{"id":110597,"date":"2021-01-10T18:41:12","date_gmt":"2021-01-11T01:41:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=110597"},"modified":"2021-01-10T18:41:12","modified_gmt":"2021-01-11T01:41:12","slug":"the-pohottuwa-government-of-sri-lanka-part-2-c4e","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/01\/10\/the-pohottuwa-government-of-sri-lanka-part-2-c4e\/","title":{"rendered":"THE POHOTTUWA GOVERNMENT OF SRI LANKA Part 2 C4e"},"content":{"rendered":"

KAMALIKA PIERIS<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

USA does not\nhave a good human rights record and it does not care either. In the domestic\nsphere, US has the largest prison population in the world, mainly drug users, and the highest per-capita incarceration rate<\/a>. 3000 odd\nwere on death row in 2016.  2.3 millions\nAmerican were behind bars. Many adults died in prison.  Children can be sentenced to prison under US\nlaw. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2010 USA\ncame under the Universal Period Review of the UN Human Rights Council. After\nwhich, UNHRC issued 228 recommendations on how US can address its HR\nviolations. US dismissed many of the recommendations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

US has a\nhorrifying record of human rights abuses abroad, said critics. US armed forces\nhave committed war crimes in most of the wars it has participated in.  By \u2018war crimes \u2018is meant crimes as defined by\nthe ICC and in the Geneva Conventions.   USA does not care. US military cannot be\nbrought before the ICC. US has not\nsigned the Rome Statute and does not come under ICC scrutiny. But the charge of\nwar crimes remains.  Here are some\ninstances of US war crimes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

US soldiers\nkilled German<\/a> prisoners of war<\/a> and\nsurrendering SS soldiers at the Dachau concentration camp<\/a> on April 29,\n1945 during World War II<\/a> .This is\nknown as the Dachau Massacre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

U.S. troops\nof the 45th\nInfantry Division<\/a>   killed about 75 unarmed\nprisoners, mostly Italian. In July 1943 in Sicily in two separate incidents. This\nis known as Biscari massacre.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Canicatti,\nItaly, one officer, Lieutenant-Colonel McCaffrey had killed eight unarmed\nItalian civilians in 1943 when they were helping themselves to items in a soap\nfactory. The American soldiers under his command had flatly refused to carry\nout the order. This killing was exposed in 2005  when\nJoseph S. Salemi of New York University, reported it. His father had been in\nCanicatti as a corporal. Canicatt\u00ec had already surrendered when U.S. troops\nentered, therefore this was a war crime. It is known as the Canicatti massacre<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Operation\nTeardrop<\/a>” was a  US Navy\noperation during World War II<\/a>, conducted\nbetween April and May 1945, to sink German U-boats<\/a>. Eight  captured crewmen from the sunken German\nsubmarine  U-546<\/em><\/a> were\ntortured by US military personnel. Historian Philip K. Lundeberg has written\nthat the beating and torture of U-546’s<\/em> survivors was motivated by the\ninterrogators’ need to quickly get information on potential missile attacks by\nGerman submarines. But there were no such missile attacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

American\nsoldiers in the Pacific deliberately killed Japanese soldiers who had surrendered.\nAccording to  Richard Aldrich, Professor\nof History at Nottingham University, it was common practice for U.S. troops not\nto take prisoners.  <\/sup><\/a> British historian Niall Ferguson,  said that, in 1943, “a secret [U.S.]\nintelligence report noted that  it\nwas  with difficulty that American troops\nwere prevented from killing surrendering Japanese.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Ulrich Straus\nsaid that troops on the front line intensely hated Japanese military personnel\nand were “not easily persuaded” to take or protect prisoners. Army\ninterrogator Captain Burden noted that \nmany prisoners at Guadalcanal, were shot during transport because\n“it was too much bother to take them in”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During WWII\nsubmarine USS Wahoo had fired on survivors of the Japanese transport Buyo Maru.\nThe US strafed thousands of adrift survivors of eight sunken Japanese troop\ntransports in 1943.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Secret\nwartime files made public in 2006 reveal that US soldiers committed 400 sexual\noffences in Europe, including 126 rapes in England, between 1942 and 1945, said\nWikipedia. A study by Robert J. Lilly estimates that a total of 14,000 civilian\nwomen in England, France and Germany were raped by American GIs during World\nWar II. It is estimated that there were around 3,500 rapes by American\nservicemen in France between June 1944 and 1945 and one historian has claimed\nthat sexual violence against women in liberated France was common. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

US  continued to violate military norms in\nits  subsequent wars. In the 1950 \nNo Gun Ri massacre in Korean War there was a mass killing of Korean\nrefugees  at a bridge near the village of\nNo Gun Ri.  This was reported by the\nAgence Presse in 1999. Over the years survivors’ estimates of the dead have\nranged from 300 to 500. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the\nVietnam War (1955-1975) US forces committed horrifying atrocities in Vietnam. Information\non these were collected by Vietnam War crimes Working group of the  Pentagon  and sent to the US archives. These files show\nthat atrocities by U.S. forces during the \nVietnam War were more extensive than had been officially acknowledged. US\nArmy investigators found 320 incidents excluding Mai Lai Massacre. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Mai Lai Massacre was a mass murder of 347 to 504 unarmed\ncitizens, carried out by US army on 16 March 1968 in the hamlets of Mai Lai and\nMy Khe  in South Vietnam.  Those killed were almost entirely civilians,\nmost of them women and children. Some of the victims were raped, beaten,\ntortured, or maimed. some of the bodies found were mutilated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\n1969 US launched “Operation Breakfast”,  a \ncovert carpet-bombing of  neutral\nCambodia.  US\nalso dropped more than 2 million tons of bombs on Laos during the Vietnam War.\nKhammouan province in Central Laos is still littered with unexploded bombs, said\nNational Geographic\u201d in 2015.  One bomb\nwent off at a picnic, when they lit a fire over it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2003 a United States-led\ncoalition invaded Iraq and threw out  its\nUS  stooge, Saddam Hussein.  An estimated 151,000 to 1,033,000 Iraqis were killed in the first three\nto four years of conflict. Luis Moreno-Ocampo former first  Prosecutor of the  ICC had said that he was willing to start an\ninquiry by the International Criminal Court (ICC) and possibly a trial, for war\ncrimes committed in Iraq by  US and UK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

US went into Afghanistan in 1999 and is still fighting there. A\npresidential memorandum of September 7, 2002 authorized U.S. interrogators of\nprisoners captured in Afghanistan to deny the prisoners  the basic protection required by the Geneva\nConvention.This was a violation of the Convention  and constituted war crimes.”  Afghan prisoners  were   \nsubject to cruel and inhuman treatment said critics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

War on Terror\u201d, was an\ninternational military campaign launched by the  US after the attack  of September 11, 2001 on the World Trade\nCentre in Manhattan, New York. US targeted \nMuslim  armed groups ( which they\nhad  helped create) particularly  Al-Qaeda<\/a>, the Islamic State<\/a>, and the Taliban<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Analysts observed that there was evidence of US war crimes in the\nWar on Terror. A leaked report by the International Committee of the Red Cross\nand the July 2007 report by Human Rights First and Physicians for Social Responsibility\ncould be used as evidence of war crimes if there was a Nuremberg-like trial\nregarding the War on Terror.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The war\ncrimes of the US are not confined to  invading and killing. The US has  bombed countries and assassinated heads of\nstate. US has assassinated  around\n40  heads of state, including Lumumba,\nAllende, said Shenali Waduge. Shenali  \nhas   provided a list of all the\nbombings carried out by US, from Nagasaki in 1945. The countries include  Guatemala, Korea, Indonesia, Cuba, Congo,\nPeru, Vietnam, Cambodia,  Libya,\nNicaragua, Iran, Bosnia, Sudan, Afghanistan. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

US is guilty\nof using biological weapons. US biological weapons were first tested on\nAmerican prisoner and solders, without their knowing.   Agent Orange was tested on prisoners.  Then it was\nunleashed on Vietnam.US is  also\nlargest provider of live land mines.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

US has\nengaged in torture. The best known is Guantanamo. The Guantanamo Bay detention camp was a  US \nmilitary prison holding prisoners \nof  the  War on Terror. The activities of Guantanamo\nwere so bad that they were eventually  investigated. USA admitted before the UN\nCommittee against Torture that they had \u2018crossed the line\u2019 at its CIA site at\nGuantanamo.     <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Analysts  observed that at Guantanamo US  practiced precise, refined torture,   including use of isolation, hoods, using\ndetainees individual phobias (such as fear of dogs) to induce stress and many\nmore \u2018treatments\u2019.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was abusive\nand degrading treatment at Guantanamo, beatings, sleep\ndeprivation<\/a>, prolonged constraint in uncomfortable positions, prolonged hooding<\/a>, cultural\nand sexual humiliation, enemas as well as other forced injections, and other\nphysical and psychological mistreatment. \nThese had been authorized by the Pentagon. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

,”On a\ncouple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand\nand foot in a fetal\nposition<\/a> to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times, they had urinated<\/a> or defecated<\/a> on\nthemselves and had been left there for 18, 24 hours or more, said an FBI agent.”\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 UN tribunals set up at the behest of the US\nand its NATO allies have been charged with bias. They were not impartial, they\nwere influenced by the US said critics. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In\n1997 Louise Arbor, investigating the killing of all passengers on board a\nRwandan presidential aeroplane when it was shot down, covered up the results\nwhen it was revealed that it had not been the Hutu extremists but the\nUgandan-RPF and US forces [the CIA was also implicated] who had shot down the\nplane. Arbor was thus an accomplice to a war crime and obstructed justice for\nwhich she was rewarded with a number of lucrative positions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 Christopher Black, a lawyer specializing in\nInternational Law who has appeared for individuals brought before UN\ntribunals   commented on the way in which\nthese tribunals have conducted the inquiries. Many\nindividuals brought before these tribunals had been falsely accused, he said. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These\ntribunals use criminal methods against \npersons that  the US wants\npunished, such as first throwing them in prison with no indictments shown or\nprior appearance before a court. Prisoners suddenly disappear, isolation being\na method used to exert psychological pressure on them, Black continued. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A\nrespected Rwandan General who had saved many Rwandan lives was arrested in\n2000. Eleven years later the trial judges concluded that the arrest had been\nillegal and politically motivated because he had testified that the US and the\nUN forces had been directly involved in the violence unleashed in that country.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tribunals\npressurize the accused to use lawyers either in their pay or whom they could\nbend to their will to do their bidding, or those in the pay of the West.  Documents and relevant disclosures are\nwithheld from these lawyers. Indictments\/charge\nsheets are often false and propagandist and often have parts blackened so that\nthe defense lawyers cannot understand that whole charge. Lawyers are subject to\nharassment, intimidation, are followed, their hotel rooms are broken into and\nrumours are spread about them to discourage their appearing for the accused,\nBlack concluded. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Everybody knew or at least suspected that terrible things were\nhappening in the US campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq.  But there was no evidence.  Wikileaks provided the evidence.  In 2010 Wikileaks released a trove of\nclassified State Department and Pentagon files detailing the realities of the\nUS campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These came from US army intelligence official Chelsea Manning who\nhad secretly fed spectacular dump of 725,000 classified files to Wikileaks. They\nshowed possible war crimes by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan,<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 The most striking piece of\nevidence was a video and audio clip from an Apache helicopter gunship attacking\ncivilians in Baghdad in 2007. The crew spray their targets with machine-gun\nfire, making comments like “Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards” and\n“It’s their fault for bringing their kids into battle”. They even\nshot at a vehicle that stopped to help the wounded. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nvindictiveness of the American security establishment towards whistle-blowers\nis awesome to behold, said Gwynne Dyer. Chelsea Manning, was given a 35-year\nsentence. She was pardoned by Obama in 2016 but was  jailed again for eight months in 2019 in an\nattempt to force her to incriminate Assange. Manning held out under huge\npressure, accumulating $1000 fines for each day she refused to talk, and was\nfinally released in March 2020 after attempting suicide. The fines still stand,\nhowever, and she is now a bankrupt who owes the US government $256,000. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A\nBritish judge has finally rejected the US attempt to extradite Wikileaks\nfounder Julian Assange and jail him forever in a high-security ,supermax prison\nreported  Gwynne Dyer. Judge Vanessa\nBaraitser at the Old Bailey in London had to work quite hard to thwart the US\ngovernment’s campaign to get its hands on Assange. In the end she ruled that\nwhile the American prosecutors had met the legal criteria for Assange to be\nextradited to the US for trial, their request was denied because the US authorities\ncould not prevent him from attempting to take his own life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\nroad of the whistle-blower is long and lonely. Edward Snowden, who alerted the\nworld to the scale of the US global electronic surveillance operation in 2013,\nis still in exile in Russia. But such people are among the few protections we\nhave against  misdeeds.  Daniel Ellsberg was  celebrated for his theft and publication of\nthe Pentagon Papers\u201d detailing the US government’s crimes in Vietnam. Assange\nis firmly in that tradition. His revelations about the US military’s misdeeds\nin Iraq were as valuable as Ellsberg’s about Vietnam. So take a moment to\nhonour Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning. They have earned it,  said Dyer. ( continued)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

KAMALIKA PIERIS USA does not have a good human rights record and it does not care either. In the domestic sphere, US has the largest prison population in the world, mainly drug users, and the highest per-capita incarceration rate. 3000 odd were on death row in 2016.  2.3 millions American were behind bars. Many adults […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[104],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-110597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kamalika-pieris"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110597\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}