Artist Statement:
"Slaughter of the Prisoners, Afghanistan"
The exhibit was created by Sam and Katah in Montréal, using
texts from the news service and images Sam drew which attempted
to make a representation of each of the victims of the
slaughter, of prisoners who surrendered to the Northern Alliance
forces at Kunduz late in November, and were then murdered at the
Quali-e- Jhangi Fortress, near Mazar-e-Sharif. Each of the
twenty one frames is filled with feet or noses, hands or eyes,
which eventually total in the four hundreds. The posters are
11x17 inches, on paper, and there are 21 of them in the series.
The series is dedicated to the memory of Hajid Murad who is a
character from the short story of the same title written by Leo
Tolstoy at the end of the 19th century, describing the war
between the Russians and the Chechens.
Though we were reading the Geneva Convention, at the time of
the massacre, we did not include it because the way we were
approaching the event had certain parameters and we stayed
within them. I do attach the very relevant, article four, below.
We were immediately appalled and transfixed by the massacre, we
watched the surrender at Kunduz, maybe we even realized that
Rashid Dostum, commander of the northern alliance forces, had
begun to massacre the surrendering Taliban before the battle of
Kunduz was over, before the surrender was completed. The
information came to us through MSN mostly with a little bit of
newspaper coverage added. The news was so intensely censored and
the press was so slow the MSN seemed more immediate. We were not
receiving images on MSN ...anyway I was not actually using the
MSN images
Of course one feels horrible watching human beings being
massacred day after day. Knowing that the bombers drop there
high explosive loads and then the marksmen pick off, shattering
them with lethal high powered leaden projectiles, any men the
bombs drive from there shelter. Later they will flood the
hostages dens with diesel fuel and burn them out, shooting them
as they emerge. Imagine these men, defeated at Kunduz, a large
number of them young recruits, cornered, driven to the wall,
virtually unarmed, starving, wounded, hopeless and despairing.
Faced with the realization that there captors will, "take no
prisoners", that they will all be executed. The press documented
their struggle, against their inevitable execution, by the
massive forces that were holding them hostage in their last
redoubt. Seven days and nights in this basement and then the
captors flood the space with diesel fuel and ignite it. When
the starved and filthy hostages make their way to the doors and
windows forced by the smoke and flames, the snipers crush any
frail hopes in these bedraggled human bodies, piercing their
vital organs, crushing their bones, tearing their flesh and
bringing them one by one to their deaths. One by one to their
deaths, over ten days, 5, 6, 700, individuals were murdered more
or less one at a time. Reading the AP report of fifty bodies
found sprawled in a field, "arms bound behind them", each killed
in what the press calls, "execution style". One must hope that
the powerful army holding this defeated and surrendered group of
very young men in this ultimate mortal trap, might take pity on
them, might, at the very least, grant their victims, those human
rights they are guaranteed under the Geneva Convention, since
all the forces participating in this massacre are states which
have ratified the convention?
We were in Montreal. We felt there was nothing we could do. I
wanted to acknowledge each of the dead. They were dying very
fast. I thought, at least I could make a mark, a mark
representing a human body, to acknowledge each of the victims.
At first it was clearly stated that there were 800...Later, once
the massacre had started this info became less clear..When I
heard distinct groups defined, like the fifty, I tried to
represent them. By the time I had made 400 images, four hundred
and some, they were all dead, maybe eighty survived. The news
stopped coming. The press moved on to the bombing of Tora Bora
Now we took the material we had printed out over the ten days of
the massacre...and edited it. All of the texts we used in the
poster series are from the news mediums. .Some of the texts had
inspired the images, some, we now found, related to the images.
Katah began to assemble the images and the texts on the computer
and to manipulate and format them
There were some last little bits of news, how the survivors
were put in shipping containers and parked out in the dessert to
die, for example...
There were some last little bits of news, how the survivors
were put in shipping containers and parked out in the dessert to
die, for example...
That is the whole story...We wished we could have done more....
Sam and Katah ..... from San Christobal de las Casas..March
21...2002
