Torture pictures: Arabs accuse US of double standards

Arabs accused the United States of having double standards on human rights as anger grew today over images of Iraqi prisoners being humiliated by smiling American troops.

“The Scandal” ran a front-page headline in Egypt’s government-leaning newspaper Akhbar el-Yom. “The Shame”, read one in the opposition newspaper Al-Wafd.

“Shame on America. How can they convince us now that it is the bastion of democracy, freedoms and human rights?” asked Mustafa Saad, reading the morning newspapers at a downtown Cairo café. “Why do we blame our dictators then?”

The outrage contrasted sharply with the Arab silence that has accompanied evidence of atrocities within Arab countries, notably those carried out in the very same prison by officials of Saddam Hussein’s former government.

Wahid Abdel Meguid, of the Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies, said many Arabs are “psychologically prepared to condemn the United States as an enemy while forget the enemy within.”

“This is a crystal-clear double standard,” he said. ”Evil is evil whether it comes from foreigners or from us. Pain is pain regardless of who causes it.”

When Saddam was in power, Arab media, mostly controlled by autocratic governments, rarely carried reports in the world press about Saddam’s atrocities.

Even after last year’s US-led invasion, when TV networks broadcast images of mass graves created during his rule, many Arab commentators said Americans had created the graves to tarnish Saddam’s image.

Abdel Melik al-Mikhlafi, a Yemeni politician who leads the Nassrite Popular Party, said the graves were only “a claim made after the American occupation which should be investigated.”

“Those who talk about the mass graves want to justify the occupation,” he said in a telephone interview from San’a, Yemen.

Arab League secretary general, Amr Moussa, has been widely criticised by Iraqis for remaining silent over the atrocities of Saddam’s regime and failing to push investigations about Saddam-era mass graves. But his office expressed disgust and shock at the “despicable scenes” shown in the new photographs.

“These practices prove that there is a complete absence of measures of accountability and transparency,” an Arab League statement said.

The condemnation was so strong in part because of America’s own rhetoric condemning human rights abuses. US President George Bush said he shares “a deep disgust that those prisoners were treated the way they were treated.” He said that is “not the way we do things in America.”

Arabs said US claims of moral superiority mean America must be held to a higher standard.

“How can the government ask others to comply with international and civilised standards while its soldiers are violating them?” said Mamdouh al-Sheikh, an independent political analyst in Cairo.

“If this mistake is not corrected and the perpetrators brought to justice, the image of the United States as a champion of freedom will be ruined.”

Hurst Hannum, an international law professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University outside Boston, said the problem is that Bush “put this war on such a high moral plane that any moral deviance will be taken more seriously by critics, and will be interpreted as either being arrogance or hypocrisy.”

Anwar al-Buni, of the Human Rights Association in Syria, said the images “negate all that which the United States claims about defending human rights and democracy all over the world.”

Six US soldiers are facing courts-martial in connection with abuse allegations at the prisons, where photographs show US soldiers giving thumbs-ups signs beside hooded, naked prisoners.