Prisoner abuse

Prisoner abuse is the crime of mistreating a civil or military prisoner. North Vietnam routinely beat and tortured American captured American pilots, in violation of the Geneva Convention.[1]

The worst violators, of course, are dictatorships of the Communist and Fascist type. Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler is notorious for murdering 6,000,000 Jews (see The Holocaust) and around 5,000,000 others. [2]

Public opinion in America tends to focus on minor incidents of abuse perpetrated by our own military or CIA, while neglecting far worse and more widespread incidents abroad. Violations of international law and human rights are measured on a gradient.[Citation Needed]

## Notes[edit]

1. ↑ Throughout 1965, 1966, and 1967 the most grievous breaches of the Geneva Conventions continued to be those committed by the Communists, and there were several cases where U.S. troops were murdered and their bodies mutilated by the Viet Cong or North Vietnamese. The Viet Cong policy of kidnapping civilians, assassinating public officials, and terrorizing entire populations continued. Communist tactics against the Montagnards, indigenous mountain tribes, were particularly vicious. Prisoners of War and War Crimes, from an official US Army history website
2. ↑ It is less well known (or accepted) that Josef Stalin and Mao Tse Tung each murdered ten times as many.