Irfan Chowdrey | Declassified UK
Soldiers who served under his command in Iraq got away with sexually assaulting prisoners, in scenes similar to Israel’s torture of Palestinians.
Under US president Donald Trump’s new plan for Gaza, former British prime minister Tony Blair has been touted as having a senior role in governing Gaza, acting as a deputy to Trump himself.
Aside from the obvious neo-colonial implications of this – Western Viceroys ruling over occupied Arabs, as opposed to those occupied Arabs being granted self-determination – Blair’s track record of human rights violations makes him deeply unsuitable for the job.
Blair made the decision in 2003 to join with the US in invading and occupying Iraq. Human Rights Watch has noted that “UK nationals committed abuses in Iraq after 2003 on a significant scale”.
Many of these abuses stemmed from policies that were implemented by Britain’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) under Blair’s leadership, wherein abusive interrogation techniques were authorised from above.
Under Blair’s MoD, ‘harshing’ was authorised – this constitutes a technique of psychological abuse wherein an interrogator screams into a detainee’s face, making implicit threats of violence and engaging in personal insults and vitriol.
No comments:
Post a Comment