Who’s Raping Whose Scapegoat?
The rape conviction of U.S. Lance Corporal Daniel Smith on December 4, 2006 in the Philippines highlights the geopolitical hypocrisy U.S. taxpayers are financing. He testified the sex in the back of a van was consensual, when both he and his accuser were drunk. Anyone who has spent any time in Olangapo or Subic knows that nice innocent virgins don’t get drunk and jump into vans full of Marines to read them the bible ─ even in religious Catholic Philippines.
The case not only raises the question of what are U.S. Marines doing in the Philippines, but why a U.S. Marine is sentenced to a harsh prison sentence for having consensual sex while the hundreds, if not thousands, of U.N. soldiers around the world on humanitarian peace missions who have been accused of rape, just get sent home quietly and are never prosecuted.
A “wall of silence” keeps U.N. sexual abuse cases from being investigated. Rapes are usually belittled as simple acts of prostitution, much as they used to be in the Philippines.
Under the Visiting Forces Agreement between America and the Philippines, U.S. Marines and other members of the U.S. armed forces are in the Philippines to advise the Filipino army and conduct joint military exercises to fight terrorism. Under the agreement, American military personnel are to be tried in Philippine courts.
For years the Philippines has been a haven for Jemaah Islamiah, a network that covers the arc of a predominantly Muslim region from the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, through Indonesia to Malaysia and Southern Thailand. The record of Islamic terrorism extends from vicious guerilla war waged by the extremist Abu Sayyaf on the islands of Basilan and Jolo, off southwestern Mindanao, to plotting against the U.S. by operatives in Manila under the guidance of their Middle Eastern masters.
The very public charges of rape, pedophilia and prostitution involving U.N. peacekeepers in Burundi, Bosnia, Cambodia, Haiti, East Timor, Ethiopia, Liberia, Kosovo and Sierra Leone pale in comparison to those made in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that highlighted the arrogance of U.N. criminal bureaucratic rapists. The 41-page report detailed 150 allegations of sexual misconduct by peacekeepers against women and girls, some as young as 12. That did not include the Congolese women working for the U.N. who were afraid to report supervisors’ demands for sex for fear of losing their jobs. More than a year after the shocking disclosures, nothing has been done to end the culture of impunity, exploitation and sexual chauvinism.
Before sending a mission abroad, the U.N. negotiates a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that, in almost all instances, deprives local authorities of criminal jurisdiction over peacekeepers. If there is no host-country government to negotiate with, as in East Timor or Kosovo, the countries providing peacekeepers and the U.N. determine the terms of the SOFA.
Comparing U.S. Marines sexual escapades on their R&R in the Philippines, for which they can receive a harsh prison sentence, to the sexual abuse U.N. relief workers inflict daily on their job for which they are excused, makes me wonder who is the real scapegoat in Lance-Corporal Smith’s sentence? American taxpayers for picking up the tab that put a U.S. Marine in jail.
The case not only raises the question of what are U.S. Marines doing in the Philippines, but why a U.S. Marine is sentenced to a harsh prison sentence for having consensual sex while the hundreds, if not thousands, of U.N. soldiers around the world on humanitarian peace missions who have been accused of rape, just get sent home quietly and are never prosecuted.
A “wall of silence” keeps U.N. sexual abuse cases from being investigated. Rapes are usually belittled as simple acts of prostitution, much as they used to be in the Philippines.
Under the Visiting Forces Agreement between America and the Philippines, U.S. Marines and other members of the U.S. armed forces are in the Philippines to advise the Filipino army and conduct joint military exercises to fight terrorism. Under the agreement, American military personnel are to be tried in Philippine courts.
For years the Philippines has been a haven for Jemaah Islamiah, a network that covers the arc of a predominantly Muslim region from the southern Philippine island of Mindanao, through Indonesia to Malaysia and Southern Thailand. The record of Islamic terrorism extends from vicious guerilla war waged by the extremist Abu Sayyaf on the islands of Basilan and Jolo, off southwestern Mindanao, to plotting against the U.S. by operatives in Manila under the guidance of their Middle Eastern masters.
The very public charges of rape, pedophilia and prostitution involving U.N. peacekeepers in Burundi, Bosnia, Cambodia, Haiti, East Timor, Ethiopia, Liberia, Kosovo and Sierra Leone pale in comparison to those made in the Democratic Republic of the Congo that highlighted the arrogance of U.N. criminal bureaucratic rapists. The 41-page report detailed 150 allegations of sexual misconduct by peacekeepers against women and girls, some as young as 12. That did not include the Congolese women working for the U.N. who were afraid to report supervisors’ demands for sex for fear of losing their jobs. More than a year after the shocking disclosures, nothing has been done to end the culture of impunity, exploitation and sexual chauvinism.
Before sending a mission abroad, the U.N. negotiates a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) that, in almost all instances, deprives local authorities of criminal jurisdiction over peacekeepers. If there is no host-country government to negotiate with, as in East Timor or Kosovo, the countries providing peacekeepers and the U.N. determine the terms of the SOFA.
Comparing U.S. Marines sexual escapades on their R&R in the Philippines, for which they can receive a harsh prison sentence, to the sexual abuse U.N. relief workers inflict daily on their job for which they are excused, makes me wonder who is the real scapegoat in Lance-Corporal Smith’s sentence? American taxpayers for picking up the tab that put a U.S. Marine in jail.
posted by Peter de Krassel's Custom Maid Politics at 5:30 AM
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