User:Jmandy91/sandbox

Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse

Reactions

Vietnam & Voice of America

After the story of torture and abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison became international news, Vietnamese media drew parallels between the My Lai Massacre and the scandal. In an article by Phạm Hồng Phước titled "Connections and Heart-Wrentching Contracts" from the the Ho Chi Minh City Police daily newspaper, the author scolds the United States and implied the misconduct indicates "a dehumanizing ideology" that "puts little worth on the lives of people who are not American citizens". The author placed photographs of the two tragedies alongside one another. In response, a few weeks later, Voice of America (VOA), the international broadcasting service of the U.S. government, aired a report called in Vietnam called "Prisoners of War" that acknowledged the sentiment of shame. In addition, the report changed the subject from American acts of abuse to maltreatment committed against U.S. soldiers in the past. The government-sponsored broadcast included inhuman acts committed against U.S. soldiers during World War II in Japan, the Korean War, and the Gulf War. Most controversial were the accusations of mistreatment of American prisoners of war in Vietnam. The report detailed "...the alleged abuse of U.S. prisoners during the war who were reportedly kept in a state of perpetual hunger and regularly beaten in Hỏa Lò prison, the 'Hanoi Hilton'. VOA implicated not only prison guards in the cruel treatment of U.S. POWS, but also the residents of Hanoi. Its description of the infamous 'Hanoi March' in 1966, when captured U.S. pilots were paraded through the streets in front of angry residents, detailed the intimidation and ridicule to which the soldiers were subjected as irate Hanoians threw excrement, stones, water, and brick at the prisoners in a deliberate attempt to humiliate them."