Torture haunts survivors

[caddis]

, his torturers opened the door to a large room heaving with naked prisoners, some moaning, others unconscious, all lying soaked in their own blood and feces, and screamed at him: ``If you don't tell us everything, you will be joining them.''


That, he says, was his shattering entry into Burma's gulag, a network of about 40 interrogation centers, 43 prisons and more than 60 labor camps through which thousands have passed, often for the mildest dissent against the country's military rulers.

``He's gone to Moscow,'' is the term people here use for someone hauled off to Insein Prison in Rangoon, the capital. Burma is also known as Myanmar.
The junta began filling the camps and prisons shortly after crushing a nationwide anti-military uprising 18 years ago. The first large batch of arrivals were the pro-democracy winners of the 1990 general election.

``I experienced such hardship in prison that as long as there are political prisoners I will work for them,'' he says. He survived, he thinks, ``by believing in democracy.''

In grisly detail, the group reports on the regime's array of torture and degradation techniques. Survivors tell of rape, electric shock to the genitals, partial suffocation by water, burning of flesh with hot wax and being made to stand for hours in tubs of urine and feces.
In what survivors describe as a grotesque perversion of Burma culture, prisoners are ordered to perform the traditional Semigwa dance, and are mercilessly beaten if they fail to execute its intricate postures or to please the torturers with their singing.
Victims describe the searing mental impact of seeing others being tortured, or of being escorted to the prison gate and then, within sight of welcoming relatives, rearrested to serve more time.

Last July, 249 prisoners were released, 118 of them from Insein, and the Red Cross has visited prisons and labor camps across Burma. The committee never details its findings, so independent corroboration of the prisoners' accounts is not available.

Foreign monitoring groups report some improvement in conditions since the Red Cross visits began in 1999. But Brad Adams of U.S.-based Human Rights Watch says: ``We are very, very confident that torture continues. It's an instrument of policy. This is not a country where it happens by chance, committed by a few rotten apples.''

http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/m...curynews_world

I thought this needed to be posted to balance the Gitmo nonsense that's out there. Where's the UN report here? Are they demanding access to these prisons?

[BooRadley]

"Survivors tell of rape, electric shock to the genitals, partial suffocation by water, burning of flesh with hot wax and being made to stand for hours in tubs of urine and feces."

We've been doing half of that stuff in Iraq. What are you trying to prove?

[caddis]

Originally Posted by BooRadley

We've been doing half of that stuff in Iraq. What are you trying to prove?

that you're an idiot

[BooRadley]

What's really funny about the whole thing is that you actually believe that you're sane, rational and sensible. Mind blowing.

[Mandrake]

Originally Posted by caddis

that you're an idiot

You haven't done a very good job so far.

Are you actually denying that we've done that stuff in Iraq? It's public knowledge.

[Java_man]

All they needed to do was follow the geneva convention and the military code regarding prisoner treatment.

Instead, the Bush-Cheney-Rummy pro-torture cartel has managed to drag the once great US down to the point where the way we treat human beings is now compared to the worst shit-holes on the planet

[jimmyjude]

Blah. Blah. Blah.

What a bunch of moral equivalency-ists.

[Java_man]

Originally Posted by jimmyjude

Blah. Blah. Blah.

CONgratulations, your most intelligent post of the week

[SwiftSloth]

Originally Posted by caddis

I thought this needed to be posted to balance the Gitmo nonsense that's out there. Where's the UN report here?

B/C Everyone already knows that russia and china have ****ed up prison laws. But the US is different in 3 ways--We claim that we dont, and that we dont believe in that type of things, and 2--We arent doing it to just our own citizens. We invaded a country and started doing it to theres. We're always arguing that we're spreading democracy and freedom and so forth and so on--and then we do this.

Now, If youv been reading other threads youll see that I also would rather australia not release the photos it did as no good will come of it. However, equating the US to Russia in terms of prison policys is ****ing hysterical caddis.

[Sulla the Dictator]

Originally Posted by BooRadley

What's really funny about the whole thing is that you actually believe that you're sane, rational and sensible. Mind blowing.

Ummm...do you realize that you just brushed off the suffering of these people in order to score points talking about Iraq?

Answer his question. Where is the UN on this? Where is the media? This is obviously worse than any fetish S&M stuff done at Abu Garib at 3 AM with a bunch of loons.

[Sulla the Dictator]

Originally Posted by SwiftSloth

B/C Everyone already knows that russia and china have ****ed up prison laws.

Caddis has actually shown something very interesting. One, you couldn't be bothered to read that the paste was about Burma, nor Russia or China. Two, you folks don't care about human rights.

You care about what embarasses the Bush administration. "Torture" isn't important to you. ACCUSING your government of using torture is whats important to you.

[Java_man]

Originally Posted by Sulla the Dictator

Caddis has actually shown something very interesting. One, you couldn't be bothered to read that the paste was about Burma, nor Russia or China. Two, you folks don't care about human rights.

You care about what embarasses the Bush administration. "Torture" isn't important to you. ACCUSING your government of using torture is whats important to you.

Got to call BS on that one

[Mandrake]

Sulla, does it feel good to blatantly lie on a forum like this? Does your anonymity make it easier? You know that what occurred at Abu Ghraib (and what has most likely gone on in other places like Gitmo and other "renditioning" destinations) is torture, period.

The "it-was-just-panties-on-their-head" line of crap is wishful thinking. People were tortured to death. It was not "s&m stuff at 3 am" and you know it. And it was perpetrated against people who might or might not have been involved in aggression towards the US occupying forces. We'll never know because there is no oversight or accountability for anyone.

It's on film. The pictures which represent the global image of America that Bush will leave in his wake.

The whole world has seen it.

[Sulla the Dictator]

Originally Posted by Mandrake

Sulla, does it feel good to blatantly lie on a forum like this? Does your anonymity make it easier? You know that what occurred at Abu Ghraib (and what has most likely gone on in other places like Gitmo and other "renditioning" destinations) is torture, period.

The "it-was-just-panties-on-their-head" line of crap is wishful thinking. People were tortured to death. It was not "s&m stuff at 3 am" and you know it. And it was perpetrated against people who might or might not have been involved in aggression towards the US occupying forces. We'll never know because there is no oversight or accountability for anyone.

It's on film. The pictures which represent the global image of America that Bush will leave in his wake.

The whole world has seen it.

This isn't a thread about abu ghraib. You're welcome to start one. In fact, you should, since you couldn't care less about the people in Caddis's paste.

[SwiftSloth]

Originally Posted by Sulla the Dictator

Caddis has actually shown something very interesting. One, you couldn't be bothered to read that the paste was about Burma, nor Russia or China. Two, you folks don't care about human rights.

You care about what embarasses the Bush administration. "Torture" isn't important to you. ACCUSING your government of using torture is whats important to you.

So, what I took from this is--You should hate torture when its other peoples corrupt governments doing it. But when yours trying to enforce torture (As Cheney HAS), if you call them on it your just being a littel bitch and trying to bring the administration down.

Seriously. How ****ing thick do you have to be: I dont support torture. Any country that does it instantly loses my respect. Now, the US may not enforce it abroad, nor allow it, but the fact that Cheney wanted to allow it says something about the fact that it was happening in Iraq. That this administration has open disdain for torturing people as there have been numerous accounts of people being torutred in obscure places by us.

Sorry, Im not down with it in any way shape or form in my government. I dislike it in other governments, but Im going to be far more pist off if the government representing me wants to do it.

[caddis]

This is state sponsored, wholesale torture that has been going on for 18 years. You guys haven't commented on it yet instead you have tried to equate it to the isolated anomaly in Abu Ghraib and extrapolate that out to Gitmo. The point I was actually trying to make was that you can look at any non-western democracy and probably find much worse then what you could ever find in Gitmo on a bad day there. Matter of fact, if China ran it's prisons the way Gitmo is operated I would bet the farm the UN and the tea-bagging lefties that that support it would be holding China up as a model of how every prison should be run...lol

[JoeyNormal]

Originally Posted by caddis

that you're an idiot

Like anyone who believes that the US hasn't historically had a hand in these kinds of torture?

"Tortures range from simple but brutal blows from a truncheon to electric shocks. Often the torture is more refined: the end of a reed is placed in the anus of a naked man hanging suspended downwards on the pau de arara [parrot's perch] and a piece of cotton soaked in petrol is lit at the other end of the reed. Pregnant women have been forced to watch their husbands being tortured. Other wives have been hung naked beside their husbands and given electric shocks on the sexual parts of their body, while subjected to the worst kind of obscenities. Children have been tortured before their parents and vice versa. The length of sessions depends upon the resistance capacity of the victims and have sometimes continued for days at a time." - Amnesty International, describing the torture suffered by Brazilians at the hands of the military and the US-run Office of Public Safety (OPS) in the 1960s

And, Sulla, the UN has been very critical of Burma:

U.N. Envoy's Visit Means Judgement Day Is Nearing

On May 30, thugs linked to the SPDC mounted an attack on Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and leaders of her National League for Democracy (NLD) party in a town north of Rangoon.

This attack, which triggered global outrage, further eroded the SPDC's credibility and so did its move to place Nobel Peace laureate Suu Kyi and NLD leaders in military custody for their ''protection''.

Pinheiro's week-long visit, his sixth trip to Burma, will be the first since these three incidents.

There are hints that he will test the SPDC's commitments to political reform and human rights based on where they stand on the freedom for Suu Kyi, who has since been moved to house arrest, and the NLD members still in prison.

Human rights activists are also confident that Pinheiro will again turn the heat on Rangoon to release the estimated 1,300 political prisoners, including close to 100 women, being held in the 39 prisons across Burma.

A year ago, Pinheiro used some of the strongest language to date to criticise Burma during his report to the U.N. General Assembly. The political crimes Rangoon had committed up to that point included the rape by Burmese soldiers of some 625 women and girls in the country's eastern Shan state.

The human rights violations in this South-east Asian nation include the forced conscription of child soldiers, the sending of members of ethnic communities into forced labour camps, the crushing of political opponents and its holding of political prisoners.

Burma watchers consider that criticism in 2002 -- which was denounced by the SPDC -- a significant shift when compared with the language used at discussions on Burma at the U.N. General Assembly over the past 10 years.

Some feel that a more severe critique by Pinheiro at the U.N. sessions this month may pave the way for a situation the junta has been trying to avoid - Burma's case being brought before the Security Council.

''From what we understand, Pinheiro is ready to place the Burma issue with the Security Council,'' Bo Kyi told IPS. ''That will force the international community to take serious note of Burma. It will not look good for the SPDC.''

http://www.ipsnews.net/interna.asp?idnews=20930

[Java_man]

Originally Posted by Sulla the Dictator

This isn't a thread about abu ghraib. You're welcome to start one. In fact, you should, since you couldn't care less about the people in Caddis's paste.

As-if YOU DO ?

LOL

[JoeyNormal]

"People had been mercilessly tortured simply for being in possession of a leaflet criticising the regime. Brutality and cruelty on one side, frustration and helplessness on the other. They were being tortured and there was nothing to be done. It was like listening to a friend who has cancer. What comfort, what wise reflection can someone who is comfortable give. Torture might last a short time, but the person will never be the same." - James Becket, American attorney, in Greece for Amnesty International, describing the torture suffered by Greeks under US-supported dictator Papdopoulos in the 1960s

“Part of his training by eight American Green Berets consisted of ‘teaching how to torture’. He witnessed a boy of about fifteen, suspected of supporting the guerrillas, being subjected to a demonstration torture by the Green Berets They tore out the youth's fingernails, broke his elbows, gouged out his eyes, and then burned him alive. The author reports that the torture sessions continued into the next day and included a thirteen year-old girl. Another victim had various parts of his body burned and was then taken up in a helicopter while still alive and thrown out at 14,000 feet. The defector noted that ‘often the army goes and throws people out over the sea’.” - The Other Side magazine, describing the story of a young Salvadoran who deserted the army in 1982.

[Java_man]

Originally Posted by caddis

The point I was actually trying to make was that you can look at any non-western democracy and probably find much worse then what you could ever find in Gitmo on a bad day there.

So you are perfectly OK with the US running prisons like some 3rd world dictatorship then ... basically you are saying "look, they do it too, so its no problem"