10-25-05,7:48am
Recently, an Australian TV program broadcast a news video showing US soldiers were overtly burning the bodies of two suspected Taliban militants in a nearby village in southern Afghanistan. When burning, the soldiers broadcast daunting messages targeting a nearby village over a loudspeaker, trying every possible means to intimidate, threaten and heap curses on villagers there.
In view of that Taliban militants are almost all Islamic believers, the US cremating bodies distinctly violates Islamic mores and tradition as burning bodies is banned under Islam. Body burning is deemed as insult and profane against Islamic belief. In the meanwhile, US soldiers heaped curses on enemies with Islamic taboo words, which again roughly violates and insults the rivals' Islamic belief. Sources also said the US troops' doing is out of their psychological warfare, targeting Islamic unmoral practices, and they use this to frighten and subjugate local Islamic militants. All this happened in an Islamic nation and society, so the incident is generally regarded as another scandal committed by US troops.
In face of condemnations and protests from various sides, the US military quibbled the burning is for health reasons while saying it will carry out an investigation into the matter. Such saying immediately won refutations from relevant experts. The reason is that the Geneva Convention has stipulated how to do with enemies' bodies. The deceased should be buried honorably. If possible, they should be buried in line with their religious belief. Apart from pending health reasons or for the dead religious belief, bodies should not be cremated.
Similar scandals like body burning are not isolated cases. Take for example, the prisoner abuses at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, battlefield bloody photos for blue pictures, the incident of desecration of the Quran by US interrogators at Guantanamo Bay, and US troops' abuses of prisoners of war in Afghanistan and killing the innocent in Afghanistan. From the revealed facts, it can be seen that US troops ignore the related clauses stipulated in the Geneva Convention. The general phenomena of wide infringement on human right have developed to a quite serious degree, which is not just what the US military authorities explained that the scandal is only an isolated case or an incident committed once in a while.
Forced by pressures from various parties, the US military authorities had to refer isolated suspects to court and attempted to divert public attention. But this cannot absolve US commanders or even the US military authorities of their responsibilities, or even cannot cover up a lot of unexposed facts within the US army.
Families and lawyers of US soldiers once appeared in court said firmly the crimes their relatives and the parties concerned committed were only made in accordance with their superiors' orders. Many sources from the US army also prove that the incidents of US troops' maltreatment of prisoners of war and infringement on human right are not scattered and isolated, or even regarded as organized collective behaviors. It is not strange that the US military authorities has repeated its order that it is not allowed to have unauthorized use of camera and cinematography to reveal army doings. However, various scandals of the US army frequently come out.
From this, many known scandals, including the body-burning incident, are only a small component of US army scandals.
