Society + Culture,

The height of humiliation

Within months of the occupation of Iraq, complaints surfaced of human rights violations in prisons administered by occupation authorities. It took almost a year and published photographs of horrific incidents of torture in Abu Ghraib before the world began to heed the voices of detainees and those trying to defend them.

Today, four years into the Anglo- American occupation, tens of thousands of Iraqis are still languishing in prison without charge, no trial in sight, deprived of the right to contest the grounds of their detention before judicial authorities. For various reasons, Iraqi women, too, have been caught up in the sweep of detentions and account for a goodly percentage of detainees, not only in Abu Ghraib, but in many other prisons. In addition to suffering the same hardships as male inmates, the women endure another plight: silence. The plight is two-fold, emanating, first, from the occupation authorities' denial that there are female detainees to begin with, and second from the nature of the stigma surrounding the arrest and detention of women.

I will discuss here obfuscations surrounding the existence of "female security detainees" and the pretexts cited by occupation authorities for detaining them. I will then address how women are treated during the arrest and interrogation process, for their ordeal does not begin in prison but rather from the moment security forces descend upon them.

DENIAL: Occupation authorities (by which I mean foreign military forces and Iraqi army, police and special forces operating under the command of the occupation) apply the term "security detainee" to all "security detainees arrested under the provisions of UN Security Council Resolution 1546 on the grounds that they are considered an imperative threat to the stability and security of Iraq". So much for theory. In practice, a "security detainee" is anyone who has been subject to random arrest -- i.e. without a court order -- regardless of sex, age or circumstances.

Numerous rights organisations have reported the presence, "for security reasons," of female detainees in many prisons throughout Iraq. Evidence indicates widespread maltreatment, degradation and physical and psychological torture, in addition to unhealthy and unhygienic conditions of detention. There remains considerable uncertainty about the number of female detainees.

Among organisations involved in documenting the detention of Iraqi women are several independent women's and human rights groups operating inside Iraq and abroad (such as Women's Will, Occupation Watch, the Iraqi League and the Human Rights' Voice of Freedom), official and political party publications (notably those produced by the Association of Muslim Scholars, the Iraqi Islamic Party, the Iraqi National Media and Culture Organisation), and international agencies and human rights and anti-war organisations (Amnesty International, the International Red Cross, the UN Assistance Mission in Iraq, and the BRussells Tribunal).

Today, four years into the Anglo- American occupation, tens of thousands of Iraqis are still languishing in prison without charge, no trial in sight, deprived of the right to contest the grounds of their detention before judicial authorities.

SECRECY AND SCANDAL: Estimates of the number of Iraqis arrested since the invasion in March 2003 range from 30,000 to 100,000. A heavy cloak of secrecy and misinformation surrounds the status and welfare of security detainees, even ones as well known as the short story writer and translator Mohsen Al-Khafafi who was arrested in April 2003 and only released in April this year. In general, occupation authorities refuse to be specific about the number of detainees -- perhaps to be at liberty to increase or reduce their number as deemed necessary.

The same applies to the extent and whereabouts of female detainees. However, in their case the source of secrecy is two-fold: over the first two years at least, not only did the occupation want to cover up its detention of women, so too did their families. There were two major reasons why these families would have wanted to collude in the silence. First, the detained women may have been members of the Baath Party or one of its agencies and they feared revenge. Second, they feared the stigma of having a female relative in prison, the thought of which conjures up rape and unwanted pregnancy.

Occupation authorities, for their part, were eager to deny the existence of female detainees, especially after the sexual abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib. They refused to release information in the hope of deceiving public opinion at both the international and domestic levels. Internationally, the Bush administration was particularly wary of international peace, human rights and women's rights organisations and activists. After congressional members saw photographs of female prisoners at Abu Ghraib forced at gunpoint to bare their breasts, officials in the Bush administration blocked these photographs from going public. Although they cited reprisal attacks against US forces in Iraq, it is commonly believed that the cover up was to spare the US additional international ignominy.