Liberating Women in Iraq American Military Style

A Briefing Paper

OF INTERNATIONAL EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Prepared by Kristen McNutt, Researcher,

Association of Humanitarian Lawyers

Presented to The United Nations Commission on Human Rights 2005 March Session

Geneva

Iraqi female detainees have been illegally detained, raped and sexually violated by United States military personnel. Women who stay at home in traditional roles are more likely to be imprisoned as bargaining chips by US troops seeking to pressurize male relatives, according to the New Statesmen (UK) . In December 2003, a woman prisoner, “Noor”, smuggled out a note stating that US guards at Abu Ghraib had been raping women detainees and forcing them to strip naked. Several of the women were now pregnant. The classified enquiry launched by the US military, headed by Major General Antonio Taguba, has confirmed the note by “Noor” and that sexual violence against women at Abu Ghraib took place. Among the 1,800 digital photographs taken by US guards inside Abu Ghraib there were, according to Taguba's report, images of naked male and female detainees; a male Military Police guard “having sex” with a female detainee; detainees (of unspecified gender) forcibly arranged in various sexually explicit positions for photographing; and naked female detainees. The Bush administration has refused to release photographs of Iraqi women prisoners at Abu Ghraib, including those of women forced at gunpoint to bare their breasts (although these have been shown to Congress). UK Member of Parliament Ann Clwyd (L) has confirmed a report of an Iraqi woman in her 70s who had been harnessed and ridden like a donkey at Abu Ghraib and another coalition detention centre after being arrested last July. Clwyd said: "She was held for about six weeks without charge. During that time she was insulted and told she was a donkey."

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Report: Belgian court petitioned to arrest Livni upon arrival in Brussels

By Barak Ravid and Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondents

Tags: Gaza, Israel News

European attorneys have reportedly petitioned a Belgian court to arrest Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni upon her arrival in Brussels later Wednesday, according to the Jawalan.com Web Site.  The complaints was apparently lodged on behalf of Belgian and French nationals with relatives who were either wounded or killed in Gaza, and calls for Livni to be arrested for war crimes.  The Foreign Ministry is looking into the report and the Israeli embassy in Brussels has not yet been involved in the matter, sources said.

Gaza war comparable to Sabra and Shatila massacre: medics

Mon Jan 12, 1:38 pm ET

OSLO (AFP) – Israel's offensive in Gaza can be compared to the massacre of Palestinian refugees by Israeli-backed Lebanese militiamen in 1982, two medics said Monday as they returned to Norway after working 10 days at a Gaza hospital.

"Gaza in 2009 is becoming a new bloody chapter in Palestinian and Middle Eastern history that is, unfortunately, comparable to Sabra and Shatila," Mads Gilbert told reporters at Oslo's Gardermoen airport, referring to a three-day massacre at two Palestinian refugee camps in Beirut 27 years ago.

Gilbert, 61, and his colleague Erik Fosse, 58, were sent into Gaza to work at the Shifa Hospital by the pro-Palestinian aid organisation NORWAC on December 31.

They said they had both worked in Lebanon in 1982 when Lebanese Christian militia massacred between 800 and 2,000 Palestinians at the camps as Israeli troops stationed nearby did nothing to stop the bloodshed.

"We hoped we would never see anything like it again," Gilbert said.

The high number of civilian casualties and the huge amount of suffering in Gaza was, however, similar to what he had seen back then, he said, claiming that as many as 90 percent of the wounded he and his colleagues had treated at the Shifa hospital were civilians.

"Every third person killed and every second person injured is a child under 18 or a woman," he said.

"Gaza is living an enormous humanitarian crisis... The bombing must stop and the borders (with Israel and Egypt) must be opened so that civilians can receive food, water and be safe," he said.