10 Lesser Known War Crimes

10 Lesser Known War Crimes

War: A state of peeing around the dog town. As he gets power, that little dog turns into an over-sized tyrant. Perhaps if God never transcended to the heavens and stayed on our little blue-green sphere, all our whimsical issues could have been solved by him.

Maybe adopt a little of that Gandhi/Marley approach.

Someone took your parking space, let it go.

Someone stole your t-shirt, let it go.

As long as you can, let it go.

After reading this, you will be thankful that you are a man alive or a woman not yet raped.

The atrocities committed during war have been so disgusting, that it instills a little guilt of being human inside me.

1. Racism In America

WHEN: After 9/11, before and during the Iraq War.

TARGET: Innocent Civilians who happened to be Muslims in America at the wrong time.

PERPETRATOR: A group of Americans who were too proud of being white and too ignorant to differentiate between Asians and criminals.

With all due respect and much owed gratitude to the warm and welcoming U.S. population, there is undoubtedly a racist population who exercised their sickening hobby more freely post 9/11. All of a sudden, Asians were nervous to leave their homes and Indian clothes and the Sikh Turban guaranteed snide remarks. This took form of a war crime when the FBI arrested several well-educated Arabs and Muslims on the context of being hijackers and detained them to Bagram Prison (North of Kabul at the US Air Base) with no access to lawyers or knowledge of the allegations against them.

The grounds for suspicion varied from booking an air ticket from the same kiosk to mentioning the name of one of the hijackers in a college book on study basis. Prisoners who are now released confess to being crammed into wire cages, routinely tortured, forced to sleep on floor mats, and have buckets for latrines.

In February 2005, The London Guardian released reports of prisoner Mustafa who was handcuffed, gagged, and forced to bend down by 3 US soldiers. They “forcibly rammed a stick up my rectum…I could not stop screaming when this happened.” He was never charged and released later. Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, who began an Institute of Islamic Research, became Bagram’s Prisoner 650 and suffered an ordeal of torture and rape for 4 years. According to a journalist, the cries of this helpless woman prompted the remaining prisoners to go on a hunger strike.

2. Cannibalism: Sierra Leone Civil War

WHEN: 1991-2002

TARGET: Civilians of Africa who were forced into war by Charles Taylor.

PERPETRATOR: Situation of Charles Taylor wanting to overthrow the Joseph Momoh Government in Sierra Leone.

Charles Taylor currently is facing trial in The Hague as he is accused of being the mastermind behind 250,000 people being cooked and eaten by his troops. Taylor is alleged to have left thousands of people limbless after he ordered his troops to hack off their arms and legs with machetes. Thousands of women were kept as sex slaves, after the tendons in their feet were slashed so they were unable to run away. Moreover, pregnant women had their wombs cut open and their unborn children hacked away. Children as young as seven were forced into this army, taught how to use AK-47 assault rifles and even how to rape!

3. Mongol Invasion

WHEN: 13th Century

TARGET: Eurasia

PERPETRATOR: Territory-Hungry Mongols

A conquest with a death toll of nearly 70 million, the Mongol invasion of Eurasia shook the entire continent and is even believed by some historians to be the reason why the West is better-off today. In spite of causing population displacement more than the WWII, the Mongol Invasion is a forgotten chapter of history.

4. Bangladesh War

WHEN: 1971

TARGET: Bengali population of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh)

PERPETRATOR: Pakistan Government

Even after 8-10 million people fled the country to seek safety in India, 1-3 million of the Bengali population perished in a period of 9 months. The minorities of Bangladesh, especially the Hindus, were specific targets of the Pakistan Army. A number of Dhaka University professors were killed during the first few days of the war itself. As a result of about 200,000 rapes that occurred during this period, thousands of war-babies were born.

5. Comfort Women

WHEN: 1932-up till end of WWII.

TARGET: 20,000 to 400,000 women and girls from Korea, China and Philippines coerced into prostitution corps.

PERPETRATOR: Empire of Japan

As a result of the sickening mentality to prostitution in Japan, just like food and medical supplies, prostitution was seen as a service which must be provided to the Japanese armed forces to prevent discontentment of the soldiers. “Comfort Stations” were set up all around Japan and the territories occupied by it and young women were unknowingly pressed into sexual slavery. Apparently established to prevent STD’s and rape by Japanese soldiers, it still did not help the soldiers contain themselves.

6. Visegrad Massacre: Bosnian War

WHEN: 1992

TARGET: Bosniaks in the Town of Visegrad.

PERPETRATOR: Bosnian Serb Army

The Bosnian War caused nearly the entire Bosnian population of 3000 in Visegrad to be killed. Every day Bosniak men, women and children were killed on the Drina river bridge and their bodies were dumped into the river. Serb soldiers’ raped women, demolished both of the town’s mosques and set ablaze 100+ Bosniaks after locking them up in their houses.

7. My Lai Massacre: Vietnam War

WHEN: March 16, 1968

TARGET: 500+ unarmed Vietnamese civilians massacred within 3 hours.

PERPETRATOR: US Army Soldiers

On the morning of March 16, the platoon of the US “Charlie Company” initiated its mission to root out the Vietnamese Congress Battalion, thought to be hiding in the South Vietnamese town of My Lai. With no purpose, a sudden firing started and soldiers went berserk, gunning down men and children, raping women and mutilating victims with the signature “C Company” carved into their chest. Revealed a year later, the My Lai Massacre is an in-erasable blotch on the US army.

8. Paraguayan War

WHEN: 1864-70

TARGET: Paraguayan Civilians and Army

PERPETRATOR: Combat operations between Brazil and Paraguay.

In the Paraguayan War against Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, Paraguay’s population was reduced from 407,000 to 221,000 survivors, of whom fewer than 30,000 were adult males.

9. Rape Of Nanking

WHEN: A six-week period after the Japanese captured Nanking (capital of Republic of China) on December 13, 1937, during Second Sino-Japanese War.

TARGET: Any and every unfortunate Chinese residing in the city of Nanking.

PERPETRATOR: Japanese soldiers who defied humanity.

What is more shocking than the brutal killing of 3 lac civilians is the rape of 20,000 women, with no exception to infants, elderly, young boys and pregnant women. Naked dead bodies were strewn across the roads of Nanking, as Japanese soldiers rammed through them, fishing out young girls, gang raping, and killing them through explicit mutilation and stabbing objects into their vagina. Sons were forced to rape their mothers; fathers their daughters. Monks who had declared a life of celibacy were forced to rape women. All the events are documented by the doctors at Nanking’s medical camps and recorded in John Magee’s documentary. More than a 100 survivor witnesses are still alive and about 45 of them have provided testimony to the horrific events.

10. Syrian Civil War

WHEN: 15 March, 2011 – PRESENT!

TARGET: Civilians

PERPETRATOR: The situation between forces loyal to the Assad Government and those seeking to oust it.

“100,000 Syrian residents die and 6.5 million displaced”, “Bomb attacks on a school playground kills 10 children”, “Nerve gas attack near Damascus leaves up to 1,300 dead”. Without ever seeing what life would be about, these children have died, just to become newspaper clippings and articles, which we can only helplessly read, and do nothing about.