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Allegations
of Abuse in Institutions |
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There is no room for
democracy, disobedience or dissent in the military. That's what former High
Court Justice David Morris says in his report on allegations of physical and
sexual brutality towards boys as young as 15 at the New Zealand Army's
Waiouru Regular force Cadet School. It is a disturbing
assertion, that the most important part of military life is obedience, rather
than humanity or sense or courage. It is not so far from
what the Nazi war criminals said at the Nuremberg trials: we were just
following orders. It's what lawyers for
Lieutenant William Calley said after he and his crazed soldiers massacred 504
villagers at My Lai, Vietnam, in 1968. Calley was guilty only of following
orders "a bit too diligently". Fortunately, it is
simply not correct. Morris' point is that
the whole idea of a training camp like Waiouru was to inculcate in the boys
the importance of hierarchy. Invoking the military's
long "experience gained in peace and war," Morris says armed forces
can function only if all personnel are trained to follow orders without
question. "The Army is not
an institution which allows democratic discussion. When an order is given,
whatever its rightness or wrongness, or even its necessity, the Army simply
expects it to be obeyed immediately and without question," Morris says. But that argument is
directly contradicted by the New Zealand Army's own rules, and the Geneva
Convention principles upon which the modern rules of warfare are based. In reality, all New
Zealand soldiers are taught that they have a responsibility to disobey any
order which is illegal or inhumane, says Brigadier-General Kevin Riordan,
director-general of the New Zealand Defence Forces legal service. "In the case of
orders that are known to be unlawful or which are manifestly unlawful, a
Service member is not only entitled to disobey, but is in fact required to do
so," Riordan said in response to my request for an explanation of the
law relating to military discipline, saying unlawful orders include acts such
as genocide, crimes against humanity and torture. Some dreadful things
happened in the Waiouru barracks, Morris concludes after interviews with 114
former cadets, Army personnel, medics, police and civilians. According to his own
report, children of 16 and 17 were given titles like "Cadet
Lance-Corporal", placed in charge of younger boys and allowed to punish
them for "offences" such as failing to keep their quarters or
uniforms clean. Boys were kicked and
bashed, scrubbed with hard laundry brushes until their skin split. The senior
boys stripped their victims naked and humiliated them, beat their genitals
with wooden implements, smeared their testicles with boot polish. Several claimed they
were sexually abused, two said they were raped. In 473 emails and
letters to Morris' review, 215 former cadets and staff said they experienced
or witnessed bullying, while 151 said they had no knowledge of any brutality.
Morris said he believed
only some of the ex-cadets' claims, but accepted the testimony of staff and
medics that they did not know about or condone bullying and tried to stamp
out any hints of cruel behaviour. "A contention a
culture of violence existed ... is not supported by my inquiries and is a
gross over-statement," Morris said, attributing the violence to "a
few, mainly senior cadets, [who] have behaved like a gang of thugs and
bullied a very limited number of cadets." He goes on to say:
"Those bullied appear to have been generally those unable, because of
size or makeup, to adequately defend themselves. I suspect a number of these
cadets should never have been selected for the Army and were clearly
unsuitable for it." But Morris seems to
overlook the quiet theme which comes through in nearly every piece of
testimony in his report: the real culture was terrified silence. Cadet after cadet told
him the greatest taboo was to "dob in your mates", and said they
would be "marked men" if they dared complain. A nurse said she
suspected the bruised and wounded boys who attributed their injuries to
"tripping over a barrack box or walking into wardrobe doors" were
actually being abused. A senior medical
officer said he would have been surprised if anyone formally reported abuse
because of the Army's "closed shop approach". Morris says bullying is
"a fact of life. Unfortunately, bullies flourish in school environments.
The Flashmans and their hangers-on exist today just as they did when Tom
Brown attended Rugby. To suffer and endure it is unfortunately the lot of
some." But with that
statement, Morris seems to be accepting that the worst vices of
hormone-enraged teenagers should be tolerated as inevitable. Bullying might be part
of life, but so is rape, so is murder. That's why we have a
criminal justice system: to regulate the behaviour of the bullies and the
sadists. Society looks to
honourable individuals to object to that kind of conduct, whether in civilian
or military life. Individuals like the
24-year-old American helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson, who airlifted civilians
out of My Lai and reported Calley for war crimes. Like the soldiers who
are speaking out about brutality in Iraq and Afghanistan. For even in barracks,
even at school, even in a war zone, some things are more important than blind
obedience. |
