Prisoners of War (POWs): In international law, term used to designate incarcerated members of the armed forces of an enemy, or noncombatants who render them direct service and who have been captured during wartime.1
This definition is a very loose interpretation of the meaning of Prisoners of War (POWs). POWs throughout history have received harsh and brutal treatment. Prisoners received everything from torture to execution. However, in recent times efforts have been made to reduce these treatments and to get humane treatment for POWs. These attempts include the Geneva Convention of 1949. Unfortunately, during the Vietnam Conflict, these “rules” of war were not always obeyed, as they are now.
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Not a specific torture, but a very painful experience that POWs had to deal with everyday, was hunger. Malnutrition, and hunger became a POW’s worst enemy, and led to many of the 114 deaths among the prisoners.
Another excruciating obstacle that prisoners sometimes faced was torture. Torture was against the Geneva Accords, but then again, so were many other acts that the NVA and Vietcong (VC) committed against American POWs. Torture sometimes only consisted of a few blows with a bamboo stick, to an all out beating until the prisoner was unconscious, to sometimes even worse acts of violence.
They grabbed him off the stool, backward, out the doorway of the bamboo house, across a muddy yard to an even smaller outbuilding...Two more guards burst into the crowded little room and unleashed a cascade of kicks and clubbing, striking Gruters about the chest, belly, and arms.4
Guy Gruters, a United States Air Force F-4 pilot, was shot down over Vietnam on December 21, 1967, and when he would not answer his captors’ questions, was beaten severely. After this his interrogators gave him the “rope torture”.
Behind him, three of the soldiers got to work with a length of rough hemp rope. They tied a series of shockingly tight hitches around his naked right bicep, then dragged the coiled line under his left armpit and yanked, hard. Gruters felt muddy, cleated boot soles on the back of his neck where the soldiers were getting leverage. What the hell are they
Geneva Conventions are rules laid down by various member nations that are applied in times of armed conflict. The Geneva convention seeks to protect people the sick, civilians, the wounded, and prisoners of war. USA is a member nation of the Geneva Conventions, having signed the 1977 protocols. Under the Geneva Conventions, the torture and abuse of prisoners is barred. Waterboarding is a torture technique used on prisoners, hence, it is also
Torture is prohibited under United States and international law. The United State’s widespread use of torture in the Vietnam war was in direct violation of many pieces of jurisdiction. This was one large factor of the United State’s illegality in the Vietnam
American captors did not submit to the Geneva Tradition. More than 7,100 Americans were caught and interned and a little more than 2,700 are known not passed on while interned.
Throughout time, torture has been used as a cruel war tactic to exploit human beings and dehumanize the characteristics that give people their identities outside of prison walls. In Rena 's Promise: A Story of Sisters in Auschwitz, Rena Kornreich tells her own accounts of the torture she experienced by both men and women during World War II. Similarly, Coco Fusco sheds light on the use of torture by women in the United States Abu Ghraib military scandal in A Field Guide for Female Interrogators. While in very different time frames, a female victim and a female liberator seamlessly tie together the antics that have been experienced and performed in war by thousands of men and
This article, written by Rep. Sam Johnson talks about his experience in the jail of Hoa Lo. He says his stay there was no Trump Hotel, meaning that it wasn’t a great stay. During torture sessions, the Vietnam tied prisoner’s hands and feet, then bound their hands to their ankles. Sometimes tightened so hard to the point where they couldn’t breathe. That’s not it, after that they would hang them by their skin on these big hooks and leave them hanging for hours. All this went on for hours, sometimes even days. With the power of god and an officer who taught him the tap code, he was able to communicate with the other POW, which kept their spirits up and saved their sanity. Again this stay was no trump hotel, this was a place where they
From the Geneva Convention, and I quote from the Cornell University Law School page on the Geneva Conventions, (https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/geneva_conventions )“Convention I: This Convention protects wounded and infirm soldiers and medical personnel against attack, execution without judgment, torture, and assaults upon personal dignity (Article 3). It also grants them the right to proper medical treatment and care.” He did not follow these rules, he broke them. Using torture on the captured. There is story about what some people did to a POW. They doused him in cold water,
The most common method that was used by the Americans against the Filipinos was known as the “water cure” method. During this, the United States soldiers would lay the prisoners on their backs with a man standing on each end of them holding them down. They would pour a pail of water in their mouth and nose, watching them swell up. The Filipinos described this type of torture as terrible, leading them to give up information, like hidden weapons for the Americans to obtain. This other type of punishments described were extreme violence along with horrible living conditions and lack of food. In my opinion, I am indifferent about torture. If an individual has committed a horrible crime, I agree with using torture on them to punish them. When using torture on somebody just to obtain information, unless it is vital, I would not push for torture or the use of extreme methods. With being so indifferent on torture being used, I cant say if I fully support the use of torture on prisoners. The root of the issue boils down to just how valuable and beneficial information may be to determine the route of punishment i would choose to
Prisoners of War have been tortured in many ways. Like, how the Japanese used to experiment on Chinese and Koreans. During World War II, prisoners of war have been tortured, and experimented on. Back then, people even have a place to design and test out experiments, they call it ‘Unit 731’. During World War II, Prisoners of War were tortured by many different ways, just like how the boys in Lord of the Flies were tortured by their own captivity while on the island.
North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and China incarcerated many Americans, holding them in barbaric conditions (“The M.I.A. Issue”). The prisoners that survived the torture and eventually were freed shared chilling stories when they returned.
Sleep deprivation and solitary confinement were also used as methods of extracting information. These are all methods which have been condemned by the United States as torture in North Korea, Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, and Turkey.
There had been more than 500 identified American Prisoners of War held by the North Vietnamese. Several reports indicated the North Vietnamese Army tortured prisoners and kept them in terrible conditions. As a result, the Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman, General Earle G. Wheeler authorized the creation of a working group in order to address the issue.
Evidently, the use of torture appears during war. Specifically, the Vietnamese war. Is the government ever warranted in using torture? Many people might say torture is ineffective and sadistic. A veteran expresses his opinion on torture, “In my 27 years of active army service, including 9 years of wartime service in Vietnam, I saw nothing to justify torture, but many reasons to prohibit it.” (Sauvageot 1). Someone with the experience of serving the United States army shows his negative opinion of torture. It may be obvious that we would only accuse Vietnam, but however much we’d like to say our government has not partaken in exercising torture, we aren’t so lucky. An article on CIA interrogation gathered the same in saying, “They [the CIA] concluded they cannot say these
The prison later became a focus of not only a controversy in the United States that spread worldwide about how the detainees were being tortured while they were being held at Guantanamo. The violation was that the people there were being abused and tortured and this was against the legal rights of the detains under the Geneva Convention. The Geneva Convention is a law that was created in war time to help protect soldier back in World War II who were ship wrecked, wounded, or sick soldiers during war times. (Staff, 2007) But
In World War II, when people were captured and became Prisoners of War they often got diseases and this one was of the many reasons why they would often die. When the were being held as prisoners the Japanese did not care about them at all, therefore they never received any medical treatment for any sickness or disease that they might have come in contact with. These prisoners were given about a 600 calorie diet a day, they were malnourished and still had to
In order to answer this question of rights in captivity, leaders must assess the situation through the lens of an overarching value and a criterion, or means to achieve the value. Executive Order 10631 lays out the duties and responsibilities of US service members in captivity. According to Article III, it is the responsibility of the captured to “continue to resist by all means necessary” (Executive Order No. 10631, 1955). We thus accept this responsibility as the mission of the POW, and ultimately, the value under which we will assess this ethical dilemma.