Solomonia Archive: TV Confessions - the Iraqi version of 'Cops'

Saturday, March 19, 2005

TV Confessions - the Iraqi version of 'Cops'

There is some controversy over what has become an exceptionally popular program on Iraqi TV - Terrorism in the Hands of Justice - where captured terrorists are put on camera to confess their crimes. The show is not only popular with the viewers, but it is also having the desired effect of galvanizing public opinion against the terrorists by showing in stark detail that the "insurgents" are not admirable holy-warriors, but are instead exposed as the lowlifes they are.

The controversy stems from questions involving the degree to which the confessions are coerced, how accurate the information is, and whether any torture is used. Such programming would certainly be a worry here in the States, but desperate circumstances and the number of lives at stake mean the putting on hold of some civil liberties and the stretching of the niceties and specifics of due-process. These people are fighting a war against a blood-thirsty crowd that shows no mercy. That means the circumstances are a bit different than the circumstances under which some international civil rights organizations' standards are geared-up to account for. This ain't Kansas, kid.

Boston Globe: Confessions rivet Iraqis - Fight for minds uses a TV show as battleground

...There is no question, however, about the program's popularity and wide reach. Men at cafes debate the details of certain gang members from ''Terrorism." Others interrupt soliloquies about recently murdered relatives to declare: ''I expect to see his killers on TV." The show aims to change the minds of Iraqis who see insurgents as noble, patriotic Muslims.

Powerful politicians have blasted the show: Mohsen Abdul Hamid, head of the Iraqi Islamic Party, a Sunni party that gets support from Arab nationalists, tribes, and the insurgency, called a press conference recently to accuse the show of airing lies, outraged not that a party member was presented as a terrorist, but that the man confessed that he drinks alcohol and does not pray...

People are drawing parallels to a previous episode in Iraqi television history. You decide whether the comparison is correct or not. In 1963, Abd al-Karim Qassem was ousted in a Ba'athist coup. Some segments of the population didn't believe he was really dead, and waited for him to come lead the counterrevolution. From Kanan Makiya's Republic of Fear...

The Ba'th, then led by a faction considered on the extreme left of the party, dealt with the emotive imagery by televising a lengthy film clip displaying Qassem's bullet-ridden corpse. Night after night, they made their gruesome point. The body was propped up on a chair in the studio. A soldier sauntered around, handling its parts. The camera would cut to scenes of devastation at the Ministry of Defence where Qassem had made his last stand. There, on location, it lingered on the mutilated corpses of Qassem's entourage...Back to the studio, and close-ups now of the entry and exit points of each bullet hole. The whole macabre sequence closes with a scene that must forever remain etched on the memory of those who saw it: the soldier grabbed the lolling head by the hair, came right up close, and spat full face into it.

The fear the Ba'th were trying to instill in this and other instances was brutally direct...

Note that important distinction. Previous TV displays by the Iraqi authorities were meant to instill fear and obeisance into the people. The new programming is meant to instill fear in the terrorists and rally support from the people - a government accountable to the people is showing them it is doing its job to protect them.

Posted by Solomon at 9:19 AM on Saturday, Mar 19, 2005
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