Main | Reports
|
HUMAN RIGHTS AMERICAN STYLE, Part 2
The torturers have changed, the victims stay the same
I couldn't believe my eyes! Is it so easy to torture someone in
an Iraq
liberated from Saddam?
Yet the marks on the body of Al-Mountadhar Fadhel, a young Iraqi
student of
23 years old, were so undeniably real, shocking, and above all completely
unacceptable.
Al-Mountadhar lives in Hay El-houria, one of the poor, run-down
neighbourhoods in the outskirts of Baghdad. Most of the streets
and allies
are inaccessible to cars. They are either too broken up or are drowned
in
dirty water which nearly reaches up to the sidewalks. "It is
the same
everywhere since the Americans arrived in Baghdad," Ahmed,
a taxi-driver,
explained. In fact, the destruction of Iraqi state buildings,
such as the ministries, the factories, the universities, the administrative
centres, the city halls, etc., threw millions of Iraqi workers out
of work;
including those city employees, among others, who were responsible
for
collecting the garbage. All are on forced unemployment, just at
a time when
there is so much to do to prevent infectious diseases and other
epidemics in
this extremely hot weather. It is more than 50° and the garbage
has not been
collected for weeks in Baghdad neighbourhoods. It took us more than
twenty
minutes to move less than one kilometre and arrive at El-machtel
street
where Al-Mountadhar lives.
The young man told us that everything had started in the area of
the Souk
el-bayâaa market. "I had gone there to buy a tape recorder,
because in these
places you can find less expensive products than in stores,"
he added.
Al-Mountadhar explained to us that in the markets, souks, or other
commercial places, you can always find people who are called locally
"sidewalk salesmen." Sometimes they leave the sidewalk
and directly take
over the roadway. This was the case on that day. These small, informal
merchants, mostly young people, had spread out all kinds of wares
on
cardboard, or small wooden tables, or directly on the road. In general,
these are people who can't find a job and so create their own work.
All
countries, particularly in the third world, which are plagued by
unemployment, are familiar with these kind of salespeople. "I
was in the
process of negotiating the price of the product with a seller"
continued
Al-Mountadhar, "when an American soldier brutally kicked and
overturned the
cardboard with everything on top of it."
He pushed me along and then, as I instinctively raised my hands
to protect
myself, the soldier suddenly threw himself on me, followed by his
companions. I tried to protest, but I was hit, my hands were tied
and I was
pushed towards a vehicle which I was made to enter. As it started
to move,
my eyes were blindfolded."
Some people in our democratic countries find it difficult to realise
that
American soldiers are capable of being just as cruel as the torturers
of
Saddam or any other famous dictator. However, it is to the United
States
that some dictators, especially from Central and South America,
send their
torturers to be trained. Hence cases of abuse by soldiers against
the Iraqi
population take place every day. "Who do we complain to?"
people ask me in a
desperate tone, "the Americans are both the judges and the
torturers."
The young Al-Mountadhar also found it difficult to believe what
he went
through, not in the jails of Saddam, but in those of the American
army. "The
military vehicles drove about 15 or 20 minutes," continued
the young man.
Because he was blindfolded, he couldn't provide any information
about the
place where he was taken. He remembered that, after getting out
of the car,
he was dragged for several meters before he was taken down a flight
of
stairs to end up on the ground.
"The only words I kept repeating non-stop were, "I did
nothing! Let me go!"
Shortly after, I was picked up and my head was shaved. "I had
long hair,"
said Al-Mountadhar with a note of regret in his voice. Next, I was
pushed
face towards the wall and my hands were tied above my head. When
the first
blows hit my body, I couldn't stop myself from crying, not so much
because
of the pain, but because I found all of this so incredibly unjust
coming
from those who were claiming they had come to liberate us from the
oppression of Saddam. They beat me for hours. It was an eternity.
At each
blow from what seemed to be a thick cable, I felt my flesh tear.
I could
hardly hear the words of my torturer, "To teach you to push
an American
back. Why did you push an American back?" I lost consciousness
several
times, but each time was revived. It was horrible. I had never thought
I
would live such an experience outside Saddam's regime."
After the beating, the soldiers kept the young man, covered in
wounds and
blood, late into the night. In the end, it was past 1:00 am when
he was
released, or rather thrown into a deserted street near a commercial
centre.
It was in the middle of curfew, that is, the time when the young
man most
risked being killed, either by the soldiers themselves, who have
a
reputation of being trigger happy, or by any of all these forces
of evil:
bandits, criminals or other networks of gangsters which have flourished
in
the shadow of the occupation and create terror among the Iraqi population.
"I felt very weak and I had difficulty even getting on to
the sidewalk,"
continued Al-Mountadhar. "All the while, I was calling for
help. Finally, a
couple of people coming out of a building approached and carried
me to the
nearest mosque. The brothers helped me, cleaned my wounds and kept
me until
curfew was lifted, before taking me home."
It is important to realise that not all Iraqi victims of abuse
like
Al-Mountadhar will openly tell about what they have undergone, let
alone
denounce their torturers. Far from it; the tyranny of the preceding
regime
sowed among them a fear so deep, that it will take training in a
democratic
culture and human rights before they will be able to practice them
and
reappropriate their country and their future. This is one of the
great needs
which presents itself to humanitarian organisations concerned with
human
rights. In this area, Quebec and Canada enjoy a good amount of trust
from
the Iraqi population.
Greetings to everyone!
Baghdad, 30 July 2003 Zehira Houfani (writer and
journalist), Montreal member of Iraq Solidarity Project
|
|