US prisoner abuse scandals expose hypocrisy of “human rights defender” claim

(Cartoon by Lu Lingxing)

Frequent prisoner abuse scandals committed by the U.S. armed forces have had a great deal of exposure in the media, shocking the world with their brutality.

Since its opening in 2002, the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, the U.S. detention facility on the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base on the coast of Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, has held numerous terrorist suspects captured in U.S. global counter-terrorism actions after the 9/11 attacks.

A report by the U.S. military investigators to the Senate Committee on Armed Services on July 13, 2005 revealed frequent detainee abuse cases in the detention camp, many of which seriously breached the Geneva Conventions and U.S. military Law.

Another notorious record was exposed in April 2004 when many photos showing U.S. soldiers’ abuse of Iraqi prisoners in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq from the second half of 2003 to early 2004 were aired by U.S. media outlets including CBS and CNN.

One month later, a scandal involving abuse by U.S. troops in Afghanistan was exposed for the first time. Since then, more similar scandals committed by U.S. troops in Iraq and in Afghanistan have been exposed.

The U.S. media revealed in 2017 that U.S. forces employed torture in their interrogations of detainees held in secret prisons in Yemen, and conspired in abuse cases committed by its allies. According to insider sources, the detainees were routinely beaten, trussed up on a “grill'' and sexually assaulted.

The frequent occurrence of prisoner abuse scandals revealed what the U.S. was truly like while it claimed to be a “human rights defender”. 

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