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What Does the Geneva Convention Say About Humiliation of Prisoners?

Prisoners should always be treated with dignity no matter what the other side does

Ryan McBeth

Feb 10

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I once had an Iraqi prisoner ask me for water or “Maya.” I went and got a bottle of water. I unscrewed it and held it to the prisoner’s mouth to drink. He drank and then he started to say: “Kald, Kald.”

I knew a little Arabic, but I couldn’t understand the word until I realized that he was saying the world “Cold.”

I asked “Baruda"?”

The prisoner nodded.

I said “Anna Awez maya baruda,” - I want cold water. The Army doesn’t even give me cold water!

There is a reason I like to tell this story. As Omar Little from the HBO series The Wire said, “It’s all in the game, yo.”

If you have to fight or kill, it’s The Game. But once a prisoner is captured, they are out of the game and must be protected. This isn’t just protection from reprisals by the capturing forces, it also means protected from civilians who seek revenge, or even from other captured prisoners who may commit physical or sexual violence against another prisoner.

Article 13 of the Third Geneva Convention states:

Article 13 - Humane treatment of prisoners

Prisoners of war must at all times be humanely treated. Any unlawful act or omission by the Detaining Power causing death or seriously endangering the health of a prisoner of war in its custody is prohibited, and will be regarded as a serious breach of the present Convention. In particular, no prisoner of war may be subjected to physical mutilation or to medical or scientific experiments of any kind which are not justified by the medical, dental or hospital treatment of the prisoner concerned and carried out in his interest.

Likewise, prisoners of war must at all times be protected, particularly against acts of violence or intimidation and against insults and public curiosity.

Measures of reprisal against prisoners of war are prohibited.

Clearly the bus in this case is not a case of endangering a prisoner’s health. However, this kisses the atmosphere of intimidation and insult. The prisoners are blindfolded, handcuffed and on a bus to an unknown destination. Then they are forced to recite something in a language they don’t understand.

Article 14 of the Third Geneva Convention states:

Article 14 - Respect for the persons and honor of prisoners

Prisoners of war are entitled in all circumstances to respect for their persons and their honor.

Women shall be treated with all the regard due to their sex and shall in all cases benefit by treatment as favorable as that granted to men.

Prisoners of war shall retain the full civil capacity which they enjoyed at the time of their capture. The Detaining Power may not restrict the exercise, either within or without its own territory, of the rights such capacity confers except in so far as the captivity requires.

This has been interpreted as a rule to prevent sexual violence, especially as women take more roles in the military that have been traditionally filled by men.

However, it can also be interpreted as prohibiting “outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.”

But not only is treating a prisoner humanly the right thing to do, it allows a more effective interrogation. The best interrogations are cooperative, with the interrogator and the prisoner working together.

Mistreating a prisoner ruins that cooperation, ultimately making the task of interrogating prisoners harder.

Not only is treating prisoners humanly the right thing to do, it can also result in better intelligence.

A selection of videos of the event is here:

Reddit.

Twitter 1.

Twitter 2.

My YouTube short on the event.

While I don’t believe the bus ride was torture, a paper on the efficacy of torture is below: