Tag: wikileaks

Better Late Than Never? Let’s Hope So

Once again the New York Times is better late than never on reporting human rights abuses.  It took them nearly a decade to start reporting on rogue US soldiers killing civilians for sport in Iraq and Afghanistan. I call your attention to the Winter Soldier testimonies of 2008 which were ignored by the mainstream media — New York Times, LA Times, et al; even the Washington Post only

Once again the New York Times is better late than never on reporting human rights abuses.  It took them nearly a decade to start reporting on rogue US soldiers killing civilians for sport in Iraq and Afghanistan. I call your attention to the Winter Soldier testimonies of 2008 which were ignored by the mainstream media — New York Times, LA Times, et al; even the Washington Post only covered it briefly in their local edition — apparently because to report on civilian atrocities during Bush made you a traitor. You had to go to a noncorporate show like Democracy Now to even be aware of such crimes.  We’ve also got paramilitaries there operating freely above the law, which only got acknowledged in the New York Times this year due to Wikileaks forcing the Times‘ hand. Thankfully, now that Obama’s in power the mainstream media seems to feel freer to at least tentatively discuss such matters as they relate to Iraq and Afghanistan.

I’m not sure what their excuse is for waiting 39 years to let us in on this 1971 nightmare that wasn’t deemed particularly newsworthy at the time it was happening, when something could perhaps have been done to stop it.  I know, I know, there are many such horrors during wars around the world all the time, I get it.  Welp, here’s one more.  Maybe it’s not too late to bring some of the war criminals responsible for it to justice. It’s the least these women and their families deserve.

Bangladesh War’s Toll on Women Still Undiscussed

By NILANJANA S. ROY
Published: August 24, 2010

NEW DELHI — The numbers are in dispute, but the story they tell has remained the same for four decades: 200,000 women (or 300,000, or 400,000, depending on the source) raped during the 1971 war in which East Pakistan broke with West Pakistan to become Bangladesh.

The American feminist Susan Brownmiller, quoting all three sets of statistics in her 1975 book “Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape,” compared the rapes of Bangladesh with the rapes of Chinese women by Japanese soldiers at Nanjing in 1937-38.

Accepting even the lowest set of figures for Bangladesh forces a horrifying comparison — the 1992-95 Bosnian war saw one-tenth the number of rapes as did the Bangladesh war. The rapes of Bosnian women forced the world to recognize rape as “an instrument of terror,” as a crime against humanity. But so far no one has been held to account for the sexual violence against Bangladeshi women in 1971.

As the 40th anniversary of the 1971 war approaches, the Bangladeshi government has set up an International Crimes Tribunal to investigate the atrocities of that era. But human rights advocates and lawyers fear CONT’D AT NEW YORK TIMES>>

US Paramilitaries* Ordered to Principal’s Office to Get Slap on Wrist

Originally posted 3/16/10 by Jefe Von Stanley on MediaElites.com.  *UPDATE 7/26/10:  When I first posted this, some took issue with my use of the word “paramilitary” to describe US Special Forces in Afghanistan.  Well, just 4 months later the infamous Afghanistan archive has been leaked by Wiki-leaks, and lo and behold, the summary of its contents according to the New York Times includes the fact that “the Central Intelligence

Originally posted 3/16/10 by Jefe Von Stanley on MediaElites.com.  *UPDATE 7/26/10:  When I first posted this, some took issue with my use of the word “paramilitary” to describe US Special Forces in Afghanistan.  Well, just 4 months later the infamous Afghanistan archive has been leaked by Wiki-leaks, and lo and behold, the summary of its contents according to the New York Times includes the fact that “the Central Intelligence Agency has expanded paramilitary operations inside Afghanistan.”  The AP also tells us this week that “some American military commando operations may have amounted to war crimes.”]  Happy now?  I rest my case.

 No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

Except that one’s a “reign of terror” and the other’s just a li’l misunderstanding. But you know I would never make an incendiary remark, so you decide whether US Special Forces often operate an awful lot like Bosnian Serb paramilitaries* in the 1990s when it comes to their regard for the Muslim civilian populace.

New York Times, 3/16/10
Special Operations forces have been responsible for a large number of the civilian casualties in Afghanistan and operate by their own rules…These special forces were not accountable to anyone in the country… Last year…there were 596 civilian deaths attributed to coalition forces, according to United Nations figures. Afghan and United Nations officials blame Special Operations troops for most of those deaths.

“In most of the cases of civilian casualties, special forces are involved,” said Mohammed Iqbal Safi, head of the defense committee in the Afghan Parliament.

“These forces often operate with little or no accountability and exacerbate the anger and resentment felt by communities,” the Human Rights Office of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan wrote in its report on protection of civilians for 2009. [No UN charges have been brought against any US military personnel because they apologized, and therefore they’re not guilty.]

UN News Centre, 7/23/07
The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) has decided that, in the interest of justice, two Bosnian Serb paramilitaries charged with multiple crimes…will be tried jointly [at the Hague].

Continued at http://mediaelites.com/2010/03/16/muslims-screwed-again-us-paramilitaries-ordered-to-stand-in-corner .