USA, Iraq ‘violating’ Geneva Convention
Washington, March 25
Human Rights Watch has accused both the Iraqi and US governments of violating the Geneva Convention prohibition on exposing Prisoners Of War (POW) to public curiosity.
According to the Third Geneva Convention of 1949, a detaining authority
in wartime has a clear obligation not to parade POWs or allow them to be exposed to the public, the group said in a release.
The prohibition was not a blanket ban on any image whatsoever of a POW, it said. For example, the prohibition would not extend to incidental filming of POWs when journalists were documenting broader military operations, it added.
But a detaining authority
in wartime had a clear obligation not to parade POWs, or allow them to be exposed to the public, the group said. The provision protecting POWs from ‘’public curiosity’’ appeared to have been violated by the Iraqi and the US governments, Human Rights Watch said.
The Iraqi government had filmed American POWs and interrogated them before cameras. On the other hand, the US Government had taken insufficient measures to prevent journalists embedded with US forces from filming Iraqi POWs held by the United States, the group charged.
‘’US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld has appropriately criticised the Iraqi filming of American POWs. However, he had said nothing to date about the filming of Iraqi POWs by media operating alongside US forces,’’ the group said. UNI
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks