Abu Ghraib: if you're "sick of the scandal," you haven't fully understood it.
A couple years ago, I ceased most of my interactions with the "daily news" as we know it. No primetime news on TV, no newspapers, and I barely listen to the radio anyways. For a while I shut out the outside world completely. Why? Because I simply couldn't cope with the horrible shit that goes on. Sometimes I would find myself sobbing in front of the television, for people I've never met. And I couldn't keep doing that. Caring so much about the world is also exhausting.But I realized that living in willful ignorance was much worse. So, to the Internet I go, these days, to seek my news.
And yes, there are days when it hits me, and it hits me hard.
Today is one of them.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4718666.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/4716280.stm
(The images, indeed, are disturbing. But that shouldn't be a deterrent to looking at them.)
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article345692.ece
Some quotes from the Independent article:
An ACLU lawyer, Amrit Singh, told Dateline: "The photographs have to be released so the public have some idea of what happened at Abu Ghraib. It is for the public to decide on looking at them what needs to be done."
Indeed. And what needs to be done is that people MUST BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE.
This is unacceptable. Completely unacceptable.
We thought the abuse was bad, and now we're being told it's even worse than we had originally been told.
No one, NO ONE, has the right to treat other human beings in such a heinous fashion. I don't give a flying fuck what nationality they are. I don't give a fuck if they're terrorists or not. It is NOT RIGHT to treat people the way these people were treated. Ever.
I can barely put into words how angry and sad and outraged this makes me.
The release of further pictures of torture will make it more difficult for the US to claim that what happened in Abu Ghraib in 2003 and 2004 was isolated and the work of low-level guards acting on their own initiative. Mr Singh said the images were evidence of "systematic and widespread abuse" of prisoners by US soldiers.
The SBS original broadcast contains some photos that are even worse than the ones linked to by BBC. I was very nearly sick to my stomach.
The sentencing of the seven low-ranking guards that have thus far been charged with the Abu Ghraib scandal are merely between three and ten years. TEN years. That's all. For the murder and abuse and torture of these people.
Absolutely disgusting.
No higher ranking officials have been brought to justice. This has to change.
What bothers me, too, is that the original broadcaster of the images, Australia's SBS, claimed that many of the images were "too disturbing to be shown."
These images are disturbing. They sicken me to the very core. They make me ashamed to even call myself part of the human species - to be a part of a species that is capable of such cold-blooded maliciousness. But the world, I think, should be able to see all these images, from the mildest to the most graphic and horrid. Because only then will people be able to confront the truth. It is a truth that people don't WANT to confront, especially those whose government was behind the act.
But the distaste at viewing such images is secondary. What takes primacy is the fact that actual human beings were forced to endure the acts depicted in the photographs. They didn't just look at them. They starred in them, against their will.
People can be told about torture hither and tither. But it's easy to cast aside words. Pictures, however, are blatant and in-your-face. Pictures convey in a spit-second what words would take paragraphs to do.
And these pictures say a lot.
These pictures say that there were injustices of the most egregious fashion committed at Abu Ghraib.
These pictures say that there is more than one reason for Iraqi resentment towards the troops that are STILL in their country.
These pictures say that it is time for the world to step up and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT.
And I, for one, agree.
You can watch the original broadcast here:
http://news.sbs.com.au/dateline/index.php?page=archive&daysum=2006-02-15
posted by Steph @ 11:33 AM
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