A new example of vexations perpetrated by the American army has been brought to the international media: in a short movie, a group of four soldiers are urinating on the corpses of Taliban members in Afghanistan.
The story is not new… In 2004, in Abu Gharib prison (Baghdad), the former reservist Lynndie England led the obscenity to which some prisoners were submitted. Now, once again, the media comes with another sample of violence, that proofs mankind becomes incredibly cruel when it thinks that nobody is monitoring. And it is that precisely the opportune presence of an unexpected camera what let everything be known.
But let’s not deceive ourselves. The fact that the chance made possible to have these images published, means that in other corners of the world there are many more horrible actions and much harder tortures that are completely unknown. They escaped from the indiscreet camera.
Looking what has been published makes us think about all that we will never see. Often, photography explains more from what it hides that from what it shows.
Certainly it’s bad what we have seen, but it’s much better we could see it. The images scandalized us, but they reinforce the role of journalism as a document of the real.
We are lucky.