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(Pictures came with this report;
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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.
Baghdad, 30 July 2003
Zehira Houfani (writer and journalist),
THANKS TO INTERNATIONAL NEWS
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