Breaking the Silence

If the media had not picked up and published or broadcast photographs of Iraqi prisoners being abused by British and American soldiers, their leadership would probably still be in denial. They claim that they “did not know”, but in that case they chose not to know. They had plenty to go on, not least the 53-page report by US Major General Antonio M. Taguba, completed in late February. According to details in The New Yorker (May 10, 2004) by Seymour Hersh, Taguba found that between October and December of 2003 there were numerous instances of "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses" at Abu Ghraib, perpetrated by soldiers of the 372nd Military Police Company, and members of the American intelligence community.

Taguba’s evidence included “detailed witness statements” and “extremely graphic photographic evidence” that he did not include in his report because of their “extremely sensitive nature”. The abuses include “breaking chemical lights and pouring the phosphoric liquid on detainees; pouring cold water on naked detainees; beating detainees with a broom handle and a chair; threatening male detainees with rape; allowing a military police guard to stitch the wound of a detainee who was injured after being slammed against the wall in his cell; sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick, and using military working dogs to frighten and intimidate detainees with threats of attack, and in one instance actually biting a detainee.”

Such torture is routine in the prisons and police stations across Pakistan, but our authorities too continue to doggedly ignore reports about such abuse, which is reported by organisations like the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. In December, the death of Mohammad Akbar, an undertrial prisoner in Sanghar jail sparked riots among the inmates, and the HRCP reports at least 13 suicides and eight unexplained deaths in custody over 2003 “with available evidence suggesting that torture was used”. The HRCP believes that torture in Pakistan is in fact increasing, “with the failure to punish those responsible encouraging others to resort to similar brutality against prisoners.” The question is, will it take graphic photographs to make our authorities address the issue?

In Iraq, British soldiers identified only as ‘A’, ‘B’ (most recently ‘C’) have also provided photographs to British daily The Mirror detailing abuse by British troops. Soldiers A and B claim abuse started because Iraqi police are powerless to process suspects. Soldier B said: "There’s no point taking them to the police station because they’re released within 20 minutes. The coppers don’t want any comeback and let them go. All we do is teach them a lesson our way.” (The Mirror, May 1, 2004). How ‘their’ way is different from
Saddam Hussain’s way, is unclear.

But this too, should be familiar to Pakistanis, where much of the torture and beatings are carried out because of a lack of investigative resources and techniques. Police officers have confessed to staging ‘encounters’ to kill off ‘guilty’ suspects whom they think the judicial system will set free.

There are other reports of British soldiers beating captives to death in custody, and of a video allegedly found of prisoners being thrown off a bridge. According to Soldier B, troops were told to destroy incriminating evidence: “We got a warning, saying the Military Police had found a video of people throwing prisoners off a bridge. It wasn’t ’Don’t do it’ or ’Stop it’. It was ‘Get rid of it.’”

That is the crux of the matter: abuse will continue if it is hidden. “Worse things than what are shown in the photos” have been taking place at Abou Ghraib, admits the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC), which finally revealed that it has known about these abuses for a long time. They remained "very discreet", they say, because ICRC reports were being “taken very seriously” by the authorities in Iraq, Washington and London. Obviously, it took these photographs rather than ‘discreet’ reports to force the appropriate level of seriousness.

Commenting that there are bound to be atrocities “wherever absolute power holds the utterly helpless in secret,” The Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee cites peacetime examples like old people, the mentally ill and children in institutions hidden from view. But it is not just in institutions and prisons that this happens, as every rape or sexual abuse victim knows. Hence the slogan ‘Break the Silence’, for organizations working with victims of sexual abuse, like the War Against Rape.

While reporting the 1960s Vietnam war, John Pilger found that the Saigon offices of American newspapers and TV companies, and international news agencies all had photographs on their internal notice boards, “of dismembered bodies, of soldiers holding up severed ears and testicles and of the actual moments of torture... The question came up whenever visitors caught sight of these pictures: why had they not been published? A standard response was that newspapers would not publish them, because their readers would not accept them. And to publish them, without an explanation of the wider circumstances of the war, was to ‘sensationalise’.” (The Mirror, May 6) That is the difference between Iraq and Vietnam. And as the world focuses on how Washington and London address the Iraq prisoner abuse scandal, it’s time for us in Pakistan to examine and make transparent our own custodial system and hold accountable those responsible for prisoners’ welfare and custody.