Attenborough’s ‘Cry Freedom‘ made a lasting impression on me: the movie tells the (true) story of Stephen Biko, a black politician who was brutally murdered by South African security police in the mid Seventies. Despite photographic proof showing that Biko died of serious brain damage caused by severe beating, South African authorities insisted he died while on hungerstrike.
The movie ends with a long (scrolling) list of other black anti-apartheid activists who died under suspicious circumstances, like ‘fell in the tub’, ‘fell out of car’ and ‘hit his head on the table’. It’s a shocking and impressive list and seeing it the first time, it made me literally sick of despair. Unbelievable.
Today several news papers mentioned that US soldiers brutally killed Afghan prisoners, one of them according to official sources an innocent bystander.
Mr. Habibullah’s autopsy, completed on Dec. 8, showed bruises or abrasions on his chest, arms and head. There were deep contusions on his calves, knees and thighs. His left calf was marked by what appeared to have been the sole of a boot.
Another prisoner was beaten up so badly that coroners said that the tissue on the legs was ‘basically pulpified’. Adds another coroner:
“I’ve seen similar injuries in an individual run over by a bus”
However, military spokesmen maintained that ‘both men had died of natural causes’, even after military coroners had ruled the deaths homicides.
I keep thinking about the ‘The Hague Invasion Act’, the Act that was conceived in the summer of 2001 (pre-September 11th) and signed into law way before the Iraqi War. Not to mention the Bush directive regarding the Geneva Treaty and prisoners of war. No wonder the administration (and others) are so upset about Newsweek. American soldiers? “They don’t do this kind of stuff”. After all, the bad guys, you only see them at CSI:NY!
But no matter how you turn it, just like Biko’s death was a crime, so are these.