The rape of men: the darkest secret of war | Society | The Observer. Of all the secrets of war, there is one that is so well kept that it exists mostly as a rumour. It is usually denied by the perpetrator and his victim. Governments, aid agencies and human rights defenders at the UN barely acknowledge its possibility. Yet every now and then someone gathers the courage to tell of it. This is just what happened on an ordinary afternoon in the office of a kind and careful counsellor in Kampala, Uganda. For four years Eunice Owiny had been employed by Makerere University's Refugee Law Project (RLP) to help displaced people from all over Africa work through their traumas.
Owiny invited the husband in. Laying the pus-covered pad on the desk in front of him, he gave up his secret. "That was hard for me to take," Owiny tells me today. It's not just in East Africa that these stories remain unheard. But they are willing to talk, thanks largely to the RLP's British director, Dr Chris Dolan. I meet Jean Paul on the hot, dusty roof of the RLP's HQ in Old Kampala. Now in their 80s and 90s, aging WWII sex slaves haven’t forgotten. By Michele Lent Hirsch/Guest Blogger — March 29, 2013 It’s a euphemism we still haven’t shaken.
“Comfort women” refers to the women and girls—usually foreign, from countries like Korea, the Philippines, and China—forced by the Japanese military to do sex work mainly during World War II. Armed groups from various countries have done this too, although perhaps without the euphemism, choosing a group of individuals to use for repeated sexualized violence. Then combatants and high-up generals rape them. Euphemisms, and terminology in general, are tricky in the context of war. That brutality is what photographer Ahn Sehong’s new exhibit, featured on The New York Times’ “Lens” blog, aims to capture.
At one point, these elderly women were young and living in Korea, then held captive by the Japanese army in China. Each of Sehong’s subjects has a grueling story. The photographer is pairing his project with activism, hoping to raise aid for the aging survivors. When Military Groupthink Condones the Mass Killing of Civilians | Rights & Liberties. Justice Delayed by Patrick Wrigley. As the disappeared from the Kurdish-Turkish conflict are unearthed from unmarked graves, will the government help deliver justice? Image courtesy Philip Downey When I met him last March, Davut Akyon was clawing at the fresh brown earth in Bağözü, a village in Southeast Turkey.
He worked deliberately, but quickly, turning over large chunks of limestone, moving from one mound to another, the speed of his labor failing to mask the futility of his task. Occasionally, he would throw a rock down a well, following its trajectory with vacant eyes. Davut was looking for his brother’s bones. Bağözü, known as Triwa in Kurdish, was forcefully evacuated by the Turkish military in 1995. Davut does not know why they took [his brother].
Davut, who lives in Dargeçit, looks older than his forty-one years. Nedim was twelve when he was taken in the middle of the night from his family home. That was the last time Davut saw Nedim. At that time, Dargeçit was at the center of a society that was disintegrating. Syria: Government Attacking Bread Lines. (New York) – Syrian government forces have dropped bombs and fired artillery at or near at least 10 bakeries in Aleppo province over the past three weeks, killing and maiming scores of civilians who were waiting for bread. The attacks are at least recklessly indiscriminate and the pattern and number of attacks suggest that government forces have been targeting civilians, Human Rights Watch said. Both reckless indiscriminate attacks and deliberately targeting civilians are war crimes. One attack in the city of Aleppo on August 16, 2012, killed up to 60 people and wounded more than 70. Another attack in the city on August 21 killed at least 23 people and wounded 30.
VIEWER DISCRETION ADVISED“Day after day, Aleppo residents line up to get bread for their families, and instead get shrapnel piercing their bodies from government bombs and shells,” said Ole Solvang, emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch who has just returned from Aleppo. When the shelling started we went to the basement. Indicting the US Government for crimes against humanity – unsealing the evidence. It is opportune that only a couple of weeks after three-times human rights awardee Bradley Manning presented his case against the US Government for war crimes committed in Iraq and Afghanistan, details have been released (see video trailer above) of a 15 month investigation by the Guardian and the BBC into torture centres in Iraq, coordinated by US Special Forces commander, James Steele, and former US General Petraeus. Add in evidence of system-wide torture and massacres in Iraq and Afghanistan as compiled by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism (see below) with additional evidence from a number of other sources (also below) and what we have is much more than a dossier but an indictment – unsealed and without need for a grand jury – that could form the basis of charges raised against the US Administration either in the World Court or – deliciously turning the tables – at the military tribunal of Bradley Manning.
The game is afoot! Note 1. Note 2. Note 3. Note 4. Note 5. Note 6. A. B. Counting Drone Strike Deaths | Human Rights Institute | Columbia Law School. Debate about drone strikes often centers on who is killed: "militants" or civilians. In the absence of official information, casualty estimates provided by media fill the gap; however, the estimates are incomplete and may significantly undercount the extent of reported civilian deaths. The US government owes the public an accounting of who is really being killed.
Read the press release. Get the Report Download the summary and recommendations (PDF) Download this report (PDF) Download the Columbia dataset (PDF) View related material Civilian Impact of Drones: Unexamined Costs, Unanswered Questions Follow us: @CLSHumanRights #DroneDeaths Selected Media Coverage Questions on Drones, Unanswered Still, New York Times Counting the bodies in the Pakistani drone campaign, Bureau of Investigative Journalism Columbia Study: Media Drone Strike Reporting Flawed, Huffington Post Apple Rejects Phone App That Tracks Worldwide Drone Strikes, Truthout.org. US Army 'kill team' in Afghanistan posed with photos of murdered civilians | World news. The Afghanistan 'kill team' photos of murdered civilians could be more damaging than those from Abu Ghraib, say Nato commanders.
Photograph: AP Commanders in Afghanistan are bracing themselves for possible riots and public fury triggered by the publication of "trophy" photographs of US soldiers posing with the dead bodies of defenceless Afghan civilians they killed. Senior officials at Nato's International Security Assistance Force in Kabul have compared the pictures published by the German news weekly Der Spiegel to the images of US soldiers abusing prisoners in Abu Ghraib in Iraq which sparked waves of anti-US protests around the world.
They fear that the pictures could be even more damaging as they show the aftermath of the deliberate murders of Afghan civilians by a rogue US Stryker tank unit that operated in the southern province of Kandahar last year. Other charges include the mutilation of corpses, the possession of images of human casualties and drug abuse. The Kill Team: How U.S. Soldiers in Afghanistan Murdered Innocent Civilians | Politics News. Kandahar massacre: gunman Army says is Bales shot without warning, farmer testifies. JOINT BASE LEWIS-McCHORD, Wash. — First, there were dogs barking in the middle of the night.
Then, two or three gunshots from the housing compound next door. Haji Mohammed Naim, a farmer from the southern Afghanistan village of Alkozai, awoke with a start. Then came knocks on the door from terrified neighbors, fleeing what they said was a gunman wearing U.S. military gear. The gunman wasn’t far behind. All Naim could see was the blinding headlamp strapped around his forehead as he moved over a wall from the compound next door. “I didn’t recognize him. The Article 32 hearing in a courtroom south of Seattle, under way since Monday, will determine whether Bales is held for a general court martial. “I was standing here, and he was standing there,” Naim said, indicating a space as close as the water bottle on the table in front of him.
“Did he say anything before he shot you?” “I don’t remember, but my son told me that he … heard me talking with him, [saying] ‘What are you doing? US invasion leaves lasting Iraq scars. I am sorry for the role I played in Fallujah | Ross Caputi. US soldiers return to their barracks at a military base outside Fallujah, Iraq, in 2004. Photograph: Stefan Zaklin/EPA It has been seven years since the end of the second siege of Fallujah – the US assault that left the city in ruins, killed thousands of civilians, and displaced hundreds of thousands more; the assault that poisoned a generation, plaguing the people who live there with cancers and their children with birth defects.
It has been seven years and the lies that justified the assault still perpetuate false beliefs about what we did. The US veterans who fought there still do not understand who they fought against, or what they were fighting for. I know, because I am one of those American veterans. In the eyes of many of the people I "served" with, the people of Fallujah remain dehumanised and their resistance fighters are still believed to be terrorists.
It could have been me instead of Travis or Brad. Travis and Brad are both victims and perpetrators. Tracking James Steele, the alleged coordinator of Iraqi torture centres: US War Crimes Tribunal investigation #1. James Steele today We have tracked down the man identified by The Guardian and the BBC who they alleged supervised death squads and torture squads, first in El Salvador, then Iraq (under General Petraeus). James Steele, named in the joint Guardian/BBC investigation, lives in Texas and operates as a counter-insurgency consultant. Significantly he styles himself as ‘Counsellor to US Ambassador for Iraqi Security Forces’. In other words, though not officially employed by the US military he is acting in a private capacity, offering the same services he coordinated when on active service in Iraq.
Below, are the knowns, unknowns and known unknowns of Steele. (We assume he is an ideal candidate to subpoena to any inquiry or prosecution of US war crimes.) To see specific allegations made against Steele and to find out more about the accusations of war crimes against the US Government, click here . A. B. . * During “Operation Just Cause” in Panama, with operational control of U.S. C. The Iraqi Wolf Brigade & ‘Frago 234′: US War Crimes Tribunal investigation #2. The Wolf Brigade together with order Frago 234 (see below) was first exposed over two years ago when Wikileaks began to publish material provided by whistleblower Bradley Manning. This article merely pulls together that material, given that in less than three months time a trial will commence. The Wolf Brigade – an Iraqi death squad, set up by US Special Forces coordinator James Steele – was the subject of a recent Guardian/BBC investigation: the full 50 minute video of this investigation is provided below.
A Wolf Brigade raid at close quarters is shown above. Note 1. Bradley Manning provided information to the public domain in accordance with the guidance issued by the ICRC and subsequently is the victim of a political prosecution by the US Administration in order to deflect any investigation into war crimes he revealed. Julian Assange is similarly persecuted by the US Government and for the same reason. Note 2. The Wolf Brigade Torture and Frago 234 See also. Guantanamo | Gareth Peirce, Andy Worthington, Wikileaks, interviews with former detainees: US war crimes tribunal investigation #3. As part of our series of investigations for a proposed US war crimes tribunal we decided on the matter of Guantanamo Bay to go direct to the experts: Gareth Pierce, Andy Worthington, Wikileaks and, of course, the former detainees. Below, we present highlights of the investigations conducted by Andy Worthington, links to the Wikileaks files on Guantanamo and audio interviews with former Guantanamo detainees.
Above is a video of a talk (January, 2012) by Gareth Peirce, who has written a book on Guantanamo (‘Dispatches from the dark side: on Torture and the death of justice’) and whose clients include Moazzam Begg and Shakar Aamer. Breaking… Gitmo detainees on now indefinite hunger strike. The overall picture that emerges from the Wikileaks files, Worthington’s flawless analysis, and Peirce’s observations is of a facility that history will show is of a level that any Nazi (and we use that term here in its true historical context not as a pejorative) would be proud of.
A. B. 1. 2. C. Links. Afghanistan atrocities: US war crimes tribunal investigation #4. Kabul, March 2013 Recently a small but significant demonstration in support of Bradley Manning took place in Afghanistan (see photo above). Via Wikileaks, Manning told the world the truth about what was happening there. Below, as part of our series of investigations for a proposed prosecution of the US for war crimes, we compile the evidence Manning raised (in the Afghan War Diaries) about war crimes in Afghanistan, as well as more recent evidence and extensive links. Incidentally, ask any historian and they will explain that no one – not even the Russians, not the British, not the Tartars, nor the Mongols – ever won a war in Afghanistan. War crimes 11 June, 2007. . 17 June, 2007. August 21, 2008. May 5, 2009. September 4, 2009. December 26, 2009.
February 12, 2010 . February 21, 2010. March 11, 2012. Links: US War Crimes Tribunal investigation #5. Three years ago, to this week, WikiLeaks posted a 40-minute video showing an attack by US military on unarmed civilians from an Apache helicopter. The attack, which took place in New Baghdad on 12 July, 2007, saw over a dozen people killed. In the aftermath of the attack, US military officials withheld all details, despite several FOIs from Reuters (as well as innocent Iraqi civilians, two of those killed were Reuters journalists, Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen). In February 2010, Bradley Manning, a US private, uploaded the video of the attack to Wikileaks.
On April 3, 2010, Wikileaks released the video ,“Collateral Murder” with added subtitles, to the world. “Collateral Murder” has since been seen by millions of people and has caused outrage. However, six years after the incident, not one person who took part in the attack has been committed for trial, let alone charged; nor has there been there any admission of wrong-doing by the US authorities. ‘Dulce et decorum est’ Iraq War and perverting the course of justice: US War Crimes Tribunal investigation #6.
The US strategy from the beginning of the second Iraq War has been to deflect criticism and prosecution by blaming others. The war began with a lie: that Saddam Hussein had WMD (weapons of mass destruction) and a BBC documentary showed what everyone suspected – that the US Administration went to great lengths to fool the public into accepting that the war was necessary (the true reason for invasion was, of course, oil). During the course of the war the US Administration ensured it was not charged for war crimes committed or for torture. And when Wikileaks revealed those war crimes, instead of prosecuting the persons who had committed the crimes the US Government focused on the person who provided the evidence.
Meanwhile the Bradley Manning prosecution farce continue with the judge decreeing that publication of court documents is a privilege not a right, which, of course, is contrary to the US Constitution. The attempt to prosecute the US Government What Wikileaks tells us really happened. US security contractors & child sex allegations: US War Crimes Tribunal investigation #7. ICC says Muammar Gaddafi killing may be war crime. British Report Details Army Abuse of Baha Mousa in Iraq. WikiLeaks: Iraqi children in U.S. raid shot in head, U.N. says. The rape of men | Society | The Observer. Ignoring Torture Is Standard Operating Procedure in Iraq Predator Drone FOIA. Ei: Netherlands could be safe haven for war criminals: leaked memo. Sri Lanka | Post-Civil War | Tamil Tigers | War Crimes.
Bangladesh Opens War-Crimes Trial for Genocide Suspects.