The United States Berates Sri Lanka on Human Rights; Hypocrites!
Early this week, the United Nations Human Rights Council resolution on Sri Lanka was passed with 46% of the member states voting in favour. Following this, the United States (U.S.) government issued a statement advising Sri Lanka “to safeguard the rights of ethnic and religious minorities, human rights defenders, and civil society actors”. This can easily pass as the most hypocritical political statement of the month, or perhaps, the entire year. This is owing to the fact that the U.S., its government and its military have a plethora of human rights violations, war crimes and democides on their head, throughout the country’s conception.
The hypocritical statement released by the U.S government is definitely not the first of its kind as a consultation of history will evidently display how the U.S government released similar statements of warnings to the Japanese and the Soviet Union on 2 separate occasions in 1938 and 1939 on the Japanese bombing of China and the Soviet bombing of Helsinki respectively. Both these bombings resulted in the loss of life of a few 100 civilians. Seven years after dictating on ‘Human rights’ to the Japanese, the U.S government dropped the first atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japanese homeland and civilian targets killing more than 200,000 innocent civilians and more than 220,000 people in total.
While the U.S does not practice what they preach, the country has also been involved in more than 111 wars in its very recent history and is responsible for the deaths of more than 310,000 civilians mostly in the Middle East and Pacific. The U.S is also responsible for the displacement of more than 37,000,000 civilians predominantly from Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Libya, and Syria since 2001.
If one were to report on all U.S war crimes and human rights violations, an entire book; let alone a single article, would be enough. Due to this, the article will not focus on the internal disputes such as the violations on several millions of African Americans through slavery and being lynched by forces of the U.S government, or the forcible displacement of the thousands of native Indian Americans on their ancestral land. The article will not focus on US massacres in the Philippines, like the Moro crater massacre, where the U.S government ordered the military to ‘Kill everyone over ten [years old]’. This will also not focus on the atrocities of the U.S military in the Korean war, including the infamous No Gun Ri Massacre, or the atrocities in the Vietnam war such as the My Lai massacre, which was the mass rape and murder of over 500 Vietnamese civilians including children, or the other 320+ cases of violations in the Vietnam war.
The article will also not focus on the various war crimes of U.S servicemen during the Second World War, including the mass rape of over 10,000 Japanese women on the island of Okinawa, or the 14,000+ cases of rape by the U.S military in the French, English, Italian and German towns and Battlefields. This will not focus on the Canicattì massacre or Biscari massacre, where U.S soldiers massacred innocent Italian civilians, or the Dachau massacre and Operation Teardrop, where U.S soldiers massacred prisoners of war who had surrendered, or the thousands of Japanese Americans who were thrown into concentration camps in the U.S and suffered inhumane conditions. Rather, this article will focus only on the U.S war crimes and human rights violations in recent years, beginning from the War on Terror post 9/11, as this is on a similar timeline of the Sri Lankan civil war, upon which the U.S government is displaying absolute pharisaism on.
Haditha massacre
In 2005, the U.S military occupation in Iraq made a series of killings on innocent Iraqi civilians, notably the Haditha massacre, where more than 30 unarmed civilians were attacked and 24 killed. The massacre was a revenge attack on innocents for the killing of a U.S soldier by insurgents. The commanding officers of the perpetrators reportedly ordered the soldiers to ‘Shoot first and ask questions later’.
The civilians were shot at point-blank range, despite being unarmed and being of virtually no threat to highly trained military personnel. After pressed by international media, the Pentagon released an official report accepting that the internal investigation “supports accusations that U.S. Marines deliberately shot civilians”, however, notwithstanding this plea, no U.S soldier has been incarcerated as of today and the military has only charged the soldiers with negligent dereliction of duty. Justice is not served.
Mahmudiyah Rape and Killings
In 2006, during the U.S forced invasion into Iraq, a company of soldiers gang-raped, mutilated, murdered and burned Abeer Qassim Hamza al-Janabi, a 14-year-old Iraqi school girl. They went a step further and killed the child’s father, mother and 6-year-old sister, after assaulting and breaking their hands and legs. The soldiers of the U.S military then proudly applauded their act as ‘Awesome’ and evidently proceeded to celebrate their deeds by feasting on chicken wings.
The U.S military then lied to the Iraqi forces claiming that it was the terrorists who had committed the rape and murders. However, with certain whistle-blowers within the company, the perpetrators were exposed. The incident was classified for several years as the whistle-blowers had reportedly not trusted their own military chain of command to protect them. The whistle-blowers receive death threats, hate mail and dead animals at their doorsteps to this day.
Kandahar Massacre
In 2012, U.S soldiers attacked 3 villages in Kandahar, Afghanistan and murdered 16 innocent, unarmed civilians, 11 of whom were children. The attack was executed at well past midnight, where unsuspecting civilians were murdered in their homes.
While the U.S government claims that it was a single soldier, and therefore a lone attack, many local journalists and civilian eyewitnesses report on multiple helicopters and other soldiers involved in the massacre.
Abu Ghraib Prison Torture
During the U.S invasion of Iraq in 2004, the United States Army and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), operated a prison torture facility in Abu Ghraib, Iraq. The U.S army personnel are responsible for the absolutely grim human rights violations against prisoners including physical and sexual abuse, torture, rape, and murder.
During March 2004, there were more than 7,500 prisoners in the facility and 100s of images were taken by fellow soldiers and leaked later on. The U.S government had sufficient knowledge of the methods of torture taking place, including waterboarding, sleep deprivation, 20-hour interrogations, stress positions, very loud music, controlled fear including the use of dogs and other ineffable and inhumane methods of torture. The George Bush administration had authorised these methods of torture calling them ‘Enhanced Interrogation’ techniques, although it is clearly against the Geneva Convention, the United Nations Convention against torture and the Hague Conventions.
In other words, the U.S government was aware of perpetrating war crimes, nevertheless gave the authorisation in the hopes that their deeds would not make the public spotlight. The leak of the 100s of photos at the Abu Ghraib prison tortures forced the CIA’s hidden atrocities to make international headlines. However, hundreds of files, documents and videos have been destroyed/misplaced by the Obama administration, notably, the CIA’s destruction of many videotapes, where it was later revealed that Jose Rodriguez Jr, former head of operations at the CIA quoted “the heat from destroying is nothing compared to what it would be if the tapes ever got into public domain”. Notable corruption, duplicity and criminality run deep into the U.S government and its allies.
The U.S military undertook this ‘Enhanced interrogation’ at multiple Black Sites including Guantanamo Bay detention centre in Cuba, Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan. Moreover, alleged black sites of the U.S government are spread throughout the globe in America, Europe, Asia, and Africa at more than 20 disclosed locations, where the actual number is greater.
Moreover, according to Amnesty International, the government of the United Kingdom (U.K), who was the prime sponsor of the UN resolution against Sri Lanka, also have alleged black sites including in the island of Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean, which is an atoll completely blocked off to civilians. The governments of the U.S and the U.K have continually declined to comment on these sites, when questioned by humanitarian organisations.
The majority of soldiers charged with war crimes at the Abu Ghraib prison were only dishonourably discharged from the U.S army and lost half a month’s salary. So much for “justice for all people”, an extract from the U.S statement to Sri Lanka.
Furthermore, in the case of the Binyam Mohamed, the Ethiopian-born British citizen, the U.S government threatened London that they would stop the sharing of intelligence with Britain, which is crucial for U.K’s national security, if British officials release the details of torture that the U.S military was conducting on Binyam Mohamed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The U.S government was willing to go to the extent of threatening its close allies in order to cover up their human rights violations.
While this article has only focused on the various military crimes done by the military of the United States, there exist multiple war crimes on the part of the United Kingdom, France, Germany and their allies.
Admission of War Criminals into top U.S governmental positions.
After the end of World War 2, the U.S government launched a secret operation known as Operation Paperclip, where the government secretly transported and admitted more than 1,600 Nazi engineers, scientists and technicians and their families, into top U.S organisations including the CIA and NASA. These engineers were all previously under the Nazi party in Germany, and therefore under Adolf Hitler and most had actively participated in the brutal killings and massacres of Jews, and Allied soldiers.
Wernher von Braun was a top Nazi engineer who is credited with designing the V-2 rocket, a military weapon responsible for the death of 9,000 allied civilians and soldiers. Instead of condemning his acts that killed U.S soldiers, and devastated civilians’ lives, the U.S government granted Von Braun the position of Manager of the NASA Engineering team.
Nazi member, Arthur Rudolph was the Director of Operations at Mittelwerk slave labour facility in Nordhausen, Germany and was responsible for the deaths of thousands of slave labourers. The U.S government made him an engineering manager at NASA.
Kurt H. Debus was made the first director of NASA’s John F. Kennedy Space Centre, despite being the former head of Nazi Rocket technology. Hans Speidel, one of Hitler’s leading commanders was later secretly moved to the U.S and then made the Commander in chief of the NATO forces. Kurt Waldheim, who led the United Nations as its former secretary-general was also involved in Nazi War Crimes.
This article is not targeted at disregarding Human rights offences, but aimed at exposing the disconnect between the U.S government’s statements and their own actions. While the U.S and its allies, regularly tend to bully smaller, poorer nations, in a dramatic political play out of modern-day imperialism, the military actions of their own nations exhibit their hypocrisy.
When every war criminal in the United States is brought to Justice, when every civilian in the Middle East, Africa, Pacific, Europe and Asia are compensated for the loss of their homes and lives, when the U.S airstrikes on civilian targets stop, and when the U.S government stops arming and funding insurgent groups and political parties to pit against one another for profit, then they will be in a position to dictate the rest of the world on human rights.
