One of the few things that deserves full appreciation in the worst human-rights violations and physical abuse of the Iraqi prisoners at the Abu Ghraib prison is its complete exposure to the world. It would be unfair not to pay tribute to the manner in which these events were highlighted on CBS’s “60 Minutes” and in the op-ed columns in The New York Times and The Washington Post, after the respected American journalist Seymour Hersh broke the story in The New Yorker.
The Bush Administration would have never apologized for these events had the American media not exposed them. This speaks of the level of freedom of press in the United States.
The Abu Ghraib scandal forced me to look into my own country’s past and recall the Pakistan of March 1971 under the rule of General Yahya Khan, when the Pakistani army cracked down on the people of then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Bangladesh emerged an independent country nine months after the military operation was launched. I was a reporter at the Pakistan Times, which in those days was a state-controlled English-language daily newspaper. We knew all that was happening in East Pakistan; however, we were not allowed to write anything about it. The people of Lahore were little concerned about what was happening with their brethren thousands of miles away in East Pakistan. However, they (the people of Lahore) felt sorry that the Bengalis were not punished enough for being unduly influenced by Hindu culture.
The late Z. A. Sulehri (at that time editor of the Pakistan Times), who called himself the great and valiant protector of Pakistani ideology and of Mohammad Ali Jinnah (the founder of Pakistan), wrote irresponsible editorials and called Bengalis separatists and accused them of being anti-state elements.
The only personality who supported the cause of our Bengali brothers was Abdullah Malik, a student at the Lahore Engineering University who later became Pakistan’s foremost progressive journalist and political historian. At a student gathering at the university, Malik told the crowd: “We are [in solidarity] with the oppressed people of Bangladesh.” He was arrested, tried and jailed by the military rulers for his statements.
The only Pakistani journalist who wrote about the atrocities in East Pakistan was Tony Mescrehnas, who was reporting for London’s Sunday Times from Karachi. Many Pakistanis considered him a traitor. Several years later, Tony told me in London that he was the only patriotic Pakistani during the 1971 crisis.
Today, 33 years later, there is not a single Pakistani journalist who has the courage to write about the rape of Golden Bengal (as some call Bangladesh) with full honesty and impartiality. We could not even honor Abdullah Malik’s apology to the oppressed people of Bangladesh. General Musharraf’s statement that “We should keep all that happened in the past,” is not enough. We can understand the Pakistan Times’ partiality in the 1971 war; it was part of the state-controlled National Press Trust at that time. However, the fact that the other independent publications failed to report fairly is still beyond comprehension.
We must look to our past before lecturing the world about human rights. We must look into the atrocities in our own backyard and feel sorry and ashamed.
Governments always under-perform when bad things happen on their watch. The Bush administration knew about the happenings at Abu Ghraib after the U.S. Army completed its investigation and handed its report over to the government last February. However, the U.S. Congress had no knowledge of these incidents. Had the U.S. media not revealed the story, we would still be ignorant of the facts. There is widespread anger in the United States over these incidents.
I understood this anger very well after reading an article by Philip Kennicott in The Washington Post. According to Kennicott, victory in a war is credited to the country as a whole, but only a few individuals are held responsible for a defeat. The apologetic attitude adopted by the Bush administration over the Abu Ghraib scandal itself deserves condemnation. These events have considerably damaged America’s credibility. The Abu Ghraib prisoners were not treated that badly, said Kennicott; the problem is that this scandal has greatly tarnished America’s international image.
No doubt these are the actions of a few individuals, but then the army is comprised of individuals. In other words, many men make up the people, and the people make up both the army and the nation. It’s immaterial how many persons are responsible for these incidents. Collectively, we are all responsible.
These pictures clearly demonstrate that we are an occupation force and that anger and frustration about our occupation is increasing amongst the Iraqi people. We have to pay the price. These pictures prove the humiliation of the Iraqi people and our presence as occupiers. It’s still not too late to learn from the past. Pakistani journalists must write to remind us what we did in the 1971 war in former East Pakistan.
