SOLDIERS ADMIT TO RAPE OF 14 YR OLD CHILD

Is happening right now, every day, to thousands. Eventually, those committing the violence against Iraqi women and prisoners will come home, and show you what your “support” means to them:

A ’beer’s rape and murder is neither incidental nor the product of a US soldier’s “personality disorder”: it is part of a pattern that includes Abu Ghraib, as well as the Haditha, Ishaqi and Qaiem massacres. And we see this pattern as serving a strategic function beyond indiscriminate revenge: to couple collective humiliation with intimidation and terror.

Today, four years into the occupation, the whole of Iraq has become Abu Ghraib, with the Iraqi streets as prison corridors and homes as cells. Iraqis are attacked in detention, on the streets and in their homes. It took almost a year, and published photographs of horrific torture in Abu Ghraib, before the world began to heed the voices of the detainees and those trying to defend them. The same is happening to women victims.

Abuses, torture and the rape of Iraqi women have been reported for three years now by independent Iraqi organizations. But the logic of occupation means that occupied people are not to be trusted, and truth is the private ownership of the occupiers. Families of the abused, raped, and killed Iraqi civilians have to wait for months, if not years, until a US soldier comes forward to admit responsibility and the US military begins an investigation. (For the US military to investigate a US soldier’s crime has been seen by Iraqis as the killers investigating their own technical skills.)

On the October 19 2005, Freedom Voice, an Iraqi Human Rights society, reported the rape of three women from the “Saad Bin Abi Waqqas neighborhood” in Tell Afar after a US raid. The alleged rape took place by soldiers inside the women’s own house after the arrest of their male relatives. Medical sources in the town said one of the women died. A US commander ordered some soldiers detained, and no more was heard of this.

Immunity from prosecution under Iraqi or international law is the main fact of the occupation and renders laughable any claims of sovereignty. It is based on UN security council resolution 1546 and the accompanying exchange of letters between Iraqi and American authorities. This immunity applies equally to the marine units accused of roaming the Iraqi and to advisers running ministries, to prison guards, security guards, multinational forces and corporate contractors of all kinds. Random arrests, rapes and killings continue under the so-called “national unity government”, which renewed their mandate and immunity while at the same time talking of a “national reconciliation initiative”. After the sexual abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib, the authorities talked about respecting local traditions, and the need to avoid provoking anger and give the Iraqi people the sense that the occupation recognizes the sensitive status of women. On occasion, Iraqi collaborators joined in. On April 18 2004, the ministry of interior chief, Ahmed Youssef, issued a statement denying maltreatment of female detainees. He said: “We are Muslims. We know very well how to treat our female detainees.” As if violence against women were not a universal crime.

The abuses continue also in the puppet regime’s prisons. On October 20 2005, officials of the Kazemiya women’s prison reported an instance of rape. The UN was refused permission to investigate. According to a report of the UN assistance mission to Iraq, Iraqi police tortured a woman who had been detained in Diwaniya police station since March 2005. The victim recounted that electric shocks were applied to her heels. She was reportedly told her teenage daughter would be raped if she did not supply the information her interrogators wanted.

A report published by the Iraqi National Association for Human Rights on October 29 2005 found that women held in interior ministry detention centers are subject to numerous human rights violations, including “systematic rape by the investigators and … other forms of bodily harm in order to coerce them into making confessions”. The report added that prisons fail to meet even the most basic standards of hygiene, and that the women were deprived of facilities as fundamental as toilets. The ministry of justice has confirmed the accuracy of the report.

The wall of denial is cracking. On June 12, al-Jazeera showed footage of Mohammed al-Diaeny, a member of parliament, going to a prison in Baquba, near Baghdad, where men showed evidence of torture and talked of being raped. Seven women detainees were shown but refused to talk. “Too ashamed”, whispered one of them. In response, Jawad al-Bolani, minister of the interior, promised investigation. He later vowed to release all women prisoners and negotiate with the multinational forces to release theirs.

There will be no end to these violations as long as Iraq remains occupied by forces that enjoy immunity from prosecution under Iraqi law and as long as the occupation authorities continue to treat Iraqi citizens with contempt in order to feel better about plundering the nation’s wealth and depriving its people of their most fundamental rights under international law and human rights conventions. The Iraqi puppet regime’s promises and the US, investigations of the “personality disorders” of the soldiers and the “few bad apples” are irrelevant for Iraqis: for them, the occupation means destruction, rape and pillage.

I have provided for any interested in this a few links, some do contain some rough language.
St. Louis Independent Media Center
Washington Post
Umar Lee