Mission & Justice

James Hider; 4/7/08

Private security guards operating in Iraq will lose their immunity from prosecution under a treaty being negotiated between Iraq and the US, Iraq’s Foreign Minister said yesterday. The new accord, part of a hotly disputed Status of Forces Agreement that will govern the legal standing of US forces in Iraq after the UN mandate expires in December, will affect tens of thousands of bodyguards, including many Australians. Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari said the Americans had agreed to drop the immunity as part of their more “flexible” approach in talks on security, which have sparked anger among many Iraqis, who regard the deal as an effort to extend US control over the country.

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Sandra Hall; 3/7/08
Film; Genre; Documentary; Run Time 116 minutes; Rated MA 15+; Country: Australia; Director: Errol Morris; Rating: stars-4

It was the photograph of the hooded figure standing on a box with electrical wires dangling from his wrists that first alerted the world to the cruelties of Abu Ghraib. So bizarre was this image that it was at first difficult to comprehend. Was it a still from a horror movie or something out of a museum of medieval barbarities? The answer was swift in coming as more photographs flashed on to our television screens. Suddenly we were being ushered into the world of modern counter-terrorism - a place where the moral compass swings in disorienting directions. You will get the idea if I tell you that the treatment meted out to the man on the box was eventually judged to be “standard operating procedure”.

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John Pilger; 3/7/08

Two weeks ago, I presented a young Palestinian, Mohammed Omer, with the 2008 Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. Awarded in memory of the great US war correspondent, the prize goes to journalists who expose establishment propaganda, or “official drivel”, as Gellhorn called it. Mohammed shares the prize of 5,000 pounds with Dahr Jamail. At 24, he is the youngest winner. His citation reads: “Every day, he reports from a war zone, where he is also a prisoner. His homeland, Gaza, is surrounded, starved, attacked, forgotten. He is a profoundly humane witness to one of the great injustices of our time. He is the voice of the voiceless.” The eldest of eight, Mohammed has seen most of his siblings killed or wounded or maimed. An Israeli bulldozer crushed his home while the family were inside, seriously injuring his mother. And yet, says a former Dutch ambassador, Jan Wijenberg, “he is a moderating voice, urging Palestinian youth not to court hatred but seek peace with Israel”. Last Thursday, on his return journey, he was met at the Allenby Bridge crossing (to Jordan) by a Dutch official, who waited outside the Israeli building, unaware Mohammed had been seized by Shin Bet, Israel’s infamous security organization.

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3/7/08

A chart outlining “coercive management techniques” for US interrogators at Guantanamo Bay was copied verbatim from a 1957 US Air Force study of Chinese communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions - many of them false - from US prisoners. The New York Times reported the chart listed techniques for use on prisoners including “sleep deprivation”, “prolonged constraint” and “exposure”. Reporting the origins of the chart, the paper said it was the latest and most vivid evidence of the way communist interrogation methods the US has long condemned as torture became the basis for interrogations by the military at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp, and by the Central Intelligence Agency. Some of the methods were used against a number of prisoners at Guantanamo before 2005, when Congress banned the use of coercion by the military, the report said.

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2/7/08

Hundreds of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have stormed the Egyptian gate at the Rafah crossing, clashing with security forces. Palestinian youth on Wednesday threw rocks at Egyptian soldiers, who responded in kind, keeping the crowd at bay with water cannons. At least six border guards were hurt in the exchange, Reuters news agency reported, citing an Egyptian police source. Television footage showed some Palestinians were also wounded. Egypt opened the crossing for two days to allow in Palestinians who need medical treatment not available in Gaza, and for Palestinians to return home.

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Editorial 2/7/08

The invasion of Iraq has turned into a disaster. The US should not heed those who are now urging a pre-emptive strike on Iran. In the sabre-rattling and tub-thumping aftermath to the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001, President George Bush famously decried the existence of an “axis of evil”, linking North Korea, Iran and Iraq. The last member in this alleged triad, as the world knows only too well, was dealt with by an invasion and occupation that have resulted in the greatest debacle in American foreign policy since the end of the Second World War. The first has recently been dropped from the Bush blacklist and gained the prospect of aid for disclosing details of its nuclear programs. But the third, Iran, continues to possess a pariah status, and is the subject of rumours and veiled threats of military action, by the US, Israel or both, which are alarmingly reminiscent of the rhetoric used in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The latest round of war talk arises from a report in the New Yorker by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, based in large part on information from sources close to Vice-President Dick Cheney, and describing an expansion of US covert operations in Iran.

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Anne Davies; 1/7/08

One of America’s foremost foreign affairs reporters, Seymour Hersh, has claimed America is running a covert operation into Iran, funded by $US400 million ($A414 million) siphoned from other programs, with authorisation from Democratic congressional leaders. According to Hersh, a journalist with the New Yorker magazine, Congress agreed to a request from President George Bush late last year to pay for a significant escalation of covert operations against Iran. He said these included activities by the the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command, and involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organisations. They also included gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program. Hersh said covert operations were not new but had been stepped up dramatically in recent months, causing disquiet in Congress.

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1/7/08

Four Iraqi men are suing US military contractors who they say tortured them while they were detained in Abu Ghraib prison, according to lawsuits being filed at US federal courts today. The lawsuits allege the contractors committed violations of US law, including torture, war crimes and civil conspiracy. The scandal over the treatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib unleashed a wave of global condemnation against the US when images of abused prisoners surfaced in 2004.

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Editorial; 30/6/08; http://www.gulfnews.com/opinion/editorial_opinion/ region/10225033.html

In the end a deal was done, but it is legitimate to ask why it had not been done sooner. The deal, to free Hezbollah fighters in exchange for the bodies of the two Israeli soldiers whose abduction culminated in the 2006 Lebanon war begs the question; what was that war for? There is a moral bankruptcy at the heart of Israeli policy. Colonies are built to scupper any hopes of a viable Palestinian state, talks of peace breakthroughs are met with attacks on Palestinian civilians, and Gaza is turned into an open prison. Two summers ago Hezbollah fighters captured the two soldiers in a cross-border raid, provoking a 33-day war with Israel that killed 1,200 Lebanese, mostly civilians, and 157 Israelis. Just why did Lebanon go through the torment when a deal was always possible, when blood did not have to be spilt? In return for the servicemen’s bodies Israel must release Samir Kantar - a Lebanese fighter who has been serving four life sentences since 1979 - four other Hezbollah fighters, and the remains of dozens of other Lebanese and Palestinians who infiltrated Israel’s northern border before 2000. The deal is controversial in Israel and so it should be, not least, since it could have been done sooner.

Linda S. Heard; 30/6/08

Sometimes I try to imagine what it must be like to be a Palestinian without a secure home, without reliable travel documents and without the rights most of us take for granted. But as someone who has a passport that opens most doors and the freedom to come and go at will it is difficult to put myself fully in the shoes of people who never know when the place they call home will be barred to them. Imagine waking up one day to be told you are no longer considered a citizen of your own country and have no automatic entitlement to see your parents or siblings ever again. Zeina Ashrawi, the daughter of political activist and academic Hanan Ashrawi, doesn’t need to imagine. A child of Jerusalem and a holder of a Jordanian passport stamped “Palestinian” as well as a Jerusalem identity card and an Israeli travel document, Zeina travelled to the US when she was 17 to attend school and college.

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