Child Abuse
Independent Online Edition: Americas
No - this is not about child pornography and censorship on the internet - this is about the systematic abuse of children which could possibly have been US government sanctioned.
The notorious US detention camp in Guantanamo Bay has been hit by fresh allegations of human rights abuses, with claims that dozens of children were sent there - some as young as 14 years old.But is this so unusual? Maia Szalavitz has written a book that suggests that the violation of the human rights of teenagers is commonplace in the USA.
Lawyers in London estimate that more than 60 detainees held at the terrorists' prison camp were boys under 18 when they were captured.
They include at least 10 detainees still held at the US base in Cuba who were 14 or 15 when they were seized - including child soldiers who were held in solitary confinement, repeatedly interrogated and allegedly tortured.
I believe, the same callousness that allows us to send teens to boot camps in which "pain compliance' tactics are expressly permitted, the same callousness that allows us to try juvenile offenders as adults (you're not old enough to drink or vote, but once you commit murder, you're suddenly mature enough to be held accountable for it) and until recently, to put them to death, is responsible. America likes to see itself as humane and compassionate-- but if we look at the way we treat children, the picture is far from flattering.
"Pain compliance tactics" sounds like the sort of tactics our PE teachers used to use on us when we were 10 or 11 - they'd bend you down in front of the class, choose the sports shoe that was largest from the class - and then punish and humiliate you in front of the whole class.
The entire structure of coercion and control based on "pain compliance tactics" is as old as the hills - and now illegal in the UK - and could also construed as "child abuse" under certain laws.
The whole point of "boot camps" for "unruly teenagers" is to break the WILL of the child through "pain compliance tactics" - if the Russians or Islamics did the same thing - it would be called "brainwashing" or "child abuse".
Is the USA the largest child abusing nation in the world?
Is it a country where the use of systematic "pain compliance tactics" (aka "torture") is used against children as young as 14 in order to break their will and ensure total obedience and compliance to the will of authority.
Enquiring minds want to know.
Tags: child abuse, independent, guantanamo, human rights, child rights, human rights violations, maia szalavitz