JUS SPECIAL REPORT: VIOLATING ARAB HONOR
May 05, 2004, By Bruce Kennedy, JUS

Editor's Note: The pictures on our front page today have been censored. We have done this to protect the women that appear in these photographs. We apologize to our viewers for the graphic content of our front page as we endeavor to bring to light the horrific violations that we have long known are being perpetrated against Iraqis.

Stealing Iraq's resources, plundering its antiquities and reducing the country's infrastructure to rubble is surely a violation of Arab honor but raping their woman is a heinous crime.

If there is one thing I have to come to know in covering the Middle East, it is that honor is the highest value in the Arab culture. It transcends all other dictates and is woven into the very fabric of Arab society. Drawing from not only the religion of Islam, but from ancient code, Arab honor masks raw power and lends it the dignity of authority.

The loss of Iraqi national honor that resulted from the US invasion and rapid occupation of Iraq has indeed been a hard pill for Arabs to swallow, particularly on the heels of decades of colonization. Stealing the country's resources, plundering its antiquities and reducing the country's infrastructure to rubble surely justifies Iraqi resistance and is a logical and understandable reaction to these crimes.

Violating personal honor is an even greater offense.

In the past week, the world has been shocked with what can only be consider the wide spread abuse, humiliation and torture of Iraqis detained in Iraq. Yesterday, Arab newspapers published the pictures that appear on our front page today as further evidence of human rights violations by Iraq's occupiers.

In early September, 2003, JUS received from an anonymous source, a series of disturbing photographs of three US soldiers sexually violating what appears to be a young Iraqi girl. The photographs are not computer generated and at first pass appear to be authentic. The girl in the picture appears to be wearing authentic Shia dress, the surroundings are similar to that found in Iraq and the quality of the photos are poor suggesting that they were taken using amateur equipment and then faxed or scanned resulting in low resolution

In an effort to determine the validity and details surrounding these photographs, we published one photograph, censored, on the main page of our portal on October 4, 2003. Although we received little solid information, what we did receive was yet another grouping of photographs, also from an anonymous source.

The second set of photographs appeared to be the work of pornographers. The characters in the photographs are more "staged" and the "soldiers" appear with their faces blackened. As we endeavored to source out this second set, we discovered not one but several pornographic sites that boasted giving the "Iraqi bitches what they deserved" and these sites had similar "soldiers" in camouflage. We decided not to publish them at that time as we have not enough information to be able to legitimize the photographs.

In January 2004, we received information that tipped us off to what was really going on. We were told by an anonymous source that the wifes, sisters and daughters of those arrested by US forces, British forces and the hired mercenaries that are so often overlooked were being used to "soften up" detainees in Iraq. Either the male relatives cooperated with interrogators they were threatened with their female family members ended up on porn sites. If the detainee was not forthcoming, this is what occurred and the photographs were presented to him.

While we had a far amount of information we still could not place a time date or location on the photos and therefore we could not publish them. We did however submit them to the humanitarian organizations with no reply and made a further call on our site for information.

Since the prisoner abuse allocations have now surfaced and these photographs are saturating the Arab world, we publish them here today in an effort that our viewers will help us to confirm, beyond a shadow of a doubt, who the perpetrators are of this horrific abuse.

Here is what we do know:

• On June 9th, an the Iraqi newspaper As-Saah charged that 18 US soldiers raped two Iraqi girls aged 14 and 15, a claim of course denied by the US military. One of the girls was subsequently killed by her family for the shame that this act caused.

• On July 15th, the New York Times news service reported that rape in Iraq said to be on the rise, which they attributed to the breakdown of the Iraqi government after the war. A report by Human Rights Watch based on more than 70 interviews with law-enforcement officials, victims, their families and medical personnel found 25 credible reports of sexual violence since the war was declared over. Baghdadis believe there are far more.

• Rapes in Iraq are rarely reported. For most Iraqi victims of rape, getting medical and police assistance is a humiliating process. The deep traditions of honor foster a sense of shame so strong that many families of victims receive no support or consolation.

• The Human Rights Watch report alleges that sometimes when women try to report a rape or families ask for help in finding abducted women, they are turned away by police officers indifferent to the crimes. Some law-enforcement officials insist rape has not increased, while other officials and many medical personnel disagree. They also found that U.S. military police were unwilling or unable to conduct serious investigations of sexual violence and abduction. In some cases, reports of sexual violence and abduction to police were simply "lost".

• If an Iraqi woman wants to report a rape, she has to travel a bureaucratic odyssey. She first must go to the police for documents that permit her to get a forensic test. That test is performed only at the city morgue. The police take a picture of the victim and stamp it, and then stamp her arm. A committee of three male doctors performs a gynecological examination on the victim to determine if there was sexual abuse. The doctors are available only from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. If a victim arrives at any other time, she has to return the next day, without washing away any physical evidence.

• US soldiers have a long history of rape in foreign in countries. In Okinawa, Japan where two-thirds of 47,000 US troops in Japan are stationed, the three U.S. military personnel were indicted on rape charges on December 19, 2002, alleged to have abducted and raped a 12-year-old Okinawan schoolgirl on September 4. Since 1972, U.S. servicemen there have been accused of some 4,000 criminal acts, including 12 cases of murder.

• Eighteen US cadets once accused of rapes or sexual assaults at the Air Force Academy are now working their way up the military ranks. The Rocky Mountain News reported on October 4, 2003 that 15 of those suspects who graduated from the US military academy are currently officers in the U.S. Air Force. Citing Privacy Act concerns, the Pentagon has refused to release information on where those officers are stationed, whether any are pilots or whether any served in the recent wars in Iraq or Afghanistan.

• Vietnam was a sexual digression for many a US soldier. After the war, in February 1971, 125 Vietnam vets, not trouble-makers or deserters, and who have a fair spread of medals between them came forward as a way of bearing witness to the lies being told by the media about that war. They explained the brainwashing to which they had been subjected and they recount the horrors that they committed once they had been turned into robots: rape, torture, villages burned, summary executions, shooting of children, prisoners thrown out of helicopters, cutting off ears (of people both alive and dead) and trading them for cans of beer. The meeting was boycotted by mainstream press but was captured by New York film makers who subsequently released one of the most notable documentaries on the Vietnam called Winter Soldier.

• There have been numerous underground news items and reports in the past months that make further allegations that US soldiers are not only raping the country but raping the Iraqi woman as well. None of these claims have been validated, until possibly now.

• We now know that abuse and "humiliation" is rife throughout US and British controlled prisons in Iraq.

If these photos can be validated, we will rigorously pursue justice through the appropriate agencies. If they are the work of pornographers this is a clear sign of the lack of morals in the West and the individuals responsible should be brought to justice for hate crimes, distributing pornography and for acts of racism. We will endeavor to do that also. Either way, they are another gross insult to Arab honor that is still stingy from the other abuses that have come to light.

If you have any information, concerning these photographs, please contact bkennedy@jihadunspun.com. We encouraged other voices of truth to help identify the perpetrators.

Source:
Jihadunspun.com