12.10.03
Report: US army razing Iraqi farmers' fields as "punishment"
The Independent reports that the US army has razed the fields of farmers in a small town south of Baghdad as "punishment" for not providing information on anti-US guerillas.
The Independent reports that the US army has razed the fields of farmers in a small town south of Baghdad as "punishment" for not providing information on anti-US guerillas.
Sheikh Hussein Ali Saleh al-Jabouri, a member of a delegation that went to the nearby US base to ask for compensation for the loss of the fruit trees, said American officers described what had happened as "a punishment of local people because 'you know who is in the resistance and do not tell us'."If true, of course, this would be a violation of the Geneva Conventions, not to mention a barbarous act in and of itself. It is certainly not going to win any hearts and minds.
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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."
