Human shield: Difference between revisions

Human shield is a military and political term describing the deliberate placement of

Using this technique is illegal by nations that are parties to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions, and the 1998 Rome Statute.^[1]

20th century

World War II

After

Wehrmacht and later SS forces extensively used Polish civilians as human shields during Warsaw Uprising when attacking the insurgents' positions.^[4][5]

At the

During the Battle of Okinawa, Japanese soldiers often used civilians as human shields against American troops.

When the Japanese were concerned about the incoming Allied air raids on their home islands as they were losing their controlled Pacific islands one by one to the

• (a) The Iraqi Government moved significant amounts of military weapons and equipment into civilian areas with the deliberate purpose of using innocent civilians and their homes as shields against attacks on legitimate military targets;
• (b) Iraqi fighter and bomber aircraft were dispersed into villages near the military airfields where they were parked between civilian houses and even placed immediately adjacent to important archaeological sites and historic treasures;
• (c) Coalition aircraft were fired upon by anti-aircraft weapons in residential neighborhoods in various cities. In Baghdad, anti-aircraft sites were located on hotel roofs;
• (d) In one case, military engineering equipment used to traverse rivers, including mobile bridge sections, was located in several villages near an important crossing point. The Iraqis parked each vehicle adjacent to a civilian house.[11]

21st century

War in Afghanistan

According to various accounts—including that of the American ambassador to the U.N., the Taliban used women and children from their own population as human shields against coalition forces in 2006,

During the Second Intifada

According to defense officials, the Israel Defense Forces made use of the "human shield" procedure on 1,200 occasions during the Second Intifada (2000-2005).^[15]

According to human rights groups

In 2004, a 13-year-old boy was photographed tied to an Israeli police vehicle in the West Bank, being used as a shield to deter stone-throwing protesters.[22]^[23]

In 2005, Israel's High Court of Justice banned the practice,

In February 2007, footage was released of an incident involving Sameh Amira, a 24-year-old Palestinian, who video showed serving as a human shield for a group of Israeli soldiers, getting inside apartments suspected to belong to Palestinian militants ahead of the soldiers.[27]^[28] A 15-year-old cousin of Amira and an 11-year-old girl in the West Bank independently told B'Tselem in February 2007 that Israeli soldiers forced each of them in separate incidents to open the door of a neighboring apartment belonging to a suspected militant, get inside ahead of them, and open doors and windows.^[29]

The Israeli Army launched a criminal investigation into the aforementioned incident.^[27] In April 2007, the Israeli army suspended a commander after the unit he was leading was accused of using Palestinians as human shields in a West Bank operation.^[30] In April 2007 CBS News reported that, according to human rights groups, the IDF did not stop the use of human shields, but the incidence was dropping.^[18][27]

During the 2008-2009 Gaza War

During the

The Guardian compiled three videos and testimony from civilians about alleged war crimes committed by Israeli soldiers during the 2008-2009 Gaza War, including the use of Palestinian children as human shields. In the videos three teenage brothers from the al-Attar family claimed that they were forced at gunpoint to kneel in front of tanks to deter Hamas fighters from firing at them and that they were used to "clear" houses for the Israeli soldiers.^[36]

An IDF soldier's testimony for Breaking the Silence told that his commander ordered that for every house raided by the IDF, they send a "neighbor" to go in before the soldier, sometimes while the soldier placed his gun on the neighbor's shoulder;^[37] according to the soldier, "commanders said these were the instructions and we had to do it".^[37] Gazan civilians also testified of being used at gunpoint as human shields by Israeli soldiers.^[38] An Israeli military official responded to these allegations: "The IDF operated in accordance with the rules of war and did the utmost to minimise harm to civilians uninvolved in combat. The IDF's use of weapons conforms to international law." An Israeli embassy spokesperson alleged Hamas pressured the people of Gaza into making those accusations.^[36]

On March 12, 2010, the Israel Defense Forces prosecution filed indictments against two staff sergeants of the Givati Brigade for forcing a 9-year-old Palestinian boy to open a number of bags they thought might contain explosives in January 2009. The boy told he was hit by the soldiers and forced to work for them at gunpoint.^[39] The IDF said it opened the investigation after the incident was brought to its attention by the United Nations.^[40] On October 3, 2010, a conviction in this matter, accompanied by a demotion and suspended sentence, was handed down by the military court against both defendants, though neither soldier was actually jailed.^[41][42][43] The sentence was criticized as too lenient by Human Rights Watch^[44] and the boy's mother.^[39]

2009-2014 Gaza War

A United Nations human rights body accused Israeli forces in June 2013 of "continuous use of Palestinian children as human shields and informants", voicing with deep concern 14 such cases had been reported between January 2010 and March 2013. It says almost all accused soldiers involved in the incidents have gone unpunished.^[45]

In an interview with Breaking the Silence, a former Israeli soldier recounted that the commander of his unit employed the policy, despite acknowledging its ban, as he would rather that a Palestinian civilian be killed carrying out the duty than one of his men.^[46] He told young Palestinian boys were also used by this particular unit to carry out military duties for the Israeli army.^[46]

The Euro-Mid Observer for Human Rights published testimony that, during the 2014 Gaza War, Israeli soldiers used Palestinian civilians as shield in Khuza'a. A family, that also gave a video interview, recorded by Media Town, told the group that Israeli soldiers had killed the family's patriarch, a 65-year-old who was carrying a white flag, and proceeded to place family members, including children, by the house's windows and shoot from behind them.[47]

A UN official made the accusation that Israel used a school in Gaza as a military base.^[52]

Palestinians

Israeli writer Amos Harel in Haaretz alleged that during the Second Intifada (2000–2005) Palestinian gunmen routinely used civilians and children as human shields and further alleges that there is photographic evidence.^[53]

On 22 November 2006, Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused Muhammad Wail Baroud, a military commander in the Popular Resistance Committee, of using civilians for shielding homes against military attacks but later stated that they erred. There was no evidence that the house was being used for military purposes at the time of the planned attack, nor did the IDF explain what military objective it could have had. They considered the destruction in light of Israel's longstanding policy of

The United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict that took place in 2008-2009 stated that it "did not find any evidence of civilians being forced to remain in their houses by Palestinian armed groups". The Mission "asked numerous witnesses in Gaza why they had stayed in their homes in spite of the shelling, bombing and Israeli ground invasion"; respondents stated they "did not think they would be at risk as long as they remained indoors or because they had no safe place to go".^[55] An Amnesty International report in 2009 criticized Hamas for human rights violations, but found "no evidence Palestinian fighters directed civilians to shield military objectives from attacks, forced them to stay in buildings used by militants, or prevented them from leaving commandeered buildings".^[56]

A review article in Case Western Reserve Journal of International Law stated that Israel warned residents to leave by using warnings such as roof knocking and phone calls, and that "Israel asserted that Palestinian civilians who did not abide by the warnings were acting as 'voluntary human shields,' and were thus taking part in hostilities and could be targeted as combatants." The article determined this assertion to be unsupportable in international law.^[57]

The

In a September 2014 interview, a Hamas official acknowledged to Associated Press that the group fired at Israel from civilian areas.^[68] He ascribed the practice to "mistakes", but said the group had little option due to the crowded landscape of the Strip, with its dearth of open zones. He denied accusations that rockets were launched from "from schools or hospitals when in fact they were fired 200 or 300 meters (yards) away".^[68] In an 2014 interview, a Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal said to a CNN interviewer that the group did not use its people as human shields.

In interviews with Gazan refugees, reporters for The Independent and The Guardian concluded it was a "myth" that Hamas forced civilians to stay in areas under attack against their will; many refugees told them they refused to heed the IDF's warnings because even areas Israel had declared safe for refugees had been shelled by its forces.^[69][70] The BBC Middle East editor Jeremy Bowen also said he "saw no evidence of Hamas using Palestinians as human shields".^[71] An Amnesty International document (dated July 25, 2014) asserts that they do "not have evidence at this point that Palestinian civilians have been intentionally used by Hamas or Palestinian armed groups during the current hostilities to “shield” specific locations or military personnel or equipment from Israeli attacks."^[72] Amnesty International's assessment was that international humanitarian law was clear in that "even if officials or fighters from Hamas or Palestinian armed groups associated with other factions did in fact direct civilians to remain in a specific location in order to shield military objectives from attacks, all of Israel’s obligations to protect these civilians would still apply."^[72] The human rights group, however, still found that Palestinian factions, as in previous conflicts, launched attacks from civilian areas.^[72]

Hamas Arabic-speaking spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri called up Gaza civilians on Hamas’s Al-Aqsa TV July 8, 2014 to stay put in areas under fire by Israel,^[73][74] prompting accusations from Israel and others — the European Union, for example^[63][64] — that Hamas was calling on people to volunteer as "in effect human shields".^[75] For Amnesty International, however, Hamas' call may have been "motivated by a desire to avoid further panic" among civilians, considering both the lack of shelters in Gaza and the fact that some civilians who heeded the IDF's warnings had been casualties of Israeli attacks.^[76] According to Sami Abu Zuhri, Hamas is using human shields and rejoices in the effectiveness of the tactic, believing it as a necessary and valid means of resistance.^[77]

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

During the

Scott Ewing, Cavalry Scout, 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment, US Army, who served in Iraq in the 2005-2006 period, stated that US troops would give candy to Iraqi children so they would stay around their vehicles, thereby making more likely that "the bad guys wouldn't attack. We used the kids as human shields".[86]^[87][88]

Lebanon War

Human Rights Watch conducted its own investigation on the 2006 Lebanon War, during which Israel accused Hezbollah of using civilians, and reported that Hezbollah did not "deliberately" use civilians as a deterrent from IDF attack, and that when violations happen it was not "routine[] or wide[]".^[92] HRW found that Hezbollah did not "routinely" stored weapons in or near civilian homes^[92] and that most often fighters launched rockets from rural, unpopulated areas that they declared no-go zones for Lebanese civilians.^[92] It did find that Hezbollah purposely endangered UN observers by launching attacks near them.^[90][92]

On July 25, 2006, Israeli forces

Siege of Lal Masjid

According to the Pakistan Army spokesman, Islamic militants used girls as human shields in Pakistan during the 2007 Siege of Lal Masjid. The mosque's head cleric denied the allegations.^[97][98]

On December 4, 2009, terrorists attacked a Friday prayer ceremony in a mosque in Rawalpindi, Pakistan,^[99] where Bilal Riaz, a graduate student, acted as a human shield to save his nephew's life.^[100]

Sri Lanka

According to a Human Rights Watch report published on February 19, 2009, the

During the Syrian civil war, the Syrian Armed Forces and loyalists were accused by Human Rights Watch of using residents of towns as human shields when advancing on opposition held areas, forcing them to march in front of the army. Witness from different towns across the country said that the army had kidnapped people and forced them to march in front of them when attacking towns and villages. The purpose of this was to protect the army from attack. HRW said "The Syrian army should immediately stop this abhorrent practice." Witnesses stated that the army forcibly used children and elderly people as well to deter anyone from firing on the soldiers.^[103]

Crimean crisis

Russian troops are reported to have used local civilians to avoid defence shooting when storming the Ukrainian Navy headquarters in Sevastopol^[104] and Ukrainian naval vessels.^[105]

Other use

Use by anti-war activists

In recent years civilian volunteers have attempted to use themselves as “human shields” to prevent military conflict. In January 2003, anti-war activists organised Human Shield Action to Iraq in advance of the March 2003 invasion. Ultimately, Human Shield Action brought 200 people to Iraq. Many of them left as they ran out of money and the likelihood of war became greater.^[106][107] Several of these human shields had to be rescued by U.S. Marines after Iraqis threatened them for opposing the invasion of their country.^[108]

Use by pro-Palestinian activists

The human rights group Rabbis for Human Rights agreed to act as “human shields” during the annual olive harvest to protect Palestinian villages from settlers.^[109] Rachel Corrie and Tom Hurndall, Western International Solidarity Movement (ISM) volunteers in the Palestinian territories, who died in 2003 and 2004 respectively have been described as “human shields” campaigning against house demolition. ISM, however, strongly takes offence at the use of the term human shield to describe their work, preferring it be used only to refer to when the military uses civilians as shields.^[110] Not even Amnesty International defines volunteer activist's actions or activist's actions for non-military property as “human shields”, and regards only the direction of "specific civilians to remain in their homes as “human shields” for fighters, munitions, or military equipment" as “human shields”.^[72] According to the 3 definitions in the header of this article the 'volunteers to protect Palestinians' make them not “human shields outside the battlefield” but protesters or ordinary pro-Palestinian demonstrants.

See also

• Human wave attack
• Falling on a grenade
• Civilian casualties
• Close Quarters Battle
• Hostage
• Human rights in Israel
• Human rights in the Palestinian National Authority
• Urban warfare

References