1. State Crime Part 2 Jill Swale

2. 2. Examples of state crime Your task was as follows Investigate recent events in the following countries to find examples of state crime on an immense scale. To what extent could other countries or influences be held partly responsible? Iraq Rwanda Zimbabwe Sudan

3. 3. State crime in Iraq Patrimonialism was rife under Saddham Hussein. He concentrated power in a small circle of relatives and cronies. The loyalty of security services was secured by material benefits and blackmail rather than ideological belief.

4. 4. State crimes in Iraq During Hussein’s regime, torture, extra- judicial executions, inhuman punishments, war crimes and genocide were rife, and accepted at the highest levels of government despite Iraq being a signatory of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

5. 5. Genocide in Iraq Iraq was created by the British when the Ottoman Empire was dismembered after the first world war. The mainly Kurdish province of Mosul was welded onto the provinces of Basra and Baghdadis and the mainly Shi’a Muslims were ruled by a Sunni elite, meaning the country was internally fragmented, making violence more likely.

6. 6. Genocide in Iraq From 1988 brutal repression of the Marsh Arabs was coupled with the destruction of the wetland ecosystem they occupied (‘ecocide as genocide.) Hussain’s cousin ‘Chemical Ali’, Ali Hasan al- Majid, was appointed Supreme Commander of the North and he destroyed Kurdish villages, killing between 50,000 and 100,000 people, many with chemical weapons. Other countries did not protest and the USA even tried to blame it on Iran. Chemical Ali

7. 7. Torture in Iraq Mass executions of Shi’ite Arabs (some involved in the 1991 uprising) took place at Abu Graib and Al Radwaniyah prisons in 1993. Some members of Saddam’s ruling family had their own private torture chambers, employing eye gouging, piercing of hands by drills, rape, acid baths, amputation of ears, branding of foreheads etc. Hundreds of thousands of Kurds and Shias are said to have disappeared.

8. 8. Torture Torture is a form of state crime perpetuated in every known nation, if the term is interpreted to include mental as well as physical suffering imposed by state officials to obtain information.

9. 9. Western hypocrisy The British did not publish a dossier on torture in Iraq until 2002, when they were preparing the public for an attack on Iraq. This information had been collected by Amnesty and presented to the UK government for years to no avail. Green and Ward suggest the invasion in 2003 was not liberation as claimed. The US occupied the Ministry of Oil and Ministry of Interior immediately but left hospitals, UN offices and museums open to looting. There was no attempt to look at all the records of atrocities in order to try the perpetrators, according to journalist Robert Fisk.

10. 10. Sanctions as genocide? In August 1990, after Iraq invaded Kuwait, UN Security Council Resolution 661 imposed stringent economic sanctions on Iraq, which would supposedly be lifted with the regime’s disarmament of WMDs and long range missiles. United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) had the job of monitoring this through weapons inspections. They reported frequently that 90- 95% of proscribed weaponry had been accounted for and the factories that produced them eliminated as early as 1997, but UK and US governments still opposed the lifting of sanctions until Saddam was removed.

11. 11. Sanctions as genocide? These sanctions stopped medical supplies and baby food getting into the country, resulting in tripling of under -five mortality rates and doubling of maternal mortality rates during this period (UNICEF). School supplies were stopped too, resulting in a major decline in literacy. (If pencils were allowed in, supposedly Iraqis could use the carbon in them to make planes invisible to radar. ) Sanctions created an anomic climate in which bribery and corruption increased to obtain the scarce goods and many felt a sense of hopelessness because of extremes of deprivation. This explains the wholesale looting after the 2003 invasion.

12. 12. Sanctions violate human rights? An entire nation was punished for the crimes of its ruler. Sanctions were legal but can be considered criminal as a gross violation of human rights which the UN supposedly upholds. Green and Ward suggest the sanctions were hypocritical too as the USA has a full arsenal of biological, chemical and nuclear WMDs and is the only nation that has used atomic bombs against a civilian population. It will not allow outsiders to inspect what it has for security reasons, yet it forced Iraq to allow this.

13. 13. Rwandan genocide Between April and June 1994, an estimated 800,000 Rwandans were killed. Most of the dead were Tutsis, a scapegoated group, and most of the perpetrators were Hutus. Longstanding tension between these two groups was brought to a head when the Tutsis were blamed for a plane crash in which the president died. The presidential guard immediately initiated a campaign of retribution. The early organisers included military officials, politicians and businessmen, encouraged by radio propaganda. Soldiers and police officers encouraged ordinary citizens to take part. In some cases, Hutu civilians were forced to murder their Tutsi neighbours by military personnel. Some Tutsis managed to escape to refugee camps

14. 14. Zimbabwe today A dictator is able to impose his or her will on a nation when a number of factors apply. Institutions that should act as a countervailing force to the dictator’s power are either crippled or completely destroyed. In some cases they become an extension of the despot’s rule. People are murdered, tortured, and abducted to instil fear in others.

15. 15. Darfur in Sudan

16. 16. State crime in Darfur Currently, in Darfur, there is "substantial evidence which indicates that many hundreds of people are being held in areas controlled by the Janjaweed where they are forced to farm land, tend animals and harvest crops for the benefit of the militia and their families. They are not paid for this work and they are not allowed to leave these areas" (report by Darfur Consortium.)

17. 17. Ethnic cleansing Non-Arab civilians are targeted for attack and abduction by government-supported Janjaweed militias and the Sudanese Army based on their belonging to this perceived ethnic group. The abduction and enslavement is systematic and government-sanctioned – and therefore an act of ethnic cleansing.

18. 18. Abuse of women in Darfur Darfuri women, after an assault on their village, are systematically raped, taken into captivity, and sold or given into sexual slavery. They can be held as slaves for a week, often repeatedly gang raped by militiamen and soldiers, or they can be married off under coercive marriage laws to friends of the Sudanese Armed Forces as far away as Khartoum.

19. 19. Child abuse in Darfur Children are often recruited as agricultural workers and sex workers and as domestic workers in Khartoum. According to both the UN and Human Rights Watch, all armed parties in Darfur, including the rebels, were involved in recruiting child soldiers. "In Darfur, the Government of Sudan has not only failed in its responsibility to protect its own citizens from human rights violations, but it also bears a direct responsibility for many of the abuses which have taken place.“ http://www.standnow.org/blog/slavery-darfur-report- darfur-consortium

20. 20. Questions Did you find other examples of countries involved in state crime? More examples of UK state crime? Did you discuss different perspectives that Marxists, feminists, social constructionists and others might have on state crime?

21. 21. Civil society versus state crime The legitimacy of the USA and UK has been gravely damaged by the war against Iraq and punitive sanctions. Global hegemony has been challenged in people’s minds. Pilger (2003) argued that fewer Iraqi civilians were killed in bombings by the allies in 2003 than in the 1991 Gulf war because the world was watching and there had been so much protest before the war began. “We are entering a new bi-polar world with two new superpowers: the Bush/Blair gang on one side, and world opinion on the other, a truly popular force stirring at last and whose consciousness soars by the day”.

22. 22. Civil society Civil society refers to pressure groups, trade unions, media and revolutionary movements. If they unite transnationally these are the best means of controlling the crimes of rulers. They are likely to be more effective in deterring state crime, whereas courts and truth commissions only operate after criminals have been caught.

23. 23. Sources Penny Green and Tony Ward (2004) State Crime: Governments, Violence and Corruption, Pluto Press, London. Transparency International, Global Corruption Report 2004: Focus: political corruption, Pluto Press, London and Internet sources J. Swale © 2009