U.S. resorting to collective punishment in Iraq

[marmar]

Published on Monday, September 18, 2006 by the lnter Press Service
US Resorting to 'Collective Punishment' in Iraq
by Dahr Jamail and Ali al-Fadhily

RAMADI - U.S. forces are taking to collective punishment of civilians in several cities across the al-Anbar province west of Baghdad, residents and officials say.

"Ramadi, the capital of al-Anbar province, is still living with the daily terror of its people getting killed by snipers and its infrastructure being destroyed," Ahmad, a local doctor who withheld his last name for security purposes told IPS. "This city has been facing the worst of the American terror and destruction for more than two years now, and the world is silent."

Destroying infrastructure and cutting water and electricity "for days and even weeks is routine reaction to the resistance," he said. "Guys of the resistance do not need water and electricity, it's the families that are being harmed, and their lives which are at stake."

Students and professors at the University of al-Anbar told IPS that their campus is under frequent attack.

"Nearly every week we face raids by the Americans or their Iraqi colleagues," a professor speaking on condition of anonymity told IPS. Students said that U.S. troops occupied their school last week..

"We've been under great pressure from the Americans since the very first days of their occupation of Iraq," a student told IPS.

Such raids are being reported all over Ramadi. "The infrastructure destruction is huge around the governorate building in downtown Ramadi," said a 24-year-old student who gave his name as Ali al-Ani. "And they are destroying the market too."

The complete article is at: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0918-02.htm

[IChing]

1. Article 33 of the Geneva Conventions---nominated thread

Section I. Provisions common to the territories of the parties to the conflict and to occupied territories

Article 32. A protected person/s shall not have anything done to them of such a character as to cause physical suffering or extermination ... the physical suffering or extermination of protected persons in their hands. This prohibition applies not only to murder, torture, corporal punishments, mutilation and medical or scientific experiments not necessitated by the medical treatment.

While popular debate remains on what constitutes a legal definition of torture (see discussion on the Torture page), the ban on corporal punishment simplifies the matter; even the most mundane physical abuse is thereby forbidden by Article 32, as a precaution against alternate definitions of torture. (See Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse.)
The prohibition on scientific experiments was added, in part, in response to experiments by German and Japanese doctors during World War II, of whom Josef Mengele was the most infamous.

Article 33. No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.

Pillage is prohibited.

Reprisals against protected persons and their property are prohibited.

Under the 1949 Geneva Conventions collective punishments are a war crime. Article 33 states: "No protected person may be punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed," and "collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited."

By collective punishment, the drafters of the Geneva Conventions had in mind the reprisal killings of World Wars I and II. In the First World War, Germans executed Belgian villagers in mass retribution for resistance activity. In World War II, Nazis carried out a form of collective punishment to suppress resistance. Entire villages or towns or districts were held responsible for any resistance activity that took place there.

The conventions, to counter this, reiterated the principle of individual responsibility. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Commentary to the conventions states that parties to a conflict often would resort to "intimidatory measures to terrorize the population" in hopes of preventing hostile acts, but such practices "strike at guilty and innocent alike. They are opposed to all principles based on humanity and justice."

[tnlefty]

2. Under the boots of the liberators....

hearts and minds and all of that. I'm just too disgusted to go much further.

[marmar]

4. Tell me about it...

It just makes me furious. All that hearts and minds talk was a huge pile of mierda.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

8. But, unless we support our troups, we are traitors!

Shame on you even considering morals, ethics and Geneva. That is so unAmerican that it makes you sound French, or worse, a UN supporter.


I fear for our country, and I fear we may be too late to save it.

[tnlefty]

10. Well, to be honest I never believed anything about hearts and mind, nor

liberators, and my outrage-o-meter runs into overload these days! I saw a snippet of the RNC convention and Go to Hell Zell's speachifying, 'nothing makes this marine madder than soldiers being referred to as occupiers and not liberators'. I'll admit that I was 'hatin'' on Zell here before it was okay to do so, but seeing that again just a couple of days ago really infuriated me.

I used to ascribe to the thought that "God don't make no junk", but I'm not so sure that I do believe either in a god anymore and there sure does seem to be a lot of 'junk' out here amongst us.

[burythehatchet]

3. We have learned much from Israel

[NOLADEM]

7. Indeed.

[Roland99]

5. Been doing this since the get-go. Holding spouses/daughters/sons

of "suspected" insurgents/terrorists in jails and using them as hostages to get the men to turn themselves in.

[NOLADEM]

6. Uh, aren't all wars collective punishment

for the actions of a few?

[Gregorian]

9. Think of the children, indeed.

Your day is over neocons. Behold, the law.

Shock and awe and jail time.

[HamdenRice]

11. Palestinianization of Iraq; Likudization of the US

I noticed this was happening from the beginning of the occupation. There is a strain of thought within Israel that says that Arabs only understand brute force and humiliation. Some Labor leaders of the past have believed this, but since Rabin opened negotiations with the PLO, this has been focused in Likud and its successor.

The neo-cons have adopted this view and it seems to be reflected in our military policy toward the occupation.

Tragically, the lessons of Ehud Barak and the vision of Shimon Peres are absent. It amazes me that Israelis forget just how peaceful Israel was when they were making progress toward the two state solution, and this could have been the model for the US in Iraq.

Remember when a psychotic Jordanian crossed the border and killed an Israeli and Arafat went to the Israeli family to offer his condolences and was greeted as a friend and neighbor? Given those times, why do the Israeli right and the neo cons really believe that collective punishment and brute force work?