Laura Flanders: Since When Does Interpol Care About Sexual Assault?

[marmar]

Since When Does Interpol Care About Sexual Assault?


Julian Assange turned himself in Tuesday — he’s been arrested and is being held without bail in London ahead of a hearing on extradition to Sweden. The head of the “stateless” news-leak organization WikiLeaks is accused of sexual assault –and let’s be clear, he should face the charges. But since when is Interpol so vigilant about violence against women? If women’s security is suddenly Interpol’s priority — that’s big news!

Tell it to hundreds of women in US jails and immigration detention centers — who charge that they can’t get justice against accused rapists — or women in the US military (two of out three of whom allege they’ve experienced assault.) In Haiti hundreds of unprosecuted cases of rape in refugee camps could use some of Interpol’s attention.

To come back to earth… It seems we only care about women’s bodies when there’s a political point to be proved. Feminist lawyers had to fight for years for the Criminal Court to take rape in Bosnia and Congo seriously. Feminist journalists wrote for years about the treatment of women under the Taliban, but it wasn’t until they needed to sell a war that US politicians cared–and invaded. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/382661/since_when_does_interpol_care_about_sexual_assault/

[neverforget]

1. When the powerful are targeted by the truth which can be less than flattering

[gateley]

5. +1 nt

[Lint Head]

2. When? Ever since corporate fascists started controlling information and propaganda.

[bemildred]

3. INTERPOL has been corrupt for a long time.

It is no accident that it has been used here. OTOH, the fact that it has been used indicates that nothing better was at hand.

[Lord Magus]

8. Interpol has been corrupt since it was founded.

What would you expect from an organization that was once led by Reinhard Heydrich?

Yes, that Reinhard Heydrich:

[rurallib]

4. since bank of america memos were mentioned

[mike_c]

6. there is no sexual assualt, no rape, no such accusations-- this is more meme control....

This is really shitty-- by repeating the words "rape" and "sexual assault" over and over again, the media is helping the government create and maintain the meme that Assange is a dangerous sexual criminal. There is simply no congruence with the facts of the matter in this discussion, yet it drones on and on and on. Don't thing that's an accident, even for a minute.

[Kaleko]

14. We have to repeat that until we're blue in the face. Thanks for trying to set the record straight.

[muriel_volestrangler]

7. 455 people currently listed on Interpol website as wanted for 'Sex Crimes'

http://www.interpol.int/Public/Wanted/Search/Form.asp

[EFerrari]

10. The link seems to go to the blank search form. n/t

[muriel_volestrangler]

12. Fill in the blanks

It's not hard - all you have to do is type 'sex crimes' at the appropriate point and click a button; and, as I'm sure you've found, trying to direct people to the results of searches via links on DU does not always work well, since they sometimes depend on data not included in the URL, or the URL contains characters that don't work with the DU software.

[EFerrari]

13. Okay. I wanted to make sure I was looking at what you intended.

Thanks for that link. I will probably use it.

[Octafish]

9. INTERPOL didn't give a rat's patootie about all the escaping NAZI war criminals.

Not all that weird, considering who has run INTERPOL.

[sabrina 1]

11. If Interpol or anyone else in the U.S. Sweden and the rest of

the Global Capitalists cared about sexual assault, they would have issued arrest warrants for the Bush administration's torturers.

They were silent when reports of the rape of women and children in U.S. detention centers was reported.

One woman I will never forget. Her name was Noor. In 2003 investigative reporters on the ground in Iraq began reporting on rumors that women in Abu Ghraib were being raped by U.S. personel. One woman, whose name was Noor, was said to have smuggled out a note begging her 'brothers' to blow up the prison as she would not be able to live with the shame that she felt for what had happened to her and other women in the prison. Shortly after those reports, the was an attempt to blow up the prison.

Those rumors were later verified

After the release of the Abu Ghraib photos, there were hearings in Congress. Lindsey Graham was visibly disturbed after viewing other, unreleased photos, and when the evil Cheney tried to stop the hearings, Graham responded 'let us do our job, we are talking about murder, rape here'. Those photos were never released after years of legal wrangling, so bad it was decided to keep them from public viewing.

It was verified that the woman, Noor, was one of the women who was abused, but all we saw was an artist's drawing of those terrible acts.

Some journalists tried to find her but her family had left their home, and we never learned anything more about her. I often wonder what happened to her.

Not once did Interpol issue any warrants to arrest the known abusers of untold numbers of abused women in U.S. controlled detention centers. Nor did they support the Spanish court when they began an investigation into six of Bush's torturers. No arrest warrants were issued by Interpol to apprehend Bush's torturers, and we learn now from the leaked documents, that our president was behind the scenes putting pressure on that court to protect those torturers and to deny justice to the victims.

There has been no justice for the raped women and children or those tortured and murdered.

Interpol has just made itself irrelevant, another U.S. controlled acolyte with zero credibility, doing the work of the Empire.

Here is some information on the ongoing crimes against women in Iraq, but I doubt it's of much interest to Interpol, being that the criminals are their bosses.

http://voicesfromiraq.blogspot.com/

[kgnu_fan]

15. kick

[Dawson Leery]

16. Since INTERPOL (a.k.a the Police) are there to protect the property owners

in this case, the banks.
Only when Mr. Assange threatened Bank of America, did the coppers give a damn about what he was doing.