Last week Salon.com had an article claiming that Khadr’s treatment at the hands of the Americans was just typical of their treatment of ‘young offenders’ in general. Why Gitmo Justice Shouldn’t Shock us
In a recent blog, right here, I wrote about Winnipeg in 1910, how the social elite were desperate to ‘civilize’ those crude and rowdy new immigrants from Northern Europe, who worked the land during the week, but who went berzerk when they had down time, so to speak.
They decided that for the children of these immigrants who broke the law, youth courts were the way to go. Rehabilitation instead of punishment. After all, a child would only learn to be a better criminal if imprisoned and Manitoba was desperately in need of citizens to work the land and breed future citizens. They didn’t need a prison industry. (How times have changed.)
Here in Canada, the population appears divided on Khadr. I think the general idea is, if he wasn’t a full-blown terrorist before, he certainly is now.
Well, Khadr has certainly become a ‘symbol’ – because ordinary lives do not matter in the big scheme of things, and in war, they matter even less.
I believe in one over-riding principle: In a democracy, it isn’t about ‘one vote per every man’ (or woman) it’s about ONE LAW for every man and woman. Once you start making exceptions, it’s that slippery slope and no one is safe anymore.
But this is a war crime, isn’t it?
Well, we have laws for war, too. Those Child-Soldier Laws. Those Geneva Conventions. Even if they are window dressing, for the most part. Let’s face it.
My grandmother was interned at Changi Prison (made infamous by various books, including King Rat) but she was also one of only three women tortured in the Double Tenth Incident. I wrote a play (from her memoirs) about at www.tighsolas.ca/page745.html. I was hoping to get it produced on BBC Radio Four, but that’s not an easy process.
The War in the East was not a big issue in the UK, although they love their WWII stories. It was a big issue in Australia, and I get lots of hits from there. And in Singapore.
The fact is, the Allies put the perpetrators of the Double Tenth Torture on trial in 1946 and excuted many of them. (My grandmother’s post war testimony, which is the crux of the play, helped put the evil Sumida Haruzo and his henchmen away.)
The war crimes tribunal accused the Japanese men in question, Gestapo types and their minions, of performing acts of ‘unspeakable horror, stark and naked.’
But the Japanese who did this were just people, no different from the Americans who stripped, humiliated and tortured prisoners at Abu Ghraib or the British soldiers accused of doing the same in Iraq. As my play shows, these Japanese soldiers were made up of good eggs and bad eggs and eggs just blindly doing their job, just like now. (When the war was going well for them, they could be indifferent, even kind, but when the pressure was on, they turned evil.)
But the British won WWII and that’s the difference.
If you want to read a first hand account of how it feels to be tortured during war, read my play.
My grandmother went to her grave despising the Japanese with every ounce of her being, so that pretty much tells you what torture does to people. My grandfather, who also interned at Changi Internment Camp, but not tortured, visited Japan once a year during his retirement. He clearly did not hate the Japanese for what they did to him (and he worked on the Thai Burma Railroad of Bridge on the River Kwai fame).
I see that George W. Bush, out promoting his memoirs, is being quoted in the news today saying that “waterboarding’ saved American and British lives. Well, waterboarding figured at Changi, and in the war crimes trial in 1946, it was described by the British as the worse kind of torture, worse than the beatings, the burnings, and even the electric shock.
A Guardian article today seems to concur with me: Bush’s Torture admission a dismal day for democracy
