Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 6. maj 2004 / Time Line May 6, 2004
Version 3.005/06/2004
Sexual Abuse in Iraq is No Accident
By Tom Cahill
President, Stop Prisoner Rape
http://www.spr.org
Stop Prisoner Rape is an organization I rescued in 1983, directed
until 1994, and have been president of since 1998.
Yes, I am a survivor of this barbarism. Memos from my FBI files
indicate the Bureau's Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO)
against the New Left may have set me up to be beaten, gang-raped
and otherwise tortured while jailed for civil disobedience in 1968
because of my anti-Vietnam War activities.
I'm not the only peace activist to receive such treatment at the
hands of the US criminal justice system. Arrested on the grounds of
the White House in Washington, DC, at a "Pray-In" to stop the
bombing of Cambodia in 1973, Stephen Donaldson, small and white,
was placed in an all-Black cell block where he was beaten and
gang-raped for two days. After release from the hospital, he went
public at a press conference. Donny and I teamed up in 1984 and
worked together on this issue till he died in 1994 of AIDS
contracted from rape in prison in the early 80s.
One of the "Watergate plumbers" was confined in the same DC jail as
Donny in August 1973. He writes about Donny on pages 318-321 in
"Will: The Autobiography of G. Gordon Liddy" (1980).
How many more activists raped in confinement is yet unknown. But
because of the extreme humiliation of this barbarism, sexual
assault must be an excellent way to silence dissidents. Therefore
it's my belief that among other "excesses," sexual torture is being
taught at the US Army's infamous "School of the Americas." And may
I remind you, Faith Fippinger, a human shield in Bagdad during the
invasion last year, is currently in prison for "tresspassing" at a
demonstration at the School of the Americas late last year.
Has the United States of America sunk to a new low in depravity,
greed, and lust for power? I don't think so. The USA has been
"abusing" the whole planet and even many of its own citizens for
decades. Pres. George W. Bush is no anomaly as members of the
Democratic Party would have us believe. Will politics be different
under President John F. Kerry? I don't think so.
The expression on Private Lynndie England's face is haunting. Posed
next to a hooded, naked Iraqi prisoner in a film shown on 60
Minutes 2, England is grinning and flashing a jaunty 'thumbs up' as
if she'd just hit a home run in a softball game.
But what's really behind England's seemingly casual gesture? In the
flurry of reporting and commentary about what took place in the
notorious Abu Ghraib prison, the deliberate decision by some
American soldiers to use sexual abuse as a tactic to humiliate
detainees warrants further examination.
The new reports from Iraq include allegations that coalition
soldiers threatened male prisoners with rape, sodomized a detainee
with an object, forced a naked, hooded detainee to masturbate,
posed groups of naked prisoners in human pyramids, left male
prisoners in cells naked or wearing women's underwear, and forced
one detainee to simulate oral sex with another detainee.
These are troubling events, but they didn't happen by accident. The
choice to use sexually charged forms of abuse was not random or
careless. More likely, it was humiliation by design.
Sexual violence is uniquely dehumanizing. Those who perpetrate this
kind of abuse, both at home and abroad, are undeniably aware of the
shame these acts induce.
And the psychological consequences shouldn't be underestimated.
Feelings of self-hate are common, and victims often hesitate to
report the abuse in order to avoid the stigma that comes with
victimization.
In particular, many male victims of sexual violence report feeling
that their masculinity has been compromised. Often, victims blame
themselves and even in impossible circumstances believe that they
somehow should have prevented it. Long-term psychological
consequences may include post-traumatic stress disorder, substance
abuse, and suicide.
Some observers have noted that nudity, forced masturbation and
humiliating sexual positions are particularly unacceptable in the
Islamic world. And it is certainly important to take cultural
differences into account. But sexual abuse is universally
appalling, and the similarity to what many U.S. prisoners routinely
undergo is striking.
Approximately one in five male inmates in the United States has
faced forced or pressured sexual contact in custody, according to
studies by researchers such as Cindy Struckman-Johnson at the
University of South Dakota. One in 10 has been raped. For women,
whose abusers are often corrections officers, the rates of sexual
assault are as high as one in four in some facilities.
This form of abuse reared its ugly head when police officers
sodomized Abner Louima in a New York stationhouse bathroom; when a
Wisconsin corrections officer impregnated mentally ill inmate
Jackie Noyes; and when corrections staff knowingly taunted Roderick
Johnson who was raped and prostituted by Texas prison gangs.
With this pattern of abuse so common at home, it's almost
unsurprising that the most senior of the individuals accused of
abusing Iraqi detainees, Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick II, was
himself a six-year veteran of the Virginia Department of
Corrections.
But, whether it happens in Iraq or in the U.S., sexual abuse is a
form of torture employed to uniquely degrade and humiliate
prisoners, people who are virtually helpless to prevent it. And
unless we stop it, we give our own thumbs up, in a sense, to a well
documented and devastating form of brutality.
Lara Stemple
Executive Director
Stop Prisoner Rape
Alex Coolman
Communications Coordinator
Stop Prisoner Rape
05/06/2004
Red Cross Says It Urged U.S. to Act on Iraq Prison Abuse
Staff members of the International Committee of the Red Cross were
fully aware of the full spectrum of abuses of Iraqi prisoners by
American soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad and had
repeatedly urged the United States to take corrective action, a
spokesman for the humanitarian organization said today, writes the
New York Times.
05/06/2004
Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty: the Additional
Protocol enters into force in all the Member States
IP/04/602 - Brussels, 6 May 2004
On 30 April, the Vice-President of the European Commission, Loyola.
De Palacio officially informed Mohamed El-Baradei, Director General
of the International Atomic Energy Agency of the United Nations
(IAEA) based in Vienna, of the readiness of the Member States of
the EU to apply the Additional Protocol to the Non-Proliferation of
Nuclear Weapons Treaty. This move will set an example to the
international community by guaranteeing a co-ordinated, smooth and
uniform implementation of the Additional Protocol in the territory
of the EU and by enabling international efforts to combat
proliferation to be concentrated in less stable regions of the
world. "Through this commitment, the EU has shown itself to be in
the vanguard of states seeking universal coverage of these
agreements and consequently the strengthening of the international
community's efforts to halt the spread of nuclear weapons", said
Loyola de Palacio.
The establishment of the Additional Protocol to the
Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty(1) follows the
discovery of clandestine nuclear activities in certain countries,
intended to allow the development of weapons of mass destruction.
This Protocol was therefore designed to enable the IAEA to improve
its ability to detect such activities, by extending the scope of
its investigations beyond nuclear fuel cycle installations. It
obliges signatory countries to make extensive declarations on all
installations holding nuclear materials (even in small quantities)
or engaging in nuclear fuel cycle activities, such as universities,
research establishments, industrial complexes or hospitals. It is
also aimed at installations which do not necessarily hold nuclear
materials but which, for example, manufacture the nuclear equipment
or have the necessary infrastructure for processing them.
The entry into force of the Additional Protocol will make the
European Commission the main interface between the Member States
and the IAEA. Most of the Member States' declarations on their
installations will originate from or pass through the Commission's
services in Luxembourg, before being transmitted to the Vienna
Agency. In addition to this, the presence of the Commission's
inspectors at site inspections will ensure uniform application of
the Additional Protocol provisions across the EU.
The Commission already plays a very important role in the control
of nuclear materials within the EU under the Euratom Treaty. It has
its own corps of 200 inspectors and also maintains a database
containing details of all civilian nuclear materials in the EU.
Inspections are already carried out in some locations in
co-operation with the IAEA.
(1) World-wide, 189 states are parties to the Treaty on the
Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Only three major states
are not party to this treaty, India, Pakistan and Israel. The NPT
aims to eliminate nuclear weapons completely by preventing their
spread to other states and progressively reducing existing
arsenals. All the countries which are parties to the NPT are
required to allow inspectors to verify that their nuclear materials
are not diverted to illegal weapons programmes.
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