Brittiska Independent rapporterar om hur USA genomför kollektiva bestraffningar i Irak genom att förstöra odlingar:

"US soldiers driving bulldozers, with jazz blaring from loudspeakers, have uprooted ancient groves of date palms as well as orange and lemon trees in central Iraq as part of a new policy of collective punishment of farmers who do not give information about guerrillas attacking US troops...

Nusayef Jassim, one of 32 farmers who saw their fruit trees destroyed, said: 'They told us that the resistance fighters hide in our farms, but this is not true. They didn't capture anything. They didn't find any weapons.'

Other farmers said that US troops had told them, over a loudspeaker in Arabic, that the fruit groves were being bulldozed to punish the farmers for not informing on the resistance which is very active in this Sunni Muslim district...

When a reporter from the newspaper Iraq Today attempted to take a photograph of the bulldozers at work a soldier grabbed his camera and tried to smash it. The same paper quotes Lt Col Springman, a US commander in the region, as saying: 'We asked the farmers several times to stop the attacks, or to tell us who was responsible, but the farmers didn't tell us.' "
(Independent : US soldiers bulldoze farmers' crops, 12 oktober 2003)

(Länken via oumbärlige Billmon - läs även kommentarerna till inlägget.)

Den kvinnliga bloggaren Riverbend i Bagdad skriver också:

"Several orchards in Dhuluaya are being cut down… except it’s not only Dhuluaya… it’s also Ba’aquba, the outskirts of Baghdad and several other areas. The trees are bulldozed and trampled beneath heavy machinery. We see the residents and keepers of these orchards begging the troops to spare the trees, holding up crushed branches, leaves and fruit- not yet ripe- from the ground littered with a green massacre. The faces of the farmers are crushed and amazed at the atrocity. I remember one wrinkled face holding up 4 oranges from the ground, still green (our citrus fruit ripens in the winter) and screaming at the camera- “Is this freedom? Is this democracy?!” And his son, who was about 10, stood there with tears of rage streaming down his cheeks and quietly said, “We want 5 troops dead for each tree they cut down… five troops.” A “terrorist”, perhaps? Or a terrorized child who had to watch his family’s future hacked down in the name of democracy and freedom?

Patrick Cockburn says that Dhuluaya is a Sunni area- which is true. Sunnis dominate Dhuluaya. What he doesn’t mention is that the Khazraji tribe, whose orchards were assaulted, are a prominent Shi’a tribe in Iraq."
(Riverbend: Palms and Punishment...">)

Kollektiva bestraffningar förbjuds i Genevekonventionen om skydd av civilpersoner i krig från 1949, artikel 33:

No protected person may be punished for an offence he or she has not personally committed. Collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited.

Artikel 53 säger vidare:

Any destruction by the Occupying Power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons, or to the State, or to other public authorities, or to social or cooperative organizations, is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations.

Tilläggsprotokollet från 1977 stadgar i artikel 54, paragraf 2:

It is prohibited to attack, destroy, remove or render useless objects indispensable to the survival of the civilian population, such as foodstuffs, agricultural areas for the production of foodstuffs, crops, livestock, drinking water installations and supplies and irrigation works, for the specific purpose of denying them for their sustenance value to the civilian population or to the adverse Party, whatever the motive, whether in order to starve out civilians, to cause them to move away, or for any other motive.

Jag måste tillägga en personlig sak. I min miltärtjänstgöring, för 25 år sedan, utbildades jag i folkrätt och i de olika Genevekonventionerna. Det fanns flera anledningar att under den tiden diskutera dem grundligt.

När jag nu slog upp dem för att citera till detta inlägg, brast något. Trots all upprördhet som ockupationen av Irak och lidandet för de civilbefolkningen redan skapat, började jag gråta när jag gick igenom konventionernas paragrafer.

Till känslorna av förtvivlan bidrar naturligtvis också regeringen Bush vägran att stödja den internationella domstolen för krigsförbrytelser:

"President Bush, facing criticism from European allies, remained defiant about the United States' refusal to back the new international war crimes court, pledging Tuesday he will never allow American diplomats and soldiers to be dragged before it.

'The International Criminal Court is troubling to the United States,' Bush told reporters following a tour at a Milwaukee church. 'As the United States works to bring peace around the world, our diplomats and our soldiers could be drug into this court, and that's very troubling - very troubling to me.' "
(CNN.com: Bush: U.S. personnel will never face global court, 3 juli 2002)

Och så är det naturligtvis Palestina:

"Amnesty fördömer i starkaste ordalag den israeliska arméns storskaliga förstörelse av palestinska hem i flyktinglägret Rafha på Gazaremsan. Hundratals människor, inklusive barn och äldre, blev hemlösa till följd av helgens militära operation. Den israeliska arméns metod att avsiktligt och godtyckligt förstöra hus och civil egendom utgör ett allvarligt brott mot internationell humanitärrätt och kan klassificeras som krigsbrott."
(Svenska Amnesty: Amnesty fördömer militär operation på Gazaremsan, 14 okt 2003)

Är det inte nog nu? Har det inte gått fullständigt över gränsen för vad som är uthärdligt? Är det inte dags att protestera så det hörs?

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