One rule for them

[Cees Binkhorst]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

Geachte lijsters,

Nogmaals een reaktie i.v.m. Irak en Guantanomo Bay.
Zoals al meermalen geschreven op de lijst, wordt het aardig stil op deze lijst.

Ik heb daar zelf ook last van, in de zin dat ik sprakeloos ben wat er allemaal gebeurt (sinds de heer Balkenende en De Hoop Scheffer ons hebben
aangemeld bij de 'Coalition of the willing' zelfs in ons aller naam).

Echter, ik ben ook van mening dat elk nieuw bericht zo langzamerhand een herhaling is van een of meer voorgaande berichten.
Daarom beperk ik mijzelf, want zoals gezegd  'alles is al een keer gezegd.'

Rest me nog een open vraag over het onderstaande stuk: 'Hoe zit het met de juridische verantwoording van daden van Amerikanen tegen de
Geneefse Conventie en de jurisdictie van Amerikaanse rechtbanken hierin?'
Met name het laatste kan toch niet worden ontkend door deze rechtbanken? Het blijven toch Amerikaanse onderdanen?

Five PoWs are mistreated in Iraq and the US cries foul. What about Guantanamo Bay?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,921192,00.html

George Monbiot
Tuesday March 25, 2003
The Guardian

Suddenly, the government of the United States has discovered the virtues of international law. It may be waging an illegal war against a sovereign
state; it may be seeking to destroy every treaty which impedes its attempts to run the world, but when five of its captured soldiers were paraded in
front of the Iraqi television cameras on Sunday, Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, immediately complained that "it is against the
Geneva convention to show photographs of prisoners of war in a manner that is humiliating for them".

He is, of course, quite right. Article 13 of the third convention, concerning the treatment of prisoners, insists that they "must at all times be
protected... against insults and public curiosity". This may number among the less heinous of the possible infringements of the laws of war, but
the conventions, ratified by Iraq in 1956, are non-negotiable. If you break them, you should expect to be prosecuted for war crimes.

This being so, Rumsfeld had better watch his back. For this enthusiastic convert to the cause of legal warfare is, as head of the defence
department, responsible for a series of crimes sufficient, were he ever to be tried, to put him away for the rest of his natural life.

His prison camp in Guantanamo Bay, in Cuba, where 641 men (nine of whom are British citizens) are held, breaches no fewer than 15 articles of
the third convention. The US government broke the first of these (article 13) as soon as the prisoners arrived, by displaying them, just as the
Iraqis have done, on television. In this case, however, they were not encouraged to address the cameras. They were kneeling on the ground, hands
tied behind their backs, wearing blacked-out goggles and earphones. In breach of article 18, they had been stripped of their own clothes and
deprived of their possessions. They were then interned in a penitentiary (against article 22), where they were denied proper mess facilities (26),
canteens (28), religious premises (34), opportunities for physical exercise (38), access to the text of the convention (41), freedom to write to
their families (70 and 71) and parcels of food and books (72).

They were not "released and repatriated without delay after the cessation of active hostilities" (118), because, the US authorities say, their
interrogation might, one day, reveal interesting information about al-Qaida. Article 17 rules that captives are obliged to give only their name,
rank, number and date of birth. No "coercion may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever". In the
hope of breaking them, however, the authorities have confined them to solitary cells and subjected them to what is now known as "torture lite":
sleep deprivation and constant exposure to bright light. Unsurprisingly, several of the prisoners have sought to kill themselves, by smashing their
heads against the walls or trying to slash their wrists with plastic cutlery.

The US government claims that these men are not subject to the Geneva conventions, as they are not "prisoners of war", but "unlawful
combatants". The same claim could be made, with rather more justice, by the Iraqis holding the US soldiers who illegally invaded their country.
But this redefinition is itself a breach of article 4 of the third convention, under which people detained as suspected members of a militia (the
Taliban) or a volunteer corps (al-Qaida) must be regarded as prisoners of war.

Even if there is doubt about how such people should be classified, article 5 insists that they "shall enjoy the protection of the present convention
until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal". But when, earlier this month, lawyers representing 16 of them
demanded a court hearing, the US court of appeals ruled that as Guantanamo Bay is not sovereign US territory, the men have no constitutional
rights. Many of these prisoners appear to have been working in Afghanistan as teachers, engineers or aid workers. If the US government either
tried or released them, its embarrassing lack of evidence would be brought to light.

You would hesitate to describe these prisoners as lucky, unless you knew what had happened to some of the other men captured by the
Americans and their allies in Afghanistan. On November 21 2001, around 8,000 Taliban soldiers and Pashtun civilians surrendered at Konduz to
the Northern Alliance commander, General Abdul Rashid Dostum. Many of them have never been seen again.

As Jamie Doran's film Afghan Massacre: Convoy of Death records, some hundreds, possibly thousands, of them were loaded into container
lorries at Qala-i-Zeini, near the town of Mazar-i-Sharif, on November 26 and 27. The doors were sealed and the lorries were left to stand in the
sun for several days. At length, they departed for Sheberghan prison, 80 miles away. The prisoners, many of whom were dying of thirst and
asphyxiation, started banging on the sides of the trucks. Dostum's men stopped the convoy and machine-gunned the containers. When they arrived
at Sheberghan, most of the captives were dead.

The US special forces running the prison watched the bodies being unloaded. They instructed Dostum's men to "get rid of them before satellite
pictures can be taken". Doran interviewed a Northern Alliance soldier guarding the prison. "I was a witness when an American soldier broke one
prisoner's neck. The Americans did whatever they wanted. We had no power to stop them." Another soldier alleged: "They took the prisoners
outside and beat them up, and then returned them to the prison. But sometimes they were never returned, and they disappeared."

Many of the survivors were loaded back in the containers with the corpses, then driven to a place in the desert called Dasht-i-Leili. In the
presence of up to 40 US special forces, the living and the dead were dumped into ditches. Anyone who moved was shot. The German newspaper
Die Zeit investigated the claims and concluded that: "No one doubted that the Americans had taken part. Even at higher levels there are no doubts
on this issue." The US group Physicians for Human Rights visited the places identified by Doran's witnesses and found they "all... contained
human remains consistent with their designation as possible grave sites".

It should not be necessary to point out that hospitality of this kind also contravenes the third Geneva convention, which prohibits "violence to life
and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture", as well as extra-judicial execution. Donald Rumsfeld's
department, assisted by a pliant media, has done all it can to suppress Jamie Doran's film, while General Dostum has begun to assassinate his
witnesses.

It is not hard, therefore, to see why the US government fought first to prevent the establishment of the international criminal court, and then to
ensure that its own citizens are not subject to its jurisdiction. The five soldiers dragged in front of the cameras yesterday should thank their lucky
stars that they are prisoners not of the American forces fighting for civilisation, but of the "barbaric and inhuman" Iraqis.

Groet,

Cees Binkhorst

Een paar recente uitspraken:
'Als de VN relevant willen zijn, moeten ze precies doen wat ik zeg.'
'Ik weet dat ik tegen de wensen van de Security Council en de tekst
van het VN-verdrag in ga, maar ik doe het wel om een VN-resolutie
uit te voeren.'
Een oude uitspraak van Thomas Paine uit 1795 "Every man must
finally  see the necessity of  protecting the rights of others as the
most effectual security for his own"

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