Committee: United Nations Human Rights Council
Topic B: The Human Rights in Prison
Country: Iraq
Delegate: Bia Kim
Since the last officially reported war in Iraq six years ago, the government has provided credible accounts of torture in the Abu Ghraib prison of Iraq. Interrogations by security forces are generally aimed at eliciting confessions and often use coercion in Iraqi prison. Also, the Iraqi interior ministry is holding a thousand detainees. The reality of prisons is due to the instability of the security situation, fear of a deterioration (like what happened years ago in Abu Ghraib prison), and absence of the supervisory authority represented by the High Commissioner for Human Rights. The deplorable prison conditions show that the Iraqi government is not providing the most basic detention standards or due process.
In the era of Saddam Hussein, Abu Ghraib, twenty miles west of Baghdad, was one of the world’s most notorious prisons with tortures. During the Iraq war, especially from 2003 to 2004, US military personal committed crimes of rape, sexual abuse, physical abuse, torture, sodomy, and murder against the Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib Prison. Most of the prisoners were civilians, who didn’t know anything about the US invasion. They were apprehended by US forces under the pretext of their involvement in the attack. Amnesty International described this prison as a “centre of torture and mass executions.” Survivors from Abu Ghraib prisons suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder(PTSD). These past brutalities from the United State have caused ISIS to continue its violence in Iraq. ISIS has been using Abu Ghraib to legitimize its current actions in Iraq as the latest episodes in over a decade of constant “Sunni resistance” to “American aggression.” This makes Iraqi prisons continue the practice of torture to repress challenge ISIS and show their force.
But Iraqi Constitution prohibits unlawful detention and all forms of “Psychological and physicality torture and inhumane treatment” and guarantees the right to seek compensation for material and moral damages(art.37) under Art. 333 of the Iraqi Penal Code that criminalizes acts of torture. It sets out that “any public official or agent who tortures or orders the torture of an accused, witness or information will be punished.” These laws illustrate that Iraq cannot tolerate the inhumane acts of the US. So under these laws, the delegation of Iraq will move towards eradicating torture in its prisons, and will find the solution for ISIS. Also, they will work toward finding a way to take care of the survivors from Abu Ghraib prison.