Interesting article in the Christian Science Monitor about a visual response by 25 artists in Baghdad to the torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib. At left, a sculpture by Abdel-Karim Khalil depicting a hooded detainee. Snip from CSM story:
[Iraqi Union of Artists deputy chairman Qasim Alsabti] created a life-size figure of a woman wrapped in a bloodstained white shroud. It symbolizes the rape of women detainees in Abu Ghraib, says Alsabti, who heard of allegations of women prisoners being raped at Abu Ghraib five months before the scandal broke. "There was a letter circulating in Fallujah from a woman inside Abu Ghraib," he says. "She was begging the resistance to bomb Abu Ghraib and bring down the walls on their heads so that their suffering would end. I felt like screaming when I heard this. I wanted to draw the attention of the American people."
[F]or many Iraqis, including artists like Alsabti, Abu Ghraib has become synonymous with what they see as the injustices of the occupation. "It's like an adviser from Saddam Hussei's regime has come back to Iraq and is now advising the Americans," he says.
Link. Incidentally, survivors of Pinochet in Chile know a thing or two about torture: Link
