What is the Geneva Convention?
The Geneva Convention was created to take care of prisoners of war. It contains rules about the treatment and rights of prisoners of war during captivity. A quote told by Michael Ignatieff, Human Rights as Politics and Idolatry about the Geneva convention: “...our species is one, and each of the individuals who compose it are entitled to equal moral consideration.” It sets out:
All prisoners receive a respectful treatment.
All prisoners should be protected against violence.
All prisoners can keep their possessions or personal effects, except for military equipment.
Prisoners of war should be evacuated as soon as possible from the fighting zone.
They need to have sanitation that is sufficient enough to prevent epidemics.
Prisoners of war should get the same amounts of food and drinks which soldiers from the host country also receive.
They should be getting medical care when needed.
When they are caught they need to tell their rank and name but they can keep the rest of their personal lives secret.
If a prisoner of war tries to escape arms may be used against him.
But who actually are the prisoners of war? The prisoners of war are the people who no longer take part in hostilities, this can be soldier, shipwrecked people but also sick and wounded civilians. There have been four Geneva conventions over time and the first dealt with the treatment of wounded and sick armed forces in the field this convention was signed in 1864, the second convention helped wounded, sick and shipwrecked members of the armed forces at sea this was signed in 1906, the third convention dealt with the treatment of prisoners of war during conflicts which...
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...0.32% of the total population. Bill Barrett an American journalist described the concentration camp of Dachau where a few British soldiers were kept as: "There were about a dozen bodies in the dirty boxcar, men and women alike. They had gone without food so long that their dead wrists were broomsticks tipped with claws. These were the victims of a deliberate starvation diet." Which describes well how the living conditions in such a concentration camp were. There were a few occasions were British soldiers were immediately shot to death but this only happened in 0.03% of all the cases, when this happened it was probably because a soldier shot because he felt threatened. So the British soldiers had quite acceptable rights but the way you would be treated would depend on whether you were sent to a prisoner of war camp or whether you were send to a concentration camp.
As common knowledge, people normally recognize the term “concentration camp” and immediately refer to the prison camps the Jews were sent to during the Holocaust. In Corrie Tenboom’s famous collective story of her imprisonment, The Hiding Place, she writes in visual description of exactly how the Jews were treated in these camps. Women were forced to stand naked in front of Nazi guards for not much reason at all and made them feel less than human and animalistic. The people were beaten and killed on a regular day basis. One of the worst parts of these camps were the barbaric gas chambers. Men, women, and children would be fooled and dragged into chambers in groups to stand and be slaughtered by the dozen. Concentration camps are what can be known as the cruelest and most barbaric part of World War II history.
“For the first few months the POWs at Changi were allowed to do as they wished with little interference from the Japanese. There was just enough food and medicine provided and, to begin with, the Japanese seemed indifferent to what the POW’s did at Changi. Concerts were organised, quizzes, sporting events etc. The camp was organised into battalions, regiments etc and meticulous military discipline was maintained. In Easter 1942 the attitude of the Japanese had changed. They organised work parties to repair the damaged docks in Singapore and food and medicine became scarce. More pointedly, the Japanese made it clear that they had not signed the Geneva Convention and that they ran the camp as they saw fit.For this reason, 40,000 men from the surrender of Singapore were marched to the northern tip of the island where they were imprisoned at a military base called Selarang, which was near the village of Changi. The British civilian population of Singapore was imprisoned in Changi jail itself, one mile away from Selarang. Eventually, any reference to the area was simply made to Changi.”(1).”The appalling suffering of these POWs was witnessed by British and Commonwealth prisoners held in separate compounds. At Stalag VIIIB alone, in Lamsdorf, eastern Germany, over 40,000 Russians perished. In total, three million Russian POWs died in German
The Nazi soldiers were like a living, breathing, and nightmare. You could call the concentration camps terrible, but I don’t think that is a strong enough word for just how terrible and messed up the concentration camps were. I’m sure any prisoner would heavily agree with me.
The only thing worse than being taken as a prisoner of war would be being killed in combat. Unfortunately, being taken as prisoner of war in world war two was the fate of many soldiers fighting. Their camps were supposed to be similar to an internment camp created for civilians, as stated by the Geneva Convention in 1929. A prisoner of war camp was supposed to allow the prisoners to write home to their families, get paid for doing non-war related jobs, and captives even got packages from the international Red Cross. While the camps were not made to be a five star hotel, the camps treated their captives well enough that they could live comfortably. In Japan, this was not the case. As explained in Unbroken, a biography about Louis Zamperini,
World War II, millions of people, ranging from doctors and lawyers to peasants were transported to prison camps spread through-out Europe. The Soviet Gulag was a massive network of prison camps stretching from the west side of the Soviet Union all the way to the east side. The most notorious camp in the Gulag was known Kolyma. Kolyma was in the far northeastern corner of the Soviet Union, only a couple hundred miles away from the United States (www.gulaghistory.org). The prisoners of the gulag were a wide variety of people. There were Soviet officers, soviet citizens, and people of many other races and religions. The Nazis had their own version of the Gulag. They were known as concentration camps. In these camps, most infamously, were millions of Jewish families from many countries who had been captured by the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police. However, there were also a slew of other people brought to the concentration camps like, Gypsies, Social Democrats, Communists, and homosexuals. About 20,000 of these camps were created in countries like Austria, France, annexed Poland, Belgium, and Germany. In 1945, when the Allies liberated the concentration camp networks, experts estimate that around three-quarters of a million people had died as a result of inhumane conditions of the camps (www.ushmm.org).
Over 12 years of injustice have been given to the inmates at Guantanamo Bay prison. Guantanamo Bay prison is unfair and unjust for many reason and should be closed.The first reason is nasal feeding enforced even though it is painful and harmful. The second reason is inmates are subject to cruel punishments .The third reason is prisoners have no way of proving that they are innocent.This is just the tip of the iceberg on why Guantanamo Bay prison should be closed.
Moore, Bob and Fedorowich, Kent. Prisoners of War and Their Captors in World War II. Oxford: Berg, 1996.
those held hostage free. Many were Jewish. Amongst piles of dead bodies and filth, there were survivors. Although they were free from the camps, most were so starved that if they ate any more than a miniscule amount of food, they would die, and many couldn’t even receive proper treatment. Some referred to them as almost “walking skeletons.” Aside from physical incapabilities, mental health was largely affected in the victims as well.
at any given time. The POW were always having to turn their back and keep
In order for a military to execute its function, every platform of the chain of command must expect and demand obedience to commands (Montrose, 2013), because if this does not happen many lives can be at stake. A simply failure to comply with the orders given can not only jeopardize the lives of the soldiers, it can compromise the safety of all military personnel involved, even in the matter of national security. Utilitarianism has a core theory that some actions may be considered right or wrong relying on the effects of the outcomes. This theory is mostly what could be applied this situation of the detainees in the military prisons. During this time, national security was weak, the country was being attacked and threatened, and thousands of innocent civilians lost their lives. The military could was only looking out for the interest of the country and many interrogation techniques were used to get information that could lead the capture of Al-Qaeda leaders. Soldiers are sent to warzones without the ability to deny their own obligation to war, just because they believe it to be morally wrong. They are sent and receive orders under the assumption the government has all the information needed to make the best decision for the country. According to the periodical, Unjust War and a Soldier’s Moral Dilemma, individual soldiers who have
Taking prisoners of war have been a battle tactic for ages. Capturing an enemy troop could be done for many reasons. Mainly enemy soldiers are captured to be interrogated for unknown information on the enemy. There were usually common rules and procedures for taking a prisoner of war, weather they were followed or not was really up to the country. Come 1929, there was a document in the works that set rules regarding prisoners of war. More than 40 countries got together to sign and agree on these new set of rules (“Life” 11). The signing of the Geneva Convention was held in Geneva, Switzerland.
"First Geneva Convention, Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen: United for Human Rights." First Geneva Convention, Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen: United for Human Rights. N.p., n.d. Web. 18 Nov. 2013. .
United States. Cong. Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. Communist Treatment of Prisoners of War: a Historical Survey, 92nd Congress, 2nd Session, 1972. Ed. James O. Eastland. S. Rept. 1972. Print.
45 Oona Hathaway, ‘Do Human Rights Treaties Make a Difference?’ (2003) 112 Yale Law Journal
Around the world and around the clock, human rights violations seem to never cease. In particular, torture violations are still rampant all over the world. One regime, the Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, establishes a strong elaboration of norms against torture. Despite its efforts, many countries still outright reject its policies against torture while other countries openly accept them, but surreptitiously still violate them. The US, Israel, and Saudi Arabia all have failed to end torture despite accepting the provisions of the Convention.