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<DIV><FONT color=#000080><STRONG>Why is the US media blacking out documentary on
war crimes in Afghanistan?</STRONG></DIV>
<DIV>
<H5>By Kate Randall<BR>21 June 2002</H5>
<P><EM><A
href="http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jun2002/maz-j21.shtml">http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jun2002/maz-j21.shtml</A></EM><B><FONT
face=Arial size=-1><A href="mailto:editor@wsws.org"></A></FONT></B></P>
<P><I>Massacre in Mazar</I>, a documentary by Irish director Jamie Doran, was
screened last week before select audiences in Europe. The film documents events
following the November 21, 2001 fall of Konduz, the Taliban’s last stronghold in
northern Afghanistan. [See: “<A
href="http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jun2002/afgh-j17.shtml">Afghan war
documentary charges US with mass killings</A>”]</P>
<P>The film presents powerful testimony from Afghan witnesses that US troops
collaborated in the torture and killings of thousands of Taliban prisoners near
Mazar-i-Sharif. The film, which has prompted demands for an international
commission of inquiry on war crimes in Afghanistan, received widespread coverage
in the European press, with major stories in the <I>Guardian</I>, <I>Le
Monde</I>, <I>Suddeutsche Zeitung</I>, <I>Die</I> <I>Welt</I> and other
papers.</P>
<P>This major story, however, has received virtually no coverage in US
newspapers or on network or cable television. Aside from stories on some
alternative Internet publications, and a June 16 article on Salon.com, the story
has been essentially blacked out in the US.</P>
<P>A search for news about the documentary in the major dailies—including the
<I>New York Times</I>, the <I>Washington Post</I>, the <I>Los Angeles Times</I>,
the <I>Chicago Tribune</I>, the <I>Boston Globe</I> and the <I>Miami Herald
</I>—turned up empty. Web sites for ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox News and CNN have
likewise carried nothing on the film.</P>
<P>Repeated telephone calls by the WSWS to these news sources, inquiring why
they have failed to cover the story, went unanswered. How is possible that not a
single major US media outlet chose to cover such an important news event? There
is no innocent or journalistic explanation.</P>
<P>This wholesale political censorship cannot be justified on the basis that
<I>Massacre in Mazar </I>—or the events it depicts—are not “newsworthy.” The two
screenings of the documentary in Germany prompted calls by a number of European
parliamentary deputies and human rights advocates for an independent
investigation into the atrocities exposed by the film. Calling for an inquiry,
prominent human rights lawyer Andrew McEntee commented it was “clear there is
prima facie evidence of serious war crimes committed not just under
international law, but also under the laws of the United States itself.”</P>
<P>The film includes scenes of the aftermath of the massacre of hundreds of
Taliban fighters who were taken prisoner outside Mazar-i-Sharif, at the
Qala-i-Jangi prison, showing captured troops who were apparently shot with their
hands tied. The filmmaker also interviewed eyewitnesses, who describe the
torture and slaughter of 3,000 prisoners, who were allegedly driven to a desert
area and massacred. These witnesses—who were not paid—have offered to provide
testimony before any independent investigation into the events.</P>
<P>The film footage is so damning that both the Pentagon and the US State
Department were compelled within days to issue statements denying the
allegations of US complicity in the torture and murder of POWs, which are
powerfully pointed to by the film. If the US government is so concerned over the
implications of what the documentary exposes, why has the US media chosen not to
report on it?</P>
<P>Since September 11, this same print and broadcast media has consistently toed
the Bush administration’s propaganda line; and there has been no shortage of
coverage on the Afghan war. The government’s flouting of international law and
the Geneva Conventions in the treatment of Afghan war prisoners at the
Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba and proposals for secret military tribunals
have gone virtually unchallenged. Assaults on the democratic rights of both
immigrants and citizens—including secret detentions and suppression of
protests—have been reported as legitimate aspects of the government’s “war on
terrorism.”</P>
<P>One topic that has received short shrift in the American press is the
civilian death toll in the US air raids in Afghanistan, which human rights
advocates estimate at more than 3,500, not including the thousands facing death
from starvation and displacement.</P>
<P>The well-known motto of the <I>New York Times</I>, “All the news that’s fit
to print,” increasingly masks a practice by that newspaper and all the media of
choosing to print only that which fits the war propaganda needs of the Pentagon
and the White House.</P>
<P>The refusal of the press to report on the charges of US complicity in the
torture and mass killings in Afghanistan shown in <I>Massacre in Mazar</I>—or
even to acknowledge the existence of the film—serves one purpose: to keep the
American people in the dark about the Bush administration’s military actions and
human rights violations.</P>
<P>The media’s silence makes it complicit in what are horrific war crimes. It
also provides an even more sinister service to the Bush administration.
Filmmaker Jamie Doran decided to release a rough cut of his documentary before
final editing because he feared Afghan forces were preparing to destroy evidence
of the mass killings, scattering the remains of the victims. Self-censorship by
the US media only facilitates such a grisly cover-up.</P>
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