Abu
Ghraib and an NPA Prison
The
Macapagal-Arroyo government has refused to ask Washington to remove the
NPA from its “terrorist list” saying that it is America’s
“sovereign act” to do so. This bizarre understanding of what a
“sovereign act” means clearly implies that Macapagal-Arroyo finds no
problem at all with the prison abuse and other crimes being committed with
impunity in Iraq and other U.S. war fronts as these happen to be identical
to what is happening in her own country.
By
Bobby Tuazon
Bulatlat
A prisoner at
the Abu Ghraib (left) and a prisoner of war at an NPA camp (right)
The
Bush government faces a strong international condemnation for maintaining
a lawless regime in its prison camps in Iraq and Afghanistan – an issue
that has generated at least three separate investigations and the
denunciation of human rights organizations across the world. Last week,
another scandal surfaced about new revelations of prisoner abuse at the
notorious Abu Ghraib, a U.S. military prison west of Baghdad. The reports
revealed the use of unmuzzled police dogs to frighten detained Iraqi
teenagers. The minors – some as young as 15 years old – were forced to
urinate on themselves as part of a sadistic game.
Two
weeks ago in the Philippines, the New People’s Army (NPA) released two
prisoners of war (POWs) almost six months after they were captured by the
guerrillas in an ambush in Camarines Sur province, several kilometers
south of Manila. Army 1Lt. Ronaldo Fidelino and Pfc. Ronel Nemeno were
turned over to representatives of the International Committee of the Red
Cross (ICRC) and later to Silvestre Bello III, chief negotiator of the
government (GRP) peace panel, other officials and the two POWs’
families. The two told newsmen that they were treated well and that they
were briefed of their rights as POWs under the Comprehensive Agreement on
the Respect of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (Carhrihl),
which the government and NDFP signed in 1998.
The
two Filipino POWs were not detained inside a prison with bars as the NPA
unit that captured them had to be mobile, more so due to intensive
military operations all over Southern Luzon. What they had, as a Bulatlat
report said, was a “prison without walls and bars.”
As POWs, Fidelino and Nemeno were treated as hors
de combat under Carhrihl, the Geneva Conventions and protocols of war.
Their daily regimen included a medical check-up administered by a medic of
the NPA, meals, newspapers and even a pack of cigarettes. The leader of
the NPA custodial team who was interviewed by Bulatlat before their
release said that security had to be tightened at night and only so
because the two tried to bribe some guerrillas for their escape. The
guerrillas didn’t take the bait.
The
two would have been released earlier anyway had not defense and armed
forces officials refused the NPA’s request to issue the suspension of
military and police operations (SOMO/SOPO) in Camarines and Albay
provinces in order to guarantee the soldiers’ safe release. About two
years ago, Army special forces violated a SOMO by raiding an NPA camp at
night that led to the killing of a POW who was about to be set free.
Knowing
better
Many
POWs, some of whom included senior military officials like Army Brig. Gen.
Victor Obillo who was set free in 1999 in Mindanao, told of how they were
treated well by their NPA captors. Many of them, including Obillo, would
admit later of how they came to know better the ideological and political
cause of the armed revolutionary movement even if they disagreed during
intense discussions with their captors over their methods. When release
time came, media men were astonished at seeing the POWs’
emotional farewell to their NPA captors.
Army
Gen. Raymund Jarque in the late 1980s commanded the largest military
operations that gave the NPA a lot of headache but also a lot of pain to
the people of Negros. When he defected to the NDFP in 1997, he had to
visit the hinterlands and in public meetings apologized to the poor masses
of Negros for all the displacement and atrocities his command had done. He
was welcomed by the NPA and he became, for a time, a military consultant
to the NDFP during peace talks.
The
New People’s Army is the same entity tagged by the Bush government,
through its State Department, as a terrorist along with the Communist
Party of the Philippines (CPP). (Following the U.S. decision, Jose Maria
Sison, the NDFP’s chief political consultant, was also listed as a
“terrorist” by the Dutch government and the EU Council.) The tagging
of the NPA in the state department’s “foreign terrorist” list was
made in late 2002 after a Washington meeting between U.S. President George
W. Bush and Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The list,
according to the NDFP, has been used by both the U.S. and Philippine
governments to blackmail the NPA to capitulate.
Late
last week, the Bush administration was to be tried before the Iraq War
Crimes Tribunal in New York. Prominent personalities from all over the
world including former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, a number of UN
officials and representatives of previous war crimes tribunals in Europe,
Japan and the U.S. were expected to testify and pass judgment on the war
crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Bush and other top
administration and military officials in Iraq. The holding of the tribunal
has been timed with the Republican Party National Convention where Bush
was to be officially nominated for reelection.
And
the new scandal about other unreported crimes committed by the U.S.
military at Abu Ghraib and other prison camps in Iraq as well as in
Afghanistan is timely. How vivid the impression such reports would make
about the Bush government that, while harping about its democratic values
and as a believer in human rights, also tags other countries as “rogue
states” and anti-U.S. forces including the NPA as “terrorist.”
Exposed
The
scandal at Abu Ghraib prison was first exposed by a letter smuggled out by
a woman prisoner from her cell in December 2003 saying that U.S. guards
had raped her and other women detainees. The women had been forced to
strip naked in front of men, the woman known only as “Noor,” wrote,
and several of them became pregnant. The note urged the Iraqi resistance
to bomb the jail to spare the women further shame. “Noor,” who became
pregnant, is believed to have been killed, the human rights watch Amnesty
International reported.
The
secret inquiry launched in January by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who is of
Filipino descent, found the note accurate. Apparently, many other Iraqi
women detainees – who were among some 40,000 people in U.S. custody all
over Iraq since last year’s invasion – suffered the same fate. Some
had committed suicide.
Many
more reports of prisoner abuse were leaked last April along with thousands
of digital photos taken by U.S. interrogators and MPs themselves. Some
photos showed naked Iraqi prisoners stacked in a pyramid, forced to pose
in mock sexual positions and being beaten. Other photos showed a guard
raping a woman; reports also told of male detainees sodomized.
At
Abu Ghraib, prisoners were often kept naked in very hot or very cold,
small rooms, or completely darkened rooms, clearly in violation of the
Geneva Conventions.
Some
prisoners were tortured and killed, with their deaths faked by U.S.
doctors as due to natural causes. In fact, U.S. doctors at Abu Ghraib and
other prison camps have been severely criticized by medical groups in the
U.S. for serving as accessory to the mistreatment of prisoners.
Scores
of MPs have been investigated and some of them face possible court
martial. But the abuse of prisoners could have been as well authorized by
U.S. commanders themselves and legitimized by military field manuals. The
axe has apparently not fallen on them.
Interrogation
techniques
Interrogation
techniques prescribed by a secretive Special Operations Forces/Central
Intelligence Agency task force that operated in Iraq and Afghanistan were
followed almost to the letter at Abu Ghraib. The task force policy
endorsed the use of stress positions during harsh interrogation
procedures, the use of dogs, yelling, loud music, light control, isolation
and other methods.
The
whole gruesome scenes of interrogation techniques and abuse of prisoners
not only in Iraq but also in Afghanistan can be traced to policy decisions
and public statements from the Pentagon itself and, by extension, to
President Bush. At the start of the bombing of the bombing of Afghanistan
in retaliation for 9/11 late 2001, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ruled
that the U.S. was not bound by the Geneva Conventions and that no
prisoners taken would be held as war combatants. In January 2002, he
declared publicly that hundreds of people captured by U.S. and allied
forces in Afghanistan “do not have any rights” under the Geneva
Conventions.
The
Pentagon statement virtually established a “lawless regime” not only
in Afghanistan but also in Iraq and implied that any humane treatment
would depend on the goodwill of U.S. soldiers. And this policy could not
have been put into effect at Abu Ghraib without the blessings of Bush.
Prison
abuse is routinely practiced by the U.S. military not only to extract
confessions from enemy suspects but more so to create long-term effects.
Prison abuse is not only meant to deny the detainee’s rights which are
provided for in the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and the protocols of war
but also, as a psywar tactic, to demoralize the “enemy.” It also
destroys the very soul of the detainee himself and hence diminishes his
fighting will. It magnifies the superiority of the conqueror including its
power to disregard international humanitarian convention. It reduces the
conflict to a relationship of master and slave, of the triumph – to use
Bush’s own words - of the “good guy” over the “bad guy.”
This
is the same U.S. government that consistently finds defense in the
Philippine government. The Macapagal-Arroyo government has refused to ask
Washington to remove the NPA from its “terrorist list” saying that it
is America’s “sovereign act” to do so. This bizarre understanding of
what a “sovereign act” means clearly implies that Macapagal-Arroyo
finds no problem at all with the prison abuse and other crimes being
committed with impunity in Iraq and other U.S. war fronts as these happen
to be identical to what is happening in her own country.
Now,
who is the real terrorist? Bulatlat
Back
to top
We
want to know what you think of this article.
|