[Texgreen] Uncivilized treatment of captives by Iran

[Roger Baker]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2047128,00.html

Call that humiliation?

No hoods. No electric shocks. No beatings. These
Iranians clearly are a very uncivilised bunch

Terry Jones
Saturday March 31, 2007
The Guardian

I share the outrage expressed in the British press
over the treatment of our naval personnel accused by
Iran of illegally entering their waters. It is a
disgrace. We would never dream of treating captives
like this - allowing them to smoke cigarettes, for
example, even though it has been proven that smoking
kills. And as for compelling poor servicewoman Faye
Turney to wear a black headscarf, and then allowing
the picture to be posted around the world - have the
Iranians no concept of civilised behaviour? For God's
sake, what's wrong with putting a bag over her head?
That's what we do with the Muslims we capture: we put
bags over their heads, so it's hard to breathe. Then
it's perfectly acceptable to take photographs of them
and circulate them to the press because the captives
can't be recognised and humiliated in the way these
unfortunate British service people are.

It is also unacceptable that these British captives
should be made to talk on television and say things
that they may regret later. If the Iranians put duct
tape over their mouths, like we do to our captives,
they wouldn't be able to talk at all. Of course they'd
probably find it even harder to breathe - especially
with a bag over their head - but at least they
wouldn't be humiliated.

And what's all this about allowing the captives to
write letters home saying they are all right? It's
time the Iranians fell into line with the rest of the
civilised world: they should allow their captives the
privacy of solitary confinement. That's one of the
many privileges the US grants to its captives in
Guant=E1namo Bay.

The true mark of a civilised country is that it
doesn't rush into charging people whom it has
arbitrarily arrested in places it's just invaded. The
inmates of Guant=E1namo, for example, have been enjoying
all the privacy they want for almost five years, and
the first inmate has only just been charged. What a
contrast to the disgraceful Iranian rush to parade
their captives before the cameras!

What's more, it is clear that the Iranians are not
giving their British prisoners any decent physical
exercise. The US military make sure that their Iraqi
captives enjoy PT. This takes the form of exciting
"stress positions", which the captives are expected to
hold for hours on end so as to improve their stomach
and calf muscles. A common exercise is where they are
made to stand on the balls of their feet and then
squat so that their thighs are parallel to the ground.
This creates intense pain and, finally, muscle
failure. It's all good healthy fun and has the bonus
that the captives will confess to anything to get out
of it.

And this brings me to my final point. It is clear from
her TV appearance that servicewoman Turney has been
put under pressure. The newspapers have persuaded
behavioural psychologists to examine the footage and
they all conclude that she is "unhappy and stressed".

What is so appalling is the underhand way in which the
Iranians have got her "unhappy and stressed". She
shows no signs of electrocution or burn marks and
there are no signs of beating on her face. This is
unacceptable. If captives are to be put under duress,
such as by forcing them into compromising sexual
positions, or having electric shocks to their
genitals, they should be photographed, as they were in
Abu Ghraib. The photographs should then be circulated
around the civilised world so that everyone can see
exactly what has been going on.

As Stephen Glover pointed out in the Daily Mail,
perhaps it would not be right to bomb Iran in
retaliation for the humiliation of our servicemen, but
clearly the Iranian people must be made to suffer -
whether by beefing up sanctions, as the Mail suggests,
or simply by getting President Bush to hurry up and
invade, as he intends to anyway, and bring democracy
and western values to the country, as he has in Iraq.

- Terry Jones is a film director, actor and Python
www.terry-jones.net