Pace: Torture, Killings Widespread in Iraq

[Snowden]

Pace: Torture, Killings Widespread in Iraq
By ED JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer



Human rights abuses in Iraq are as bad now as they were under Saddam Hussein, as lawlessness and sectarian violence sweep the country, the former U.N. human rights chief in Iraq said Thursday.
John Pace, who last month left his post as director of the human rights office at the U.N. Assistance Mission for Iraq, said the level of extra-judicial executions and torture is soaring, and morgue workers are being threatened by both government-backed militia and insurgents not to properly investigate deaths.
"Under Saddam, if you agreed to forgo your basic right to freedom of expression and thought, you were physically more or less OK," Pace said in an interview with The Associated Press. "But now, no. Here, you have a primitive, chaotic situation where anybody can do anything they want to anyone."
Pace, who was born in Malta but now resides in Australia, said that while the scale of atrocity under Saddam was "daunting," now nobody is safe from abuse.
"It is certainly as bad," he said. "It extends over a much wider section of the population than it did under Saddam."
Pace, currently a visiting fellow at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, spoke as sectarian tensions in Iraq push the country to the brink of civil war.
There has been a surge in religious violence in Iraq since the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in the mainly Sunni city of Samarra, 60 miles north of Baghdad, and a spate of reprisal attacks against Sunnis.
The situation has been made worse by extremist Shiite militia operating within the ranks of the Interior Ministry, said Pace, who singled out the Badr Brigade, which makes up a large chunk of the Iraqi security services and military.
He said militia and insurgents are responsible for threatening morgue staff in Baghdad not to perform autopsies on bodies of apparent victims of torture and killings.
"They are told it is not necessary, and not in their interests," he said, adding that both militia and insurgents were "trying to minimize any chances" that their activities could be investigated and prosecuted.
Pace, who spent much of his two years in the post in Iraq, said he visited the morgue in Baghdad once a week when he was in the city and regarded it as a "barometer" of the level of violence in the country. He declined to provide more specific details about the threats, citing fears for the safety of morgue workers.
He said that around three-quarters of the several hundred bodies brought to the morgue each month were categorized with "gunshot wound" as the cause of death — a phrase Pace says is a euphemism. "Nearly all were executed and tortured," he added.
Iraq's interior minister, Bayan Jabr, is a member of Iraq's biggest Shiite party, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or SCIRI, which ran the Badr Brigade. Badr claims it is no longer an armed militia.
But former Badr commanders hold key posts in Interior Ministry commando units, which are regarded by Sunnis as nothing more than death squads. In November, the U.S. Army raided an Interior Ministry bunker in Baghdad and found 158 tortured and starved Sunni prisoners.
"They have caused havoc," said Pace, referring to the Badr Brigade. "They do basically as they please. They arrest people, they torture people, they execute people, they detain people, they negotiate ransom and they do that with impunity."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060302/...q_human_rights

[freund]

Sorry took so long to reply, I was beating a detainee...I mean..um, having dinner. I don't know how true this report is but I guess you have to realize that the culture that bred Sadaam Hussein is a violent one. These people do bad stuff to each other.

[Woodmonkey]

Originally Posted by freund

Sorry took so long to reply, I was beating a detainee...I mean..um, having dinner. I don't know how true this report is but I guess you have to realize that the culture that bred Sadaam Hussein is a violent one. These people do bad stuff to each other.

Glad you mentioned that. You just don't root that out of a society in a few years.

I doubt strongly that the following is true:

Human rights abuses in Iraq are as bad now as they were under Saddam Hussein, as lawlessness and sectarian violence sweep the country, the former U.N. human rights chief in Iraq said Thursday.

There are no longer government sanctioned and run rape and torture rooms, mass graves are no longer being filled. Problems? Yes! As bad? No.

Very misleading

[Snowden]

Originally Posted by Woodmonkey

Glad you mentioned that. You just don't root that out of a society in a few years.

I doubt strongly that the following is true:

There are no longer government sanctioned and run rape and torture rooms, mass graves are no longer being filled. Problems? Yes! As bad? No.

Very misleading

I take it as an extremely biased report too, Katie - but I think we have to be aware of what this man is saying. He's with the UN; and that alone makes him suspect to me!

On the other hand, the killings, torturings, etc., are no doubt being done. We're seeing revenge, I believe. Whole villages are not being wiped out to test poison or bacterial gases - but the Shi'ites have been especially targeted since Bush I encouraged them to try and take Saddam down; they were the victims of a careful plot for genocide.

Christians are told not to take revenge; Muslims don't have that teaching, and I'm not sure we'd be able to resist it ourselves, after being treated as these people have been treated all those years. They are finally able to get back at their oppressors, and I think relatively few people could resist that opportunity.

[OldShatterhand]

From 28 636 to 32 270 Iraqi civilians were killed since April of 2003.
Source: http://www.iraqbodycount.org/index.php .

Saddam killed more than 1.5 million Iraqis in 25 years .

So he killed an average of 60,000 people a year, while the insurgency and the Coalition forces have killed max 32 270 in almost three years.

If my calculations are correct (and they are!), more people died under Saddam in one year than under US occupation in three years. So, I don't think things are as bad now as they were under Saddam.

[Snowden]

Originally Posted by OldShatterhand

From 28 636 to 32 270 Iraqi civilians were killed since April of 2003.
Source: http://www.iraqbodycount.org/index.php .

Saddam killed more than 1.5 million Iraqis in 25 years .

So he killed an average of 60,000 people a year, while the insurgency and the Coalition forces have killed max 32 270 in almost three years.

If my calculations are correct (and they are!), more people died under Saddam in one year than under US occupation in three years. So, I don't think things are as bad now as they were under Saddam.

Thanks for that, Yuri. I believe your press over ours. We have freedom of the press here - and they use that freedom to report what they think rather than the truth, it seems. The news we get is very much influenced by politics in the US, and while we like to think we're well-informed, our media is often slanting the news even when it tells the truth. You can tell, simply by getting one paper that is run by conservatives and another turned out by liberals. The same story sounds different in them, each one stressing it in a way that shows in the way an item is reported.