The Invisible War | Kirby Dick (Documentary)

From Oscar®-and Emmy®-nominated filmmaker Kirby Dick (This Film Is Not Yet Rated; Twist of Faith) comes The Invisible War, a groundbreaking investigative documentary about one of America’s most shameful and best kept secrets: the epidemic of rape within the U.S. military. The film paints a startling  picture of the extent of the problem—today, a female soldier in combat zones is more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than killed by enemy fire. The Department of Defense estimates there were a staggering 22,800 violent sex crimes in the military in 2011. 20% of all active-duty female soldiers are sexually assaulted. Female soldiers aged 18 to 21 accounted for more than half of the victims.

Focusing on the powerfully emotional stories of rape victims, The Invisible War is a moving indictment of the systemic cover-up of military sex crimes, chronicling the women’s struggles to rebuild their lives and fight for justice. It also features hard-hitting interviews with high-ranking military officials and members of Congress that reveal the perfect storm of conditions that exist for rape in the military, its long-hidden history, and what can be done to bring about much-needed change.

At the core of the film are often heart-rending interviews with the rape survivors themselves— people like Kori Cioca, who was beaten and raped by her supervisor in the U.S. Coast Guard; Ariana Klay, a Marine who served in Iraq before being raped by a senior officer and his friend, then threatened with death; and Trina McDonald who was drugged and raped repeatedly by military policemen on her remote Naval station in Adak, Alaska. And it isn’t just women; according to one study’s estimate, one percent of men in the military— nearly 20,000 men —were reportedly sexually assaulted in 2009.

And while rape victims in the civilian world can turn to an impartial police force and judicial system for help and justice, rape victims in the military must turn to their commanders—a move that is all too often met with foot-dragging at best, and reprisals at worst. Many rape victims find themselves forced to choose between speaking up and keeping their careers. Little wonder that only eight percent of military sexual assault cases are prosecuted.

The Invisible War exposes the epidemic of sexual assault in the military – one of the most under-reported stories of our generation, a story the filmmakers are proud to be breaking to the nation and the world. They hope the film will help lead a national dialogue about the crime of rape perpetrated on the very people who have pledged to protect our country and are gratified to see the film is already making an impact. Since it premiered at Sundance, the film has been circulating through the highest levels of the Pentagon and the administration. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta watched The Invisible War on April 14. Two days later, he directed military commanders to hand over all sexual assault investigations to a higher-ranking colonel. At the same time, Panetta announced that each branch of the armed forces would establish a Special Victims Unit. While these are promising first steps, much more needs to be done.

To that end, The Invisible War is a call for our civilian and military leadership to listen. And to act!

The Invisible War | A Kirby Dick Documentary

 

U.S. Troops Posed with Body Parts of Afghan Bombers -By David Zucchino | L.A.Times

The 82nd Airborne Division soldiers arrived at the police station in Afghanistan’s Zabol province in February 2010. They inspected the body parts. Then the mission turned macabre: The paratroopers posed for photos next to Afghan police, grinning while some held — and others squatted beside — the corpse’s severed legs.

A few months later, the same platoon was dispatched to investigate the remains of three insurgents who Afghan police said had accidentally blown themselves up. After obtaining a few fingerprints, they posed next to the remains, again grinning and mugging for photographs.

Two soldiers posed holding a dead man’s hand with the middle finger raised. A soldier leaned over the bearded corpse while clutching the man’s hand. Someone placed an unofficial platoon patch reading “Zombie Hunter” next to other remains and took a picture.

The Army launched a criminal investigation after the Los Angeles Times showed officials copies of the photos, which recently were given to the paper by a soldier from the division.

“It is a violation of Army standards to pose with corpses for photographs outside of officially sanctioned purposes,” said George Wright, an Army spokesman. “Such actions fall short of what we expect of our uniformed service members in deployed areas.”

Wright said that after the investigation, the Army would “take appropriate action” against those involved. Most of the soldiers in the photos have been identified, said Lt. Col. Margaret Kageleiry, an Army spokeswoman.

The photos have emerged at a particularly sensitive moment for U.S.-Afghan relations. In January, a video appeared on the Internet showing four U.S. Marines urinating on Afghan corpses. In February, the inadvertent burning of copies of the Koran at a U.S. base triggered riots that left 30 dead and led to the deaths of six Americans. In March, a U.S. Army sergeant went on a nighttime shooting rampage in two Afghan villages, killing 17.

The soldier who provided The Times with a series of 18 photos of soldiers posing with corpses did so on condition of anonymity. He served in Afghanistan with the 82nd Airborne’s 4th Brigade Combat Team from Ft. Bragg, N.C. He said the photos point to a breakdown in leadership and discipline that he believed compromised the safety of the troops.

He expressed the hope that publication would help ensure that alleged security shortcomings at two U.S. bases in Afghanistan in 2010 were not repeated. The brigade, under new command but with some of the same paratroopers who served in 2010, began another tour in Afghanistan in February.

U.S. military officials asked The Times not to publish any of the pictures.

Capt. John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman, said the conduct depicted “most certainly does not represent the character and the professionalism of the great majority of our troops in Afghanistan…. Nevertheless, this imagery — more than two years old — now has the potential to indict them all in the minds of local Afghans, inciting violence and perhaps causing needless casualties.”

Kirby added, “We have taken the necessary precautions to protect our troops in the event of any backlash.”

Excerpt, read: U.S. Troops Posed with Body Parts of Afghan Bombers -By David Zucchino | L.A.Times

 

Egyptian Court Orders Military to End Virginity Tests | BBC & Euronews

A Cairo court has ordered forced virginity tests on female detainees in military prisons to be stopped.

The court made the decision after a case was brought by protester Samira Ibrahim. She accused the Egyptian army of forcing her to undergo a virginity test after she was arrested during a protest in Tahrir Square in March.

Human rights organizations say the Egyptian military has used the practice widely as a punishment.

“The court orders that the execution of the procedure of virginity tests on girls inside military prisons be stopped,” judge Aly Fekry, head of Cairo administrative court said.

The ruling was greeted by cheers from hundreds of activists inside the courtroom. Activists had demanded that the authorities prosecute anyone responsible for subjecting protesters to such tests.

Earlier this year, an Egyptian general was quoted as acknowledging that the military had conducted such tests, saying that they were used so women would not later claim they had been raped by authorities.

Human rights groups say such tests are a degrading form of abuse and the general’s justification a legal absurdity.

Related: Activist: Verdict Has Shamed Military | Al-Jazeera (Video)

 

Philippine Military Accused of Human Rights Abuses | Al Jazeera (Video)

The Philippines government has been accused of failing to prevent killings and human rights abuses by its military, according to a report by Human Rights Watch. Authorities say they have launched a new campaign to educate the troops but new allegations of torture have emerged.

Al Jazeera’s Jamela Alindogan has more from Zamboanga, in the southern Philippines.

 

Oil, The Secret Pipeline: How Burmese Junta is Making €1 Billion a Year | France 24 (Video)

Oil – a billion euros a year. That’s the profit allegedly being made by the Burmese government, to the cost of the Burmese people. The ruling junta’s accused of secretly selling the country’s oil and natural gas reserves to China via clandestine pipelines. A local NGO says locals are being exploited in the project, which is adding to the fuel shortage that’s already taken hold in the capital, Rangoon.

 

Mexican Human Rights Activist Granted Political Asylum in the U.S. –By Valeria Fernández | New America Media

EL PASO, Texas — Cipriana Jurado never imagined her fight for human rights in Ciudad Juarez, “the murder capital” of Mexico, would lead her to flee her country in defense of her life.

“The problem is that the federal and state government has been blind to what’s going on in Juarez. For them we are just numbers, collateral damage,” said Jurado.

Jurado was granted a political asylum request last Friday, making her the first case in recent history in which the U.S. government recognized that a human rights activist was persecuted by the military in Mexico, according to her attorney Carlos Specter.

“The complaint was based on the fear Jurado had of returning (to Mexico) for her criticism and her documenting of abuse perpetrated by the military,” said Specter.

The Office of Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) said they couldn’t confirm the decision for confidentiality rules and that they don’t keep statistics on the reasons why the U.S. government grants asylum.

The lack of statistics makes it hard to know whether Jurado’s case is among the first of its kind, said Karen Musala, clinical professor of law and director of the Center for Gender and Refugee Studies at the University of California Hastings College of the Law.

But she agrees with Specter that historically, politics have gotten in the way of granting political asylum. When it comes to Mexico, she said, there is an underlying fear that due to its proximity to the United States, the numbers of people seeking this protection could grow.

Musala also believes political asylum can be granted not only due to political persecution by the government but when the government can’t protect its citizens from non-state actors, “whether it’s narco-traffickers or individuals.”

In fiscal year 2010, the United States granted political asylum to 21,113 people, 192 of them from Mexico, according to statistics from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).  According to Specter, about 90 percent of asylum cases presented in the United States are refused “for political reasons.”

“They still don’t recognize that there’s violence coming from the state towards the Mexican community, specifically from the federal officers and the military,” said Specter, adding that is why Jurado’s case is so significant.

Jurado, a 46-year-old single mother, applied for asylum in March, almost a year after her longtime friend Josefina Reyes, another human rights activist who had denounced military abuses, was gunned down in Guadalupe, a small town near Juarez on the West Texas border. She holds backs her tears as she remembers the testimony of some of the witnesses.

“She fought. We’ve always said that if they try to take us it wouldn’t be alive, because we fear torture so much,” she said.

Jurado and her friend Josefina Reyes had been publicly outspoken against the military since 2007, when the first troops started arriving in Juarez as part of Mexican President Felipe Calderón’s war on drugs.

The city was already known for the violent murders of hundreds of women that were never solved. The presence of the military, she said, took the violence and impunity to another level. In Juarez and surrounding areas, close to 8,000 people have been killed in the last three years, when the war on drugs escalated.

“In Juarez there’s no fight against drug trafficking. In Juarez there are armed groups murdering people that are unarmed,” she said.

Jurado came to Juarez to work in a maquila when she was 13. She founded the “Centro de Investigación y Solidad Obrera” (Center for Investigation and Worker Solidarity) from her home to fight for workers’ rights and had been investigating femicides in the city for decades. But soon she found herself documenting a new kind of case: grievances from locals who said the Mexican military had kidnapped their family members, tortured and sometimes murder them.

“They’ll take them to the military base and then they’ll start torturing them, so they’ll plead guilty to smuggling drugs or being ‘sicarios’ – that’s what they call paid assassins here,” she said. “We started seeing forced disappearances and extrajudicial murders.”

It was during her investigation into the disappearance of Saúl Becerra Reyes that she began feeling that her life was in danger.

Becerra was reportedly taken by the military on Oct. 21, 2008 with five other young men who were incarcerated in a military base, accused of possession of drugs and weapons. One of the arrestees testified that he and Becerra had been tortured, according to a report in Mexico City newspaper El Universal. After that, he said, he never saw Becerra again. Becerra’s body was found on the side of the road in April 2009, while Jurado was investigating the case.

In an article published in El Universal in July 2009, Jurado said that what could have happened to Becerra was that, “como en muchos otros casos, se les pasó la mano con la tortura” (as in many other cases, they went too far with the torture).

When his body was found, she started receiving threats. There were several attempts to break into her home, documents were stolen from her office and at one point her 19-year-old son was followed and threatened on the street.

Jurado was urged by several human rights organizations including Amnesty International, which was assisting her in her investigations, to seek asylum in the United States.

But it was a difficult decision to make. She felt a responsibility to continue the work she had started to press the government to investigate hundreds of unsolved cases of murders and disappearances.

She was reminded of an earlier incident, in 2008, when she thought she was going to be killed. A group of agents from Mexico’s Federal Agency of Investigations took her from her home without explanation. She was released 24 hours later, and told she had been arrested for obstructing the public way during a protest back in 2005.

But when she saw Josefina’s children at the funeral for her longtime friend and colleague, she knew what she had to do. “They couldn’t even say goodbye because her coffin was closed,” she said. “I just thought, I don’t want my children to be in this situation.”

She took a trip to Chicago to speak about violence in Juarez. When her visa expired in December 2010, she didn’t return to Mexico.

Excerpt, read: Mexican Human Rights Activist Granted Political Asylum in the U.S. –By Valeria Fernández | New American Media

 

Syria Accused of Torturing Second Teenager to Death –By David S. Morgan | CBS

(WARNING: Graphic video)

The body of a 15-year-old Syrian boy, bearing signs of what activists called torture, was returned to his parents six weeks after the boy disappeared.

Video footage of the boy’s body obtained by Al Jazeera from a Syrian source shows what appear to be gruesome wounds: Riddled with bullet holes, the boy’s body is missing an eye and several teeth, his neck and leg broken. A large part of his lower face is now a large hole.

Hundreds in the town of Jeeza mourned the death of Thamer al-Sahri Wednesday. The boy had vanished six weeks ago along with his friend, Hamza al-Khatib, a 13-year-old whose tortured remains were released by Syrian authorities in late May.

Hamza’s body was covered in burns and scorch marks – signs of being tortured by electric shocks and cigarettes. Hamza’s neck had been broken, his arms shot, and his genitals cut off. The torture of Hamza became an international rallying cry against the regime of President Assad.

Excerpt, read: Syria Accused of Torturing Second Teenager to Death –By David S. Morgan |CBS



Related videos:

• Torture in Syria (Video)
• CNN: “Rampant Torture” in Syria  (Video)

 

Tortured Boy Becomes Face of Syrian Uprising –By Dominic Waghorn | Sky News

Hamza al Khatib disappeared during demonstrations on April 29 in the south of the country. His mutilated body was returned to his family a month later. In a gruesome video posted on the internet, apparent medical examiners point to gunshot wounds on his corpse.

They claim to have found bruises on his arms and legs, say his neck has been broken and he has been tortured. They also claim his genitals were mutilated.

The body is partly decomposed.

It is impossible to verify the claims, although the puncture holes in his chest and arms look like gunshot wounds. The Syrian government claims Hamza was killed in a shoot-out between armed gangs and guards, but says that there is no evidence of torture.

In a sense the truth about his death is less important than the impact of the video (Warning: Graphic content).

Hamza has been compared to Mohamed Bouazizi, the vegetable seller whose self-immolation sparked the Tunisian revolution.

His story is also reminiscent of Khaled Said‘s, the Egyptian whose death in police custody began the Facebook campaign that started the revolution there.

Hamza al Khatib, 13, who was tortured and murdered by the government has become the face of the Syrian uprising (Photo: AP).

Syria’s uprising has lasted 12 weeks without a focus or symbol.

Despite unleashing the full force of its military on protestors the regime has been unable to quell the unrest. Large protests are continuing, but neither side has yet gained sufficient momentum to overcome the other.

Reprint: Tortured Boy Becomes Face of Syrian Uprising –By Dominic Waghorn | Sky News

Related: We are all Hamza Alkhateeb (facebook page)

 

Egyptians Decry Protesters’ ‘Virginity Tests’ | TIME/ AP

Photo: Reuters/ Fayaz Kabli

(CAIRO) — Egyptian activists and bloggers are pressing Egypt’s military rulers to investigate growing accusations of abuses against protesters, including claims that soldiers subjected female detainees to so-called “virginity tests.”

Bloggers say they will hold a day of online protest on Wednesday to voice their outrage. Amnesty International raised the accusations of virginity tests in a May report. It said 18 female protesters held in military detention reported that they were threatened with prostitution charges and forced to undergo “virginity tests.” They also said the were tortured, beaten up and given electric shocks.

The allegations surfaced after a crackdown on a March 9 protest in Cairo by crowds calling on the military to speed up a transition to democracy after Hosni Mubarak’s ouster.

Reprint:  Egyptians Decry Protesters’ ‘Virginity Tests’ | TIME/ AP

 

Bahraini Security Accused of Beating School Girls | UPI & AJE

MANAMA, Bahrain, May 11 (UPI) — Bahraini security forces have kidnapped and beaten teenage schoolgirls, alleged victims charge.

In an interview with al-Jazeera aired Wednesday, a 16-year-old girl calling herself Heba said she and three classmates were seized from their school and beaten severely while held for three days.

An officer “hit and banged me against the wall to scream,” she said. “Since we did not cry out or scream, we were beaten more and more.”

The government did not respond to a request for comment.

The opposition Al Wefaq party charges police have raided up to 15 girls schools, detaining, beating and threatening to rape girls as young as 12. Meanwhile, pro-government MPs charged Wednesday that Shiite employees have been plotting for decades to sabotage the state oil company.

The Gulf Daily News reported lawmakers blamed Energy Minister Abdulhussain Mirza for lax control of Bapco. MP Jassim al-Saeedi charged the plot has been afoot ever since Bapco began promoting into senior posts in 1980.

“Employment, promotion and training was divided among this sect, while those belonging to the other sect (Sunnis) were left out in pain despite being deserving,” he said.

MP Abdulhaleem Murad charged Bapco gave bonuses to striking workers trying to overthrow the monarchy.

Reprint: Bahraini Security Accused of Beating School Girls | UPI & Al Jazeera English