The Associated Press is reporting on recent revelations that early in the Korean War the South Korean government, with US acquiescence, murdered 100,000-200,000 of its citizens suspected of possible leftist sympathies. These executions occurred in scenes of mass death, with thousands of detainees lined up in front of trenches and shot, checked to make sure they were dead, and then pushed into mass graves and covered over.
With U.S. military officers sometimes present, and as North Korean invaders pushed down the peninsula, the southern army and police emptied South Korean prisons, lined up detainees and shot them in the head, dumping the bodies into hastily dug trenches. Others were thrown into abandoned mines or into the sea. Women and children were among those killed. Many victims never faced charges or trial.
The mass executions — intended to keep possible southern leftists from reinforcing the northerners — were carried out over mere weeks and were largely hidden from history for a half-century.
In recent years these mass graves have started to be excavated by a South Korean Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The Commission is also investigating hundreds of reports of American massacres of civilians, mainly through air strikes:
The 17 investigators of the commission’s subcommittee on “mass civilian sacrifice,” led by Kim, have been dealing with petitions from more than 7,000 South Koreans, involving some 1,200 alleged incidents — not just mass planned executions, but also 215 cases in which the U.S. military is accused of the indiscriminate killing of South Korean civilians in 1950-51, usually in air attacks.
American military officials had control of the South Korean military and could have stopped the massacres but chose not to:
The declassified record of U.S. documents shows an ambivalent American attitude toward the killings. American diplomats that summer urged restraint on southern officials — to no obvious effect — but a State Department cable that fall said overall commander Gen. Douglas MacArthur viewed the executions as a Korean “internal matter,” even though he controlled South Korea’s military.
Ninety miles south of Seoul, here in the narrow, peaceful valley of Sannae, truckloads of prisoners were brought in from Daejeon Prison and elsewhere day after day in July 1950, as the North Koreans bore down on the city.
The American photos, taken by an Army major and kept classified for a half-century, show the macabre sequence of events.
White-clad detainees — bent, submissive, with hands bound — were thrown down prone, jammed side by side, on the edge of a long trench. South Korean military and national policemen then stepped up behind, pointed their rifles at the backs of their heads and fired. The bodies were tipped into the trench.
Trembling policemen — “they hadn’t shot anyone before” — were sometimes off-target, leaving men wounded but alive, Lee said. He and others were ordered to check for wounded and finish them off.
Very important to keep in mind is that these crimes were vigorously denied by Korean and American officials for half a century. While many Korean family members of the executed and other knew of the murder of 100,000 of their citizens, they were too afraid of being labelled “leftist” to speak. In many cases they destroyed all pictures and other remnants of their dead family members to protect the family. Those who tried to publicly reveal the killings were harassed:
Among the Koreans who witnessed, took part in or lost family members to the mass killings, the events were hardly hidden, but they became a “public secret,” barely whispered about through four decades of right-wing dictatorship here.
“The family couldn’t talk about it, or we’d be stigmatized as leftists,” said Kim Chong-hyun, 70, leader of an organization of families seeking redress for their loved ones’ deaths in 1950.
Kim, whose father was shot and buried in a mass grave outside the central city of Daejeon, noted that in 1960-61, a one-year democratic interlude in South Korea, family groups began investigating wartime atrocities. But a military coup closed that window, and “the leaders of those organizations were arrested and punished.”
Then, “from 1961 to 1988, nobody could challenge the regime, to try again to reveal these hidden truths,” said Park Myung-lim of Seoul’s Yonsei University, a leading Korean War historian. As a doctoral student in the late 1980s, when South Korea was moving toward democracy, Park was among the few scholars to begin researching the mass killings. He was regularly harassed by the police.
The US and British government denied the reports and censored or attacked those few reporters and others who tried to reveal the massacres:
Scattered reports of the killings did emerge in 1950 — and some did not.
British journalist James Cameron wrote about mass prisoner shootings in the South Korean port city of Busan — then spelled Pusan — for London’s Picture Post magazine in the fall of 1950, but publisher Edward Hulton ordered the story removed at the last minute.
Earlier, correspondent Alan Winnington reported on the shooting of thousands of prisoners at Daejeon in the British communist newspaper The Daily Worker, only to have his reporting denounced by the U.S. Embassy in London as an “atrocity fabrication.” The British Cabinet then briefly considered laying treason charges against Winnington, historian Jon Halliday has written.
Associated Press correspondent O.H.P. King reported on the shooting of 60 political prisoners in Suwon, south of Seoul, and wrote in a later memoir he was “shocked that American officers were unconcerned” by questions he raised about due process for the detainees.
Some U.S. officers — and U.S. diplomats — were among others who reported on the killings. But their classified reports were kept secret for decades.
These incidents should remind us yet again, as if another reminder were needed, that war is always horrifying, that civilians are regularly considered enemies to be destroyed in modern warfare. the myth of the clean war is exactly that, a myth created to justify that which is unjustifiable. As one of the executioners described his thoughts as he finished off one victim who had survived the first shot:
I thought, there should never again be war.
Another lesson of these massacres and the ability of governments to suppress the knowledge of them for decades is that, when it comes to atrocities, governments lie. All governments lie. While this does not mean that all claims of atrocities are true, those who give credence to official denials, who treat those denials as “evidence”, as anything other than the propaganda they are, are themselves abetting the atrocities of the state. Only a truly inquisitive press and an aroused citizenry constitute a partial check of government denial and deceit. We should remember this elementary fact as we evaluate the many claims of atrocities in Iraq.
Blogger Valtin, who wrote about these massacres last night, has called for an American Truth & Reconcilliation Commission to investigate “full extent of U.S. involved war crimes.” I concur with this position. Only if our country somehow comes to terms with our role in many late 20th century horrors do we have a chance of choosing a different path. To stay on the path of denial is to remain in the service of death.
May 19th, 2008
Einstein is sometimes cited as a great scientist who believed in God. Cited in support of this is his famous statement in regards to the probabilistic nature of quantum theory: “God does not play dice with the universe.” A recently auctioned January 3, 1954 letter however gives a clearer sense of his thoughts on religion, which in some sense resemble those of Freud and Marx:
The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.
May 17th, 2008
In Soviet Russia, psychiatrists sometimes collaborated with the repressive regime by locking up dissidents in mental hospitals and injecting them with powerful psychotropic drugs, “antipsychotics” designed to treat schizophrenia. The Soviet psychiatrists were rightly condemned for their misuse of medicine for the un-therapeutic purpose of social control.
American health personnel are not immune from cooperating with efforts to misuse psychiatric drugs for social control purposes having no connection with those drugs’ intended uses. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) has been systematically administering psychotropic drugs to immigrants in the process of being deported as the Washington Post reported this week. Deportees who in the past had resisted deportation were injected with drugs, often a three drug “cocktail,” in order to keep them pliant during deportation. These drugs included the powerful antipsychotic drug Haldol, as well as the antianxiety drug Ativan, and Cogentin, a drug used to treat the often severe Parkinsons illness like side effects of Haldol.
These drugs were prescribed by psychiatrists and administered by specially selected nurse “medical escorts.” The drugs were administered in extremely high doses, sometimes rendering the deportees unable to speak. It sometimes took deportees days or even weeks to get the drugs out of their system. Thus Michael Shango was injected with 32.5 milligrams (mg) of Haldol, as well as 8.5 mg of Ativan and some Cogentin over 11 hours. His initial Haldol dose was 10 mg. Compare this with a usual Haldol dose of 2 to 5 mg repeated in 4 to 6 hours for “control of the acutely agitated schizophrenic patient with moderately severe to very severe symptoms” and 2 to 6 mg of Ativan daily for patients whose bodies have already adapted to the medication; lower doses of these drugs are recommended for new patients as people need time to adjust to them.
These drugs, especially Haldol are extremely powerful and are almost never utilized in individuals not diagnosed as actively psychotic. They can be extremely uncomfortable, especially if first administered in high doses and can disorient an individual for days. When Shango was imprisoned upon his return to the Congo, he was so disoriented that he didn’t know where he was fortunately, friends helped him escape. It was weeks before he fully recovered from the drugs.
This use of powerful medications to control detainees is likely illegal. In fact, the Clinton administration had concluded:
“Regarding detainees who are not mentally ill, involuntary medication of such persons for the sole purpose of subduing them during deportation, without a court order, is not supported by any legal authority and raises ethical issues as well.” [emphasis in original]
(more…)
May 15th, 2008
CREW (Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington) and VoteVets.org have obtained a memo from a VA hospital’s PTSD program coordinator suggesting that they avoid giving PTSD diagnoses and instead give Adjustment Disorder R/O [rule out] PTSD. We need to find out if this is widespread.
May 15th, 2008
As some of you may know, Amy and David Goodman included out movement of psychologists fighting the APA policy on interrogations in their book, Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary heroes or Extaordinary Times. While you DEFINITELY should by the whole book, I’ve scanned the chapter on us entitled “Psychologists in Denial“ and placed it at: http://tinyurl.com/53urep.
Enjoy! And go buy the book. I cried as I read each chapter.
BTW, Amy and David will be in Boston on Friday:
WHEN: Doors open at 6:00pm, event begins at 7:00pm
WHERE: The Jamaica Plain Forum, First Church in Jamaica Plain, Unitarian Universalist, 6 Eliot St., Jamaica Plain, MA 02130
DESCRIPTION: A talk and booksigning with journalists Amy Goodman and David Goodman.
TICKETS: Advanced Tickets and Books in advance:
$5 in advance or at the door (cash or check only, please)
To be sold at Rhythm and Muse Bookstore
470 Center St.
Jamaica Plain, MA 02130
David and Amy have asked me to say a few words, though I’ll get there a bit late as I have to teach that night. So, if you’re in th Boston area, please join us.
May 15th, 2008
The US military has announced that it has dropped charges against[ one of] the so-called “20th hijacker,” Mohammad al-Qahtani. Back in 2006, Bill Dedman of MSNBC asked Can ‘20th hijacker’ ever stand trial? Evidently the answer is “no.” The reason is partially that al-Qahtani was tortured, as bioethicist Steven Miles describes. But being tortured doesn’t spare one from trial in Bush’s America. But al-Qahtani has the unique distinction that his torture is described in detail in the leaked log of his interrogation, the only interrogation log to become public so far.
As anyone reading this blog regularly knows, al-Qahtani’s interrogation is notable because a psychologist, Maj. John Leso, is documented as being present at the interrogation. Also notable is that in the two years since this became public knowledge the American Psychological Association has failed to take action against Maj. Leso, an APA member, despite at least four ethics complaints being filed against him dating back to the summer of 2006. Evidently the APA is against torture, except when it is documented to have occurred.
Here is a BBC account of reasons for the dropping of charges: (more…)
May 13th, 2008
National Lawyers Guild Calls For Special Prosecutor to Investigate Bush Administration Officials and Lawyers Who Wrote Torture Memos
Issues White Paper On Torture Liability
Contacts:
Marjorie Cohn, NLG President, marjorie@tjsl.edu; 858-204-3565
Jeanne Mirer, NLG International Committee, mirerfam@earthlink.net; 313-515-2046
New York. The National Lawyers Guild (NLG) calls on Congress to appoint a Special Prosecutor, independent of the Department of Justice, to investigate and prosecute high Bush officials and lawyers including John Yoo for their role in the torture of prisoners in U.S. custody.
The NLG has issued a White Paper explaining why the memos, which purported to give objective legal advice, subject all those involved to prosecution under international and U.S. domestic law. This includes people who ordered the torture, approved it or gave advice to justify it.
Guild President Marjorie Cohn testified on May 6 before the Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Civil Liberties of the House Judiciary Committee, that some lawyers in the Department of Justice were “part of a common plan to violate U.S. and international laws outlawing torture.”
The 14-page White Paper details the ways in which the lawyers, including Yoo, Jay Bybee, David Addington, and William Haynes, counseled the White House on how to get away with war crimes. The lawyers said that the Department of Justice would not enforce federal laws against torture, maiming, assault and stalking. “Just because the statute says,” John Yoo explained in a recent Esquire interview, “that doesn’t mean you have to do it.”
Professor Cohn told the congressmen it was “reasonably foreseeable” the lawyers’ advice “would result in great physical and mental harm or death to many detainees”; more than 100 have died, many from torture. Torture, like genocide, slavery and wars of aggression, is absolutely prohibited at all times. No country can ever pass a law that would allow them.
Professor Philippe Sands, a British international litigator and author of the new book, “Torture Team,” also testified at the congressional hearing. He said that after his extensive interviews with many Bush officials, including John Yoo, “it became clear to me that the Administration has spun a narrative that is false, claiming that the impetus for the new interrogation techniques came from the bottom-up. That is not true; the abuse was a result of pressure and actions driven from the highest levels of government.”
It was recently revealed that Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, George Tenet, and John Ashcroft met in the White House and personally oversaw and approved the torture by authorizing specific torture techniques including waterboarding. President Bush admitted he knew and approved of their actions.
“They are all liable under the War Crimes Act and the Torture Statute,” Professor Cohn testified. “Under the doctrine of command responsibility, commanders, all the way up the chain of command to the commander-in-chief, are liable for war crimes if they knew or should have known their subordinates would commit them, and they did nothing to stop or prevent it. The Bush officials ordered the torture after seeking legal cover from their lawyers.”
The National Lawyers Guild calls on Congress to appoint a Special Prosecutor, independent of the Department of Justice, to investigate and prosecute the high officials of the Bush administration and the lawyers who advised them, for their roles in misusing the rule of law and legal analysis to justify torture and other crimes.
The White Paper can be read at www.nlg.org/news/statements/White Paper - Yoo hearing.doc
May 13th, 2008
American education at its best. Apparently a substitute teacher in Land O’ Laked Florida was fired for showing his students a magic trick in which he made a toothpick disappear. It seems a student, and the School District, thought he was exhibiting wizardry!
The trick requires a toothpick and transparent tape. A sleight-of-hand maneuver causes the toothpick to disappear then reappear. At least, so it seems. In reality, the toothpick hides behind the performer’s thumb, held in place by the tape.
“The whole thing lasted 45 seconds,” Piculas said.
He said the students liked the trick. He showed them how to do it so they could perform it at home.
One student in the Rushe Middle class apparently took the trick the wrong way, Piculas said. He said he was told the student became so traumatized that the student’s father complained.
Glad to hear that Florida school districts are protecting our students from the evils of magic.
May 12th, 2008
In response to the horrifying situation Burma, Avaaz has launched an urgent people-to-people fund-raising effort, to be filtered through the International Burmese Monks Organization and related groups. So far they have raised over one million Euros. To find out more, go here.
May 12th, 2008
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