Inilah wajah sang polisi dunia yang menjunjung tinggi azas demokrasi. Kejadian ini terjadi di Korea tahun 1950-an. Mereka menutupi rapat-rapat hampir 50 tahun, sebelum akhirnya para bekas GI yg melakukan pembantaian tidak tahan sendiri dan bercerita. http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/koreaUS990929.html ---------------------------------------- Massacre at No Gun Ri American GIs Confirm Korean Accounts of a Large-Scale Massacre by U.S. Troops Chun Choon-ja tells her survival story at the site where witnesses say U.S. troops opened fire on and killed South Korean refugees under the railway bridge. U.S. veterans' accounts of the incident support the Koreans' claims. (Ahn Young-joon/AP Photo) By Sang-Hun Choe, Charles J. Hanley and Martha Mendoza The Associated Press It was a story no one wanted to hear: Early in the Korean War, villagers said, American soldiers machine-gunned hundreds of helpless civilians under a railroad bridge in the South Korean countryside. When the families spoke out, seeking redress, they met only rejection and denial, from the U.S. military and their own government in Seoul. Now a dozen ex-GIs have spoken, too, and support their story with haunting memories from a "forgotten" war. American veterans of the Korean War say that in late July 1950, in the conflict's first desperate weeks, U.S. troops killed a large number of South Korean refugees, many of them women and children, trapped beneath a bridge at a hamlet called No Gun Ri. At Least 100, or `Hundreds,' Killed In interviews with The Associated Press, ex-GIs speak of 100 or 200 or "hundreds" dead. The Koreans, whose claim for compensation was rejected last year, say 300 were killed at the bridge and 100 in a preceding air attack. American soldiers, in their third day at the warfront, feared North Korean infiltrators among the fleeing South Korean peasants, veterans told the AP. The ex-GIs described other refugee killings as well in the war's first weeks, when U.S. commanders ordered their troops to shoot civilians, citizens of an allied nation, as a defense against disguised enemy soldiers, according to once-classified documents found by the AP in U.S. military archives. Six veterans of the 1st Cavalry Division said they fired on the civilians at No Gun Ri, and six others said they witnessed the mass killing. "We just annihilated them," said ex-machine gunner Norman Tinkler of Glasco, Kan. Claims for Retribution Denied After five decades, none gave a complete, detailed account. But the ex-GIs agreed on such elements as time and place, and on the preponderance of women, children and old men among the victims. Some said they were fired on from among the refugees beneath the bridge. But others said they don't remember hostile fire. One said they later found a few disguised North Korean soldiers among the dead. But others disputed this. Some soldiers refused to shoot what one described as "civilians just trying to hide." The 30 Korean claimants - survivors and victims' relatives - said what happened July 26-29, 1950, was an unprovoked, three-day carnage. "The American soldiers played with our lives like boys playing with flies," said Chun Choon-ja, a 12-year-old girl at the time. The reported death toll would make No Gun Ri one of only two known cases of large-scale killings of noncombatants by U.S. ground troops in this century's major wars, military law experts note. The other was Vietnam's My Lai massacre, in 1968, in which more than 500 Vietnamese may have died. Some Details Unknown From the start of the 1950-53 conflict, North Korean atrocities were widely reported - the killing of civilians and summary executions of prisoners. But the story of No Gun Ri has remained undisclosed for a half-century. The Pentagon, told generally of the AP's findings, said it had found no substantiation for the allegations in the official record. The AP's research also found no official Army account of the events. Some elements of the No Gun Ri episode are unclear: What chain of officers gave open-fire orders? Did GIs see gunfire from the refugees or their own ricochets? How many soldiers refused to fire? How high in the ranks did knowledge of the events extend? The troops dug in at No Gun Ri, 100 miles southeast of Seoul, South Korea's capital, were members of the 7th Cavalry, a regiment of the 1st Cavalry Division. The refugees who encountered them had been rousted by U.S. soldiers from nearby villages as the invading army of communist North Korea approached, the Korean claimants said. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com
