Perspectives
The new American gulags
M Abdul Hafiz
ONCE dreaded by Soviet-dissidents the harshness of gulags as depicted by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in his 'The Gulag Archipelago' pales into insignificance when compared to what have happened now to the inmates of Abu Ghraib, Guantonamo and many other secret CIA prisons that sprouted at the US' behest in the wake of her global war on terror. The notoriety connected with Siberian gulags is almost wasted away with the prison tortures perpetrated by the Americans. During the cold war period the West made much out of the infamous labour camps known under the rubric of gulags that remained scattered like an archipelago through the Soviet Union. Now faced with a prison scandal of much greater seriousness as graphically described in March 9 report of Major General Antonio Taguba the Bush Administration is only con-cerned about its exposure than its contents. But as the miasma of horror stories spread Robert Myers, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, was despatched on a mission to CBS news to tell it to suppress its stories and horrifying pictures of the prison 'abuses.' The chilling accounts of some forty to fifty million Soviet citizens who were condemned to long sentences in gulags both before and after this second world war have scarcely been erased from the memory when ironically new American gulags filled with terror suspects have indeed come up with yet more ugly face. They now stretch from Afghanistan to Iraq, from Guantonamo to umpteen secret CIA prisons around the world. Also there emerges a spanking new system for those incarcerated in those new gulags. The US embraced Geneva conventions after the second world war to protect its soldiers. But for the inmates of American gulags filled in with the non-Americans the only law that applies is whatever the executives deem necessary. Rumsfeld extended this system -- 'A legal blackhole' according to Human Rights Watch -- to Afghanistan and then Iraq -- openly rejecting the Geneva conventions. As a result thousands of detainees in American gulags remain unseen without charge sheet or trial. The Soviet gulags aimed, at the best, at psychologically breaking a defiant dissident, but the new ones have been dehumanising their inmates by robbing them of human dignity. The systematic torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere is so poisonous in its symbolism that it defies belief. How could any one except perverts resort to sexual abuse and humiliation of naked Muslim prisoners? How could they be urinated on and sodomised? Some of the highlights of Taguba report are until for print for their sheer obscenity. Yet these are perpetrated by powers that invaded on a promise to bring the rule of law and human rights. Even though the US officials profusely regretted the excesses and even apologised, none has yet been held responsible or fired. "Their treatment does not reflect the nature of American people" said President Bush plaintively. "That's not the way we do things in America", Bush added. But sadly it is the way America does things when it goes abroad. The American constitution does protect its own citizens. But it hardly applies to the aliens incarcerated in Camp X-ray at Guantonamo or Abu Ghraib in Iraq. The Americans' conducts there explode the myth that a "freedom loving nation" like America built on the ideals of Thomas Paine, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson could never do such things. Tony Blair's foreign policy adviser, Robert Cooper who is credited with the elevating double standards into a doctrine is even more stark in declaring that human rights are only for the civilized: Among ourselves we keep the law but when operating in the jungle we must also use the laws of the jungle. What a self-defeating way to bring civilized values to those whose hearts and minds are real battle ground of the 'war on terror'! Senate Armed Forces Committee was recently briefed by Rumsfeld about the death of 25 prisoners and two murders in war by private contractors. These contractors were brought to Iraq as a part of Bush's strategy of keeping Iraq under occupation with a lighter regular force. Even if they are blatantly in the role of mercenaries they are subject neither to Iraqi law nor the US' military court of justice. There are estimated twenty thousand men in this category and they are at the centre of recent scandal as interrogators and guards of Abu Ghraib prisons. Under the Bush legal doctrine a system has been created which is beyond law but entrusted with the defence of the rule of law and to defend democracy by inhibiting democracy. Abu Ghraib has been a predictable consequence of the Bush Administration imperatives and policies. The more will they linger the larger will have to be the extent of the gulag created by it. Brig ( retd) Hafiz is former DG of BIISS
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