WORLD VIEWS: Torture generates anger

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Edward M. Gomez is a former diplomat and correspondent for Time magazine in New York, Tokyo and Paris. He speaks several languages and has lived and worked all over the world. He is a regular contributor to The New York Times and other publications and is the U.S. editor of Raw Vision magazine.

WORLD VIEWS: Torture generates anger; Australia's 'Leb' bashings

Edward M. Gomez, Special to SF Gate

How much torture can Washington tolerate, either by American personnel or their agents, or by officials in U.S.-controlled Iraq? Apparently a lot. But while the Bush administration looks the other way or denies American involvement in the torturing of detainees in Iraq, at its Guantánamo prison camp in Cuba or in secret prisons in Eastern Europe, much of the rest of the world has been repulsed by the Bush team's policy.

Washington's refusal to come clean about exactly what American personnel and their agents have been up to around the world, despite copious evidence of abuse, has frustrated foreign observers.

"The response of the United States' administration to recent reports in the European media on its use of torture and illegal abductions has been garbled, at best," Jamaica's generally middle-of-the-road Gleaner admonished.

Of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's recent, weak-sounding assertion that "while the U.S. did not countenance torture, information yielded by suspects [whom the United States had detained and interrogated in various locations] had saved European lives," the Caribbean daily observed: "In effect, she was saying,'We didn't, but if we did, it wasn't wrong.'"

Overseas, political observers in countries that normally are generally friendly to and have tended to respect the United States are sounding increasingly disillusioned about the attitude of the government under Bush's watch. Writing in Spain's El País, commentator Andrés Ortega noted that there is a growing "trans-Atlantic distance" separating the thinking of Europeans and the Bush administration as far as "the value and content of international law" are concerned.

This big discrepancy, Ortega noted, "along with [Washington's] tortured definition of what is considered torture -- which has provoked a new confrontation between the U.S. and the United Nations -- undermine[s] even more the overseas legitimacy of the superpower, which it needs, even though it doesn't recognize that it does so."

Recent revelations that American troops had discovered some 170 mainly Sunni Muslim prisoners, "some of whom had apparently been abused, beaten, starved and tortured," in a bunker operated by Iraq's interior ministry, further fueled the concerns of critics who believe the country's U.S.-led occupation forces are either clueless about what's really going on there or incapable of keeping order in the war-ravaged land.

The discovery of the prison run by the Interior Ministry, a division of Iraq's fledgling new government that is dominated by Shiite Muslims, the Sunnis' rivals, was seen as fueling "sectarian tensions." Sunnis have accused the Interior Ministry "of allowing militias and police 'death squads' to harass and detain Sunnis suspected of involvement in the insurgency." (Guardian/Süddeutsche Zeitung)

A second prison run by the Interior Ministry was discovered a few days ago. (Le Monde)

Meanwhile, "[t]he volume of evidence pointing to the use of extreme tactics by the U.S. in its war on terror," such as last year's Abu Ghraib prison-torture scandal, which "has been accumulating for years," has convinced many foreign observers that, "along with some of its allies, the U.S. has been engaging in some pretty rough business." (Gleaner)

However, even if "[t]hat is to be expected, given the intensity of the war and the challenges posed by committed foes," the Gleaner advised, "the U.S. needs reminding that to the extent it uses the same kind of tactics that it decries in others -- savagery and terror -- it will compromise itself in the eyes of its friends, both actual and potential. Extreme measures may be ethically justifiable in specific circumstances. But they can also amount to a slide on to a slippery slope, in which evil gradually becomes banalized."

Today's ongoing struggle with terrorism makes us face some "tough decisions," commentator Romanus Otte wrote in Germany's Die Welt am Sonntag. He pointed out that, in "the struggle against terror ... [w]e must take the threat seriously and protect ourselves as well as we can." At the same time, he cautioned, "we [cannot risk] abandoning our values." As a result, he added, "[t]orture must be forbidden, exactly because it is so tempting." Otte concluded: "Torture must be forbidden so that we do not become just like our enemies."

The risks for governments that aid Washington's overseas torture activities could be high, too. Commentator John Saxe-Fernández, writing in Mexico's La Jornada, observed, for example, that for Germany's new chancellor, Angela Merkel, "[t]he political costs ... if she is suspected of even the slightest collaboration with the United States ... [with regard to secret] interrogation and extermination centers, could be devastating, and she knows it: her conservative government is operating in the midst of public opinion that persists in rejecting the Iraq war, along with a mounting sense of indignant irritation over 'clandestine' U.S. operations, which [have included] the systematic use of torture, a practice to which [the United States] now appears to be addicted."

'Leb' Bashing in Australia

War, bombings and torture in other places are the routine stuff of headlines, but this past weekend, sun worshippers at Cronulla Beach in Sydney, Australia, got a taste of a different kind of violence -- the homemade kind. Reportedly provoked by assaults about a week ago on two lifeguards at the beach by youths described as being of "Middle Eastern appearance," Sunday's race riots involved what papers called "thousands of drunken youths." (BBC/Daily Telegraph/Courier-Mail)

Seeking revenge for the attacks on the lifeguards, members of the white, largely male mob -- some 5,000 strong -- went on a rampage, leading to dozens of arrests and injuries. The rioters took aim at individuals who they believed were ethnic Lebanese. After the event, police told the media that they "believed neo-Nazi and white-supremacist groups [had been] among the crowd." In a newspaper photo, "[o]ne woman was pictured ... holding a poster that read 'Aussies fighting back.' ... She was advertising a group called the Patriotic Youth League." That organization "has links to the German-based skinhead group Volksfront, [to the] British Nationalist Party and [to] the New Zealand National Front." (Australian Associated Press/Sydney Morning Herald)

As the violent mob moved across the beach, "a Middle Eastern youth told locals: 'I'm an Australian, I was born here,'" as he was taunted with chants of "Kill Lebs!" Minutes later, the young man "was punched to the ground and kicked, before being led to safety by police. Bashings continued during the day, as two girls of Middle Eastern appearance were pelted with beer bottles, a teenager who was said to be minding his own business was chased by a mob and bashed, and a man was cornered ... and beaten." At one point, the beer-soaked crowd descended on a bar "where a 'Leb' was rumored to be hiding. The mob screamed for him to show himself, with several chanting, 'String him up.'"

Later, a "group of teenage girls" pushed "[t]wo girls of Middle Eastern descent" to the ground as the "crowd erupted again, this time with calls of 'cat fight' and 'kill the Leb bitches.'" Describing the melee, a local lifeguard told a reporter, referring to the recent attacks on two other lifeguards: "What the Lebs did last week was low, and it's time we showed a bit of pride towards where we live." (Courier-Mail)

Later Sunday evening, after the beachside riot, "[a] group of about 60 men of Middle Eastern appearance and armed with baseball bats smashed the windows of parked cars" in an "apparent revenge attack" in east Sydney. (Australian Associated Press/Sydney Morning Herald)

The violent outburst on one of suburban Sydney's famously laid-back beaches prompted words of condemnation from politicians and an outpouring of citizens' comments in local and national media. Australian Prime Minister John Howard said: "Attacking people on the basis of their race, their appearance, their ethnicity is totally unacceptable and should be repudiated by all Australians." (Australian Broadcasting Corp.)

"This is absolutely disgusting," wrote a reader named Michael in a message to Adeliade's Advertiser. "Anyone so stupid and ignorant to participate in racially motivated violence does not deserve to touch our Australian flag."

Elsewhere, the head of the Forum on Australian-Islamic Relations, an online discussion group, said that the day of rioting had shown "that there is underlying racism running deeply in the Australian psyche. It's been simmering for a few years."

Similarly, although from a different perspective, an Anglo-Australian Cronulla resident remarked: "It's been a long time coming. This place has changed in the past 30 years, and now the young ones are taking it back." But Sarah Id, an Australian of non-Anglo background who was victimized in the Cronulla Beach violence, recalled that the rioters had shouted: "You don't belong here." In response, she had stressed that she had been born in the area and had attended the local high school. (All readers' comments from the Age.)

In the Sydney Morning Herald, op-ed columnist Paul Sheehan noted: "Out there in Sydney, there is a huge, cumulative weight of resentment and contempt at the constant provocations by Lebanese gangs -- I'm not even going to bother with the simpering euphemism about 'men of Middle Eastern appearance' when everybody knows what it means. It was evident on the beach at Cronulla."

Australia's Daily Telegraph assailed the "thuggish louts" who shamed all Australians with their violent, booze-fueled behavior on the beach. But the paper also recognized that "[t]here is no doubt that many regular users of Cronulla Beach feel, as do many Anglo-Australians (particularly women) who come in regular contact with large numbers of Middle Eastern migrants, that Australia's easy-going casual culture is under attack from young Middle Eastern males. The reports of women being abused for being immodestly dressed, or traveling alone, or drinking alcohol, are too numerous to be dismissed."

The paper urged Australian authorities to stop ignoring "such incidents of anti-social behavior" and, when it comes to the conduct of people using public facilities like beaches, to adopt a "zero-tolerance position toward those who claim they live by different cultural standards."
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  Author, artist and critic Edward M. Gomez is a former diplomat and correspondent for Time magazine in New York, Tokyo and Paris. He speaks several languages and has lived and worked all over the world. He is a regular contributor to The New York Times and other publications and is the U.S. editor of Raw Vision magazine.
worldviews@sfgate.com

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/g/a/2005/12/13/worldviews.DTL

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