The infidel Americains
The Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib, as CBS reports, had a taste of what Lee Kuan Yew and Jiang Ze Min used to call American decadence, or what the more diplomatic sectors of the international community now term as egregious violations of international law.

The Iraqi prisoners are being tortured, raped, beaten, humiliated, degraded and killed in Abu Ghraib (see the pictures here), and, as Seymour Hersh reports for the New Yorker, there is reason to believe that the CIA, the military intelligence officials themselves, sanctioned the depravities in order to break the spirit of the Iraqis and facilitate intel gathering. The socially conservative Arab society in the Middle East is, of course, shocked and disgusted. Critics of the American occupation all over the world cry that the pictures confirm what they suspected all along: the American standard of morality and decency is no higher than Saddam Hussein's. Who knows what is happening in Guantanamo ?

The militant bombers all over Iraq and all those fighting in Fallujah know that their compatriots are being despicably sexually humiliated by the Americans. The pictures no doubt will be used by Al-Qaeda to further foment hatred in a region where the population is inclined to believe the worst of the infidel Americans. One can only expect therefore a further spiralling of violence.

We would do well now to be reminded of some rules of international law regarding torture:

Universal Declaration of Human Rights:
Article 5.
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
Article 7
No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment
Article 1
1. For the purposes of this Convention, the term "torture" means any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity. It does not include pain or suffering arising only from, inherent in or incidental to lawful sanctions.

Article 10
1. Each State Party shall ensure that education and information regarding the prohibition against torture are fully included in the training of law enforcement personnel, civil or military, medical personnel, public officials and other persons who may be involved in the custody, interrogation or treatment of any individual subjected to any form of arrest, detention or imprisonment.
2. Each State Party shall include this prohibition in the rules or instructions issued in regard to the duties and functions of any such person.

Article 16
1. Each State Party shall undertake to prevent in any territory under its jurisdiction other acts of cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment which do not amount to torture as defined in article I, when such acts are committed by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.

The Ghraib mistreatment clearly violated international proscription against torture. And what is frustratingly galling is that it is the Americans, the self-proclaimed bright shining light of the world, who are doing it this time and, as the pictures reveal, the Americans perversely enjoy the practice. Some critics are claiming racism.

I am not too familiar with the practices of torture in history, but some of the world's brutal regimes never resorted to BDSM. The authorities on Robben Island, for example, under the apartheid regime, humiliated its prisoners by asking them to parade naked, as was done to Nelson Mandela, but I am yet to read of anything remotely close to this American way of doing it. The notorious Insein prison in Burma also has yielded no tales remotely akin to what was shown in the Ghraib pictures. Our own martial law abuses never went this far. As Today sarcastically asks, Has the United States become a global dominatrix ?