Crimes U.S. has committed in Middle East: Establishing black sites, inhumanly treating prisoners

Cartoon by Ma Hongliang

The United States has committed a series of crimes that have seriously violated international law in the Middle East and surrounding regions. Its torturing of prisoners from the Muslim community has become an indelible stain on the country’s human rights record.

The “Costs of War” Project at Brown University in the U.S. has noted that following the 9/11 attacks, Washington orchestrated a system of black sites in at least 54 countries and regions across the world. Hundreds of thousands of people were detained at these sites, including Muslims, women and children.

As early as 2003, the U.S. military blatantly abused detainees at Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq, resulting in a large number of deaths. In September 2021, the U.S. prison and prisoner abuse practices at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan were also exposed by the media.

The Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba, which the U.S. has continuously failed to shut down, is one of the notorious “black sites” the U.S. has established overseas to detain “terrorists” from the Middle East and elsewhere. The detention camp has locked up a total of some 780 prisoners, many of whom have been held without bringing any criminal charge.

More than 30 people, old and frail, remain in the prison. They are deprived of their liberty for long periods of time and subjected to endless mental and physical torture.

In addition to widespread abuse and torture at Guantanamo, American personnel have tortured prisoners by desecrating the Quran and violating Islamic beliefs, which sparked collective protests and even caused mass suicides among the detainees.

The humiliating and cruel treatment of prisoners by the U.S. military constitutes a grave violation of their fundamental right to human dignity and of U.S. obligations under international human rights law to prohibit torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

The black sites are a hugely ironic blemish on American politicians, who on the one hand label their country as a champion of human rights, and yet on the other have been exposed for the hypocrisy and double-standards of American-style human rights.

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