Martelen

U ziet het stoffelijk overschot van een van die vele duizenden doodgemartelde burgers van El Salvador, slachtoffer van de speciale doodseskaders van het door de VS gefinancierde en getrainde Salvadoraanse leger. Ik moest aan deze mensen denken toen ik van de week vernam dat de Amerikaanse minister van Buitenlandse Zaken Condoleezza Rice Europa heeft beloofd mee te werken aan een onderzoek naar geheime CIA-gevangenissen in Europa, waar van elders ingevlogen gevanenen worden verhoord. Waarom mevrouw Rice niet meteen kon zeggen of er dergelijke martelcentra bestaan bleef onduidelijk. 17 mei 2004, na de publicatie van de Abu Ghraib foto's, reageerde de Amerikaanse SOA Watch, die al jarenlang martelpraktijken documenteert, als volgt: 'Recent reports of the torture of Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib military prison near Baghdad are part of a larger pattern of abuse and torture at the hands of U.S. soldiers, U.S.-trained soliders, “independent contractors” and intelligence agents around the world. In fact, U.S. Army intelligence manuals advocating torture techniques and how to circumvent laws on due process, arrest and detention were used for at least a decade to train Latin American soldiers at the U.S. Army’s School of the Americas, renamed in 2001 the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation or WHINSEC. “We see a consistent pattern of the Pentagon claiming to work for democracy,” says Fr. Roy Bourgeois, founder of SOA Watch, “while in their prisons and training centers, reports of torture and human rights abuses continue to surface.“Over 64,000 Latin American soldiers have been trained in combat skills and psychological warfare at the SOA/WHINSEC. Graduates of the school are consistently involved in human rights abuses and atrocities in Latin America.' Zie ook http://www.soaw.org/new/ Ook de slachtoffers van het Amerikaans beleid stonden niet verbaasd over de Abu Ghraib praktijken: 'For many Latin American victims of torture, the infamous pictures of abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison brought back not only chilling recollections of their own experiences, but also confirmed what they have long maintained: that their torturers were following interrogation guidelines set by the US Army School of the Americas (SOA). "I had flashbacks when I saw the guy with the hood [at Abu Ghraib]," says Carlos Mauricio, a Salvadorean who was tortured in 1983. Founder of Stop Impunity, a group that seeks to prosecute human rights violators, dismisses as a "whitewash" the Bush administration's view that Abu Ghraib abuse was the work of a few US army misfits. "What happened at Abu Ghraib was torture by the book; they were implementing US policy," Mauricio, 51, told the Sunday Herald.' Zie http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1212-02.htm Al decennialang zijn westerse martelpraktijken in conflictgebieden geen uitzondering maar regel. Afgelopen dinsdag meldde de Herald Tribune: 'As the U.S. military pushes the largely Shiite Iraqi security services into a larger role in combating the insurgency, evidence has begun to mount suggesting that the Iraqi forces are carrying out executions in predominantly Sunni neighborhoods. Hundreds of accounts of killings and abductions have emerged recently, most of them brought forward by Sunni civilians, who claim that their relatives have been taken away by Iraqi men in uniform without warrant or explanation. Zie:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/11/29/news/sunnis.php
En: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11180.htm Vorige week donderdag eindigde een artikel in NRC/Handelsblad over mogelijk verdere uitbreiding van de militaire inzet in Afghanistan met de regel: 'Nederland eist van de Afghaanse regering schriftelijke beloften dat gevangenen die door de Nederlanders worden gemaakt niet worden gemarteld of de doodstraf kunnen krijgen.' Soms denk ik dat ik een surrealistische wereld ben beland. Zou het kabinet Balkenende en NRC werkelijk denken dat martelaars zich aan regels houden?