Beheading dominates media worldwide

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-23-2003
Beheading dominates media worldwide
41
Wed, 05-12-2004 - 11:54am

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/apeurope_story.asp?category=1103&slug=World%20View%20Beheading


Wednesday, May 12, 2004 · Last updated 8:25 a.m. PT


Beheading dominates media worldwide


By MICHAEL MCDONOUGH
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER


LONDON -- Amnesty International condemned the videotaped beheading in Iraq of American civilian Nick Berg, an act which Prime Minister Tony Blair's office described Wednesday as "barbaric." But Iranian radio accused Western media of using the slaying to distract attention from the abuse of prisoners in Iraq.


Images from the film showing Berg and his captors just before the killing dominated TV broadcasts and newspaper front pages in many countries.


A Kuwaiti newspaper ran a picture of one of the killers holding the severed head and some Greek TV stations showed the actual execution, although they obscured the head. The full video was posted on an al-Qaida-linked Web site.


"Such acts are unjustifiable under any circumstances and constitute a serious crime under international law," London-based human rights group Amnesty International said of the slaying. "Those responsible should be brought to justice in line with international standards."


The masked men who killed Berg claimed they were angered by coalition abuses of Iraqi prisoners. The video, posted Tuesday, showed them pushing Berg to the floor, severing his head and holding it up. His body was found near a highway overpass in Baghdad on Saturday, the same day he was beheaded, a U.S. official said.


The video bore the title "Abu Musab al-Zarqawi shown slaughtering an American," referring to an associate of Osama bin Laden believed responsible for a wave of suicide bombings in Iraq.


Blair's official spokesman, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the killing as "a truly barbaric act," adding: "There is no justification for this kind of act in a civilized world."


In Greece, government spokesman Theodoros Roussopoulos said the execution provoked a "sense of abhorrence. ... The Greek government condemns violence wherever it comes from."


Most Greek TV stations aired segments of the video, some stopping just before the beheading while others obscured the head during the execution.


Other broadcasters in Britain, Spain, China, Germany, Italy and Belgium showed images of Berg kneeling on the floor with his black-clad captors standing behind him.


"What follows is too cruel to show," said Belgium's VRT public broadcaster, which aired the video up to the point where Berg was thrown to the ground after one attacker took out a knife.


Germany's mass-circulation Bild newspaper ran a picture of Berg's captors holding up his severed head, eliciting condemnation from the German Journalists' Union.


"Naturally, newspapers have to report on this horrible act," union chairman Michael Konken said in a statement. "But the human slaughter recorded in the picture does not belong in the media."


Iranian radio accused the western media of showing pictures from the video for propaganda purposes.


"As a result, the issue of Iraqi prisoners' torture has been totally ignored by these media," the Voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran said.


"The American authorities too, have entered this news-making propaganda. These authorities have described the killing method of the American national as loathsome, and implicitly indicated that the American troops were justified to torture Iraqi prisoners."


Arab media reacted cautiously to the execution, with some newspapers conspicuously playing it down or even ignoring it.


Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya, the big two satellite networks, aired edited snippets of the video. "The news story itself is strong enough," said Jihad Ballout, spokesman for Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television. "To show the actual beheading is out of the realm of decency."


Egypt's leading daily, Al-Ahram, ignored the beheading Wednesday. An editor said the news came too late for the paper to confirm the video's authenticity with the U.S. government.


Newspapers in Syria, where the government controls the press tightly, did not report the execution at all.


Five of Kuwait's seven dailies published the report with photographs on their front pages. The other two published brief reports. The Al-Siyassah daily ran two photos, including one with a masked militant holding up Berg's severed head.


(mm-rb-jl)

cl-nwtreehugger


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iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Fri, 05-14-2004 - 12:36pm

<<,Having it done to them in the first place.

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"If you don't stand up for something, you'll lie down for anything." -- B

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-10-2004
Fri, 05-14-2004 - 12:48pm
Please post to support your accusations against me so i can dispute them fairly. Accusing someone of being "unpatriotic" is not better then saying someone doesn't care about the Amrican deaths which I honestly have never said. Why can you call someone something but get offended that others imply such things about yourself?????
iVillage Member
Registered: 05-10-2004
Fri, 05-14-2004 - 12:56pm
No it doesn't...i have repeatedly posted my feelings in regards to the mistreatment of the Iraqi prisoners and fully disagreed and was appalled by such treament. So where again is the "inhumanity being lost"??? I am curious to where you pulled that out of? This is the topic of the beheadment of the American is it not? In the post about the abuse of Iraqi prisoners I focused on the sad and disgusting abuse of the Iraqi's, so what's your point? As for my horrid statement...I was expressing my feelings as to the extent of evil that goes behind Mr. Berg's death and how IMO you can't compare the two behaviors...this is my opinion so respect that. Thank you!
iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Fri, 05-14-2004 - 1:29pm

Here's my post, in it's entirety:


<<>>


If this continues to be a CONTEST of what's more horrid, then the inhumanity in BOTH situations continues to stay lost.


<<>>


So is sodomizing a prisoner with a light-stick.


<<<No it doesn't...i have repeatedly posted my feelings in regards to the mistreatment of the Iraqi prisoners and fully disagreed and was appalled by such treament. So where again is the "inhumanity being lost"???>>>


In the constant "contest" of who was/is more justified.

________________________________________________

"If you don't stand up for something, you'll lie down for anything." -- B

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-23-2003
Fri, 05-14-2004 - 1:59pm

<<,Having it done to them in the first place.


iVillage Member
Registered: 05-10-2004
Fri, 05-14-2004 - 2:01pm


<<>>

The beheadING of the American is gruesome and appalling and horrid. The abuse of the Iraqi prisoners is gruesome and appalling and horrid. If we continue to assert that the beheading is WORSE, then we are just as guilty of losing our humanity as those that acted so violently. Because it is that sense of "your behavior was worse than ours" that dehumanizes everyone and everything we encounter. NEITHER incident can be diminished by the other.

How is the abuse of the Iraqi prisoners "gruesome"...It is appalling but horrid and gruesome? I don't think you can compare those defintions to both acts of appalling situations and see it as an equal wrong-doing. They were both wrong but not equally IMO. That doesn't mean I am trying to use the beheading to shadow out the abuse by our own Americans but there is a differnce IMO. And if I assert that the beheading is worse IMO doesn't make me guilty of losing my humanity and it sure doesn't even remotely make me equally guilty as those who were viloent. That's the most ridiculous accusation yet. I am offended and yet shocked.

<<>>

Last I checked, respect was something a person earned, and rarely gets when they merely demand it.

So maybe

I respect the fact that these Iraqi prisoners, because of their customs, their culture, their religious beliefs were abused beyond something that some Americans would call "a pimple" and, because of that, their humiliation may well be a fate worse than death for them. I respect that they didn't deserve what they got, regardless of whether they were insurgents or just innocent men who got picked up in a sweep. While it sickens and saddens me every single day to hear about another mother's son or daughter getting killed at the hands of the insurgents, I also respect that these insurgents are fighting us because they believe that we have invaded their country. Were the tables turned, if some large country invaded ours, would you not feel it just to take up arms and eliminate as many of the invaders as you could? To help in any way that you could to liberate our country and re-gain control of it? These are human beings, with different beliefs than ours - not wrong beliefs, just DIFFERENT ones. And, as such, they deserve to be treated with the same kind of respect and dignity that we DEMAND for our own citizens. There is no justification for their abuse and torture - none. There is no justification for the beheadING of Eric Berg. Is one more horrific than the other? No, because there's no justification for either. There's no justification for the torture and intentional sadistic abuse of ANY human being, not even the most vile and despicable one.

For to slip down that slope is for ALL of us to lose our humanity.



It's not because simply they believe in another God and we just don't respect that...what big picture are you missing here? Their "God" and "beliefs" take it to the extreme measurement of blood shattering murder. They don't have these innocent beliefs that are simply "let me believe what I wish and leave me alone" . It isn't just a diffeent religion and the fact that you see it that way confuses me beyond anything else. I also never justified either the situations so what are you talking about? As for the beheading of Mr. Berg, these people are not because we invaded their country...they are angry at every single American, innocent here on our own land and those at war. It's in their religion to hate us no matter what, they want us off the face of the earth and their sole mission is to do so.

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Fri, 05-14-2004 - 2:05pm

<<<Also, the fact that the Geneva Conventions were mentioned here totally astounded me...because

________________________________________________

"If you don't stand up for something, you'll lie down for anything." -- B

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-23-2003
Fri, 05-14-2004 - 2:14pm

And this man purports to be a BORN AGAIN CHRISTIAN and tell ME that my homosexuality is IMMORAL?


iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Fri, 05-14-2004 - 2:17pm

<<>>


Yes, horrid and gruesome.

________________________________________________

"If you don't stand up for something, you'll lie down for anything." -- B

iVillage Member
Registered: 05-10-2004
Fri, 05-14-2004 - 2:36pm
Yes, horrid and gruesome. Unless you don't find sodomizing someone with a light stick horrid and gruesome? Unless you don't find forcing someone to sodomize themself with a banana horrid and gruesome. I'm not going to split hairs with you on adjectives. I find the abuse of the Iraqi prisoners every bit as horrd and gruesome as the beheading of Eric Berg. Period.


("gruesome

adj : shockingly repellent; inspiring horror; "ghastly wounds"; "the grim aftermath of the bombing"; "the grim task of burying the victims"; "a grisly murder"; "gruesome evidence of human sacrifice"; "macabre tales of war and plague in the Middle ages"; "macabre tortures conceived by madmen...nope not gruesome to me or by the means of the definiton. I wasn't throwing the adjectives around to prove a point so if you wish to stop talking about them then don't bring them up anymore. I don't find the beheading as gruesome as the abuse of the Iraqi's. PERIOD.")

<<>>

This is the same mentality that caused the enslavement of an entire race of people for 400 years.

This is the same mentality that caused the Holocaust in Germany.

This is the same mentality that fostered the genocide in the Sudan.

This is the same mentality that the KKK, Skinheads and Ariyan Brotherhood uses to justify their hate-induced actions.

This is the same mentality that Reverend Phelps and his hate crew have displayed.

"They're totally different from us." "Their religion makes their beliefs dangerous."

(Their mentality, not ours...As I have said befoe it isn't about their religion just being different, so why do you have to keep bringing that in proving your point about something I never said...it isn't as simple as just having different religion My goodness!!!)

No - SOME of them are. They're ALL human beings and for the most part, the Iraqi people are just decent people and unwilling participants who are caught in the middle of a test of wills between the US and Islamic extremists - neither of which are they a part. And the fact that anyone refuses to see that confuses ME beyond anything else.

(I wasn't talking about the innocent civilians, we are not there to slaughter them or even murder them/shoot them/kill them as a goal of ours. Civilians are killed accidently and that is a sad fact of war. It's the extremists who are the problem and those are who we are after.)

<<>>

Last I checked, the Koran didn't specifically mention Americans, America, or anything like it. Like the Taliban, there are SOME extremists who interpret Islamic law more stringently than the average Muslim. But that doesn't make them ALL extremists and to imply that it does is racist and bigoted and shows very little understanding of them while at the same time demanding total understanding of US.

(Theri interpretation of their Koran cooncides America and evil that is represented in the Koran, they connected the dots in that direction on their own, so what does that mean?

Who said they are all extremists? IT's the extremists who see the connection between EVIL and AMERICA and those people are our targets not bread selling village people who dont' know how to read and just try to get by in this lifetime...I never insinuated that and so being racist and bigoted doesn't apply here)

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