Call that humiliation?
No hoods. No electric shocks. No beatings. These Iranians
clearly are a very uncivilised bunch
By Terry Jones
03/31/07 "The
Guardian" -- -- I share the outrage expressed in
the British press over the treatment of our naval personnel
accused by Iran of illegally entering their waters. It is a
disgrace. We would never dream of treating captives like this -
allowing them to smoke cigarettes, for example, even though it
has been proven that smoking kills. And as for compelling poor
servicewoman Faye Turney to wear a black headscarf, and then
allowing the picture to be posted around the world - have the
Iranians no concept of civilised behaviour? For God's sake,
what's wrong with putting a bag over her head? That's what we do
with the Muslims we capture: we put bags over their heads, so
it's hard to breathe. Then it's perfectly acceptable to take
photographs of them and circulate them to the press because the
captives can't be recognised and humiliated in the way these
unfortunate British service people are.
It is also unacceptable that these British captives should be
made to talk on television and say things that they may regret
later. If the Iranians put duct tape over their mouths, like we
do to our captives, they wouldn't be able to talk at all. Of
course they'd probably find it even harder to breathe -
especially with a bag over their head - but at least they
wouldn't be humiliated.
And what's all this about allowing the captives to write letters
home saying they are all right? It's time the Iranians fell into
line with the rest of the civilised world: they should allow
their captives the privacy of solitary confinement. That's one
of the many privileges the US grants to its captives in
Guantánamo Bay.
The true mark of a civilised country is that it doesn't rush
into charging people whom it has arbitrarily arrested in places
it's just invaded. The inmates of Guantánamo, for example, have
been enjoying all the privacy they want for almost five years,
and the first inmate has only just been charged. What a contrast
to the disgraceful Iranian rush to parade their captives before
the cameras!
What's more, it is clear that the Iranians are not giving their
British prisoners any decent physical exercise. The US military
make sure that their Iraqi captives enjoy PT. This takes the
form of exciting "stress positions", which the captives are
expected to hold for hours on end so as to improve their stomach
and calf muscles. A common exercise is where they are made to
stand on the balls of their feet and then squat so that their
thighs are parallel to the ground. This creates intense pain
and, finally, muscle failure. It's all good healthy fun and has
the bonus that the captives will confess to anything to get out
of it.
And this brings me to my final point. It is clear from her TV
appearance that servicewoman Turney has been put under pressure.
The newspapers have persuaded behavioural psychologists to
examine the footage and they all conclude that she is "unhappy
and stressed".
What is so appalling is the underhand way in which the Iranians
have got her "unhappy and stressed". She shows no signs of
electrocution or burn marks and there are no signs of beating on
her face. This is unacceptable. If captives are to be put under
duress, such as by forcing them into compromising sexual
positions, or having electric shocks to their genitals, they
should be photographed, as they were in Abu Ghraib. The
photographs should then be circulated around the civilised world
so that everyone can see exactly what has been going on.
As Stephen Glover pointed out in the Daily Mail, perhaps it
would not be right to bomb Iran in retaliation for the
humiliation of our servicemen, but clearly the Iranian people
must be made to suffer - whether by beefing up sanctions, as the
Mail suggests, or simply by getting President Bush to hurry up
and invade, as he intends to anyway, and bring democracy and
western values to the country, as he has in Iraq.
· Terry Jones is a film director, actor and Python -
www.terry-jones.net
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
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