein for the cruel treatment and execution of political prisoners, but elsewhere among US-run prisons in Iraq.

Our outrage is multiplied by the knowledge that this is not, as George Bush portrays it, the work of six or seven delinquent soldiers. This depiction is the strategy of an administration on the run, both from the political fallout of this scandal, and from the intractable resistance in Iraq to the American occupation. Torture becomes necessary where invaders encounter broad resistance and seem totally ignorant about the structure of that resistance and the nature of the local civil society.

George Bush would have us believe that the vileness at Abu Ghraib is an isolated instance of treachery, a regrettable aberration in an otherwise humane system. No; the abuse of Iraqi detainees, directed by US military intelligence and unopposed by Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, is part of US strategy in Iraq. It is consistent with the US military's disregard for the Geneva Conventions in Iraq and with the Bush administration's disregard for international law. Worse, it is characteristic of an historic pattern of abuse practiced by the US military as an instrument of foreign policy.

We see this at Guantanamo Bay detention centre, where prisoners can be held indefinitely, without charge and without access to a lawyer. We see this at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning Georgia where for decades the US army has provided counterinsurgency training to foreign (primarily Latin American) soldiers. Such training long included the use of a torture manual as a textbook as well as training in torture and other forms of intimidation. That torture manual itself was written by US army officers based on their work in Vietnam (http://www.soaw.org)

In Iraq, the equivalent of torture has been the defining feature of US policy and the hallmark of its actions, from at least 1990 through the present. The bombing of civilian infrastructure in Jan-Feb, 1991 was a massive breach of international law. Surely the slow death of a nine month-old child from preventable and curable diarrhoea is a torture to that child and to all who love her. Multiply that by hundreds of thousands of children who died unnecessarily as a result of conditions created by war and brutally sustained and exacerbated by economic sanctions.

For years, frequent, unpredictable "no-fly" zone bombings terrorised Iraqi communities, destroying buildings, livestock, livelihood, and lives. For six or eight months, in the lead-up to the March, 2003 invasion, the threat to unleash "shock and awe" terrorised Iraqi citizens. Economic activity slowed, people tried to leave the cities and the country, or they sought to stock essential provisions. Children asked their parents, "Is today the day we are going to die?" And then the protracted bombardment itself – consciously designed to terrorise with errant bombs exploding in urban marketplaces, in neighbourhoods, the very Earth trembling: day and night, terror.

On May 10, 2004, looking, as it were, on the bright side, George Bush stated triumphantly that despite the torture scandal there can be no doubt that Iraqis are better off than they were a year and a half ago under the Saddam Hussein regime. Once again he ignored the facts on the ground: massive unemployment, continued lack of basic necessities including fuel, clean water, and electricity, and most of all the growing and ungovernable violence and insecurity. In the US, the largely unquestioned belief that violence can actually be governed, and thereby put to good and definite purpose, underpins our country's militarism. Evidence in Iraq, however, suggests otherwise, suggests in fact the need for a wholly different mindset, a wholly different attitude toward violence.

As we look back over the last fourteen years of US action in Iraq, we see that the US has effectively imprisoned the entire country, stripped its citizens of their dignity, their wealth, their health and education, and subjected them to a campaign of ongoing terror, without appeal and apparently without end.

We see the systemic abuse in the prison system not only as more evidence of what the cult of militarism does, but also as further proof that our government has brought upon the Iraqi people exactly what it has claimed to be liberating them from - terror, insecurity, tyranny. This is a fundamental betrayal of staggering magnitude, a betrayal not only of US trust and security - for surely we are ever more clearly and powerfully focused in the sights of people who would avenge themselves violently against the US - but also a betrayal of the Iraqi nation. Its citizens have been treated, not as people with an inalienable right to self-determination, but as objects in a high-stakes political and economic ruse.

To this end, we demand that: 1) the US conduct a thorough and unflinching investigation into the abuse of Iraqi detainees, one that holds accountable Secretary of Defence Rumsfeld and high-ranking military officers; 2) the US begin making reparations to Iraq, for the damage inflicted by its military and by its rigid support of economic sanctions; 3) the US withdraw its military from Iraq. In the political space created by these actions, the US may then be able to constructively enter a multi-national dialogue with Iraq about how to best support Iraq and its people.

* David Smith-Ferri, Ed Kinane, John Farrell, Bill Quigley, George Bowen, and Scott Blackburn

London & Baghdad May 18, 2004

The Centre for Psychosocial Health Iraq (CPHI) & Centre for Psychosocial Care for Survivors of Torture in Iraq (CPCST) joins the national and international community; governments, organisations and individuals in shock, disbelief and condemnation of the practice of physical and psychological torture against Iraqi citizens detained in Abu Ghraib prison. We believe that there is no moral justification for employing such a practice which degrades human values and escalates cycle of violence in Iraq. Condemning torture, wherever it arises and whoever the perpetrators are, is an ethical and human right commitment.

Furthermore, we were reassured by the wide condemnation and official apologies for such acts and should signal the time to move forward by supporting and helping victims, and to bring perpetrators to justice.

We would like also to offer our help and support to the victims as part of CPCST role as a professional and non-political organisation, that provides psychosocial support to victims of torture and their families in Iraq. Such help would include outreach visits to Abu Ghraib prison to help and support the detainees.

The Centre for Psychosocial Health Iraq, in its first project, has successfully set up a Centre for Torture Survivors and their Families with the primary aim of assisting survivors to rehabilitate into society through processes of counselling, new skills development and access to employment and housing. Psychiatrists, trauma support and outreach workers, advocacy staff and documentation officers currently run the newly developed centre for the care of survivors of torture in Iraq. The delivery of services to clients is supported by an administrative and management team and the centre endeavour to work in partnership with other government and non-government organisations including ministry of health and ministry of human rights in Iraq. CPHI and CPCST aspirations are to join the endeavours to achieve peace, democracy, justice and civil society in Iraq, and working on national and individual levels to reduce the cycle of violence and empower survivors of torture. Iraq is facing exceptional situation that requires creative political solutions that mobilise what is best in Iraqi society and communities. The Coalition Provisional Authority, United nation and the international community should work with Iraqis as partners in peace-building and denounce and eradicate torture. Tolerance, reconciliation, reparations and justice are values that should be owned by all, supported by a fair, transparent and efficient legal framework.

The Centre aims to contribute to breaking the cycles and culture of violence by addressing the psychosocial needs of survivors of torture. Similar approaches need to be offered to those who assist in the path to democracy, and in particular to frontline persons such as the military and police. The tendency to continue the practices of the past regime needs to be curbed, and this could be done through mechanisms of giving frontline workers information on victim empowerment so that the cycle of violence is stopped.

CPHI and CPSCT are organising a programme inside and outside Iraq to mark the International Solidarity Day against Torture (26th June 2004). We call upon you to join us in these activities and to put an end to torture by any groups or individuals now and in the future.

Ex-detainees Send an Open Letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee
Report from Centre for Constitutional Rights – http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/reports

Synopsis

Shafiq Rasul and Asif Iqbal, two British citizens who were detained by US forces in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, for more than two years, wrote an open letter to President Bush and the Senate Armed Services Committee charging American military officials with deliberately misleading the public about the interrogation techniques used at army facilities on the island prison.  Mr Rasul and Mr Iqbal challenged the legality of their detention and were freed from Guantanamo on March 8, 2004, just prior to arguments before the United States Supreme Court regarding their case.  Their case, Rasul v Bush, was brought by their attorneys at the Centre for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and continued on behalf of other detainees.  The case was argued on April 20, 2004.

Description and Status

In their letter to President Bush and the Senate, the two men charged that statements made by US officials denying abuses in US run prisons are "completely untrue".  In particular, they challenged assertions that there was "no stripping or humiliation or physical abuse at Camp Delta".

Officials elicited false confessions from Mr Rasul and Mr Iqbal by insisting that they were visible in grainy video of Osama bin Laden and Mohamed Atta after prolonged solitary confinement. Both men’s presence in England at time of videotaping was later verified by British Intelligence.

Among the interrogation techniques described by the men are:
 • The practice of short-shackling whereby detainees were forced to squat with their hands chained between their legs and fastened to the floor for hours while they were questioned.  
 • The practice of leaving detainees naked and chained to the floor while women were brought into the room – a particularly humiliating practice for prisoners from strict Islamic backgrounds. 
 • The use of strobe lights, loud music, and freezing air to make the difficult physical conditions even worse.  
 • The use of dogs to frighten prisoners. 
 • The use of physical force on other detainees.  On one occasion a man who had become psychiatrically ill was lying on the floor of his cage nearby their cell when a group of guards severely assaulted him.  In another instance a detainee was beaten so badly he was hospitalised. 
 • The practice of forcing prisoners to strip completely for several days at Camp "Romeo" for allegedly misbehaving by breaking minor rules such as having two rather than one plastic cup in their cage.

Mr Rasul and Mr Iqbal asserted that military officials have video and photographic documentation of these complaints and urged that these materials be made public.

Link to: Open Letter to the Senate (PDF)
[http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/reports/docs/ltr%20to%20Sentate%2012may04v2.pdf]