Claire Harvey: Justice and humanity must outweigh blind obedience

There is no room for democracy, disobedience or dissent in the military.

That's what former High Court Justice David Morris says in his report on allegations of physical and sexual brutality towards boys as young as 15 at the New Zealand Army's Waiouru Regular force Cadet School.

It is a disturbing assertion, that the most important part of military life is obedience, rather than humanity or sense or courage.

It is not so far from what the Nazi war criminals said at the Nuremberg trials: we were just following orders.

It's what lawyers for Lieutenant William Calley said after he and his crazed soldiers massacred 504 villagers at My Lai, Vietnam, in 1968. Calley was guilty only of following orders "a bit too diligently".

Fortunately, it is simply not correct.

Morris' point is that the whole idea of a training camp like Waiouru was to inculcate in the boys the importance of hierarchy.

Invoking the military's long "experience gained in peace and war," Morris says armed forces can function only if all personnel are trained to follow orders without question.

"The Army is not an institution which allows democratic discussion. When an order is given, whatever its rightness or wrongness, or even its necessity, the Army simply expects it to be obeyed immediately and without question," Morris says.

But that argument is directly contradicted by the New Zealand Army's own rules, and the Geneva Convention principles upon which the modern rules of warfare are based.

In reality, all New Zealand soldiers are taught that they have a responsibility to disobey any order which is illegal or inhumane, says Brigadier-General Kevin Riordan, director-general of the New Zealand Defence Forces legal service.

"In the case of orders that are known to be unlawful or which are manifestly unlawful, a Service member is not only entitled to disobey, but is in fact required to do so," Riordan said in response to my request for an explanation of the law relating to military discipline, saying unlawful orders include acts such as genocide, crimes against humanity and torture.

Some dreadful things happened in the Waiouru barracks, Morris concludes after interviews with 114 former cadets, Army personnel, medics, police and civilians.

According to his own report, children of 16 and 17 were given titles like "Cadet Lance-Corporal", placed in charge of younger boys and allowed to punish them for "offences" such as failing to keep their quarters or uniforms clean.

Boys were kicked and bashed, scrubbed with hard laundry brushes until their skin split. The senior boys stripped their victims naked and humiliated them, beat their genitals with wooden implements, smeared their testicles with boot polish.

Several claimed they were sexually abused, two said they were raped.

In 473 emails and letters to Morris' review, 215 former cadets and staff said they experienced or witnessed bullying, while 151 said they had no knowledge of any brutality.

Morris said he believed only some of the ex-cadets' claims, but accepted the testimony of staff and medics that they did not know about or condone bullying and tried to stamp out any hints of cruel behaviour.

"A contention a culture of violence existed ... is not supported by my inquiries and is a gross over-statement," Morris said, attributing the violence to "a few, mainly senior cadets, [who] have behaved like a gang of thugs and bullied a very limited number of cadets."

He goes on to say: "Those bullied appear to have been generally those unable, because of size or makeup, to adequately defend themselves. I suspect a number of these cadets should never have been selected for the Army and were clearly unsuitable for it."

But Morris seems to overlook the quiet theme which comes through in nearly every piece of testimony in his report: the real culture was terrified silence.

Cadet after cadet told him the greatest taboo was to "dob in your mates", and said they would be "marked men" if they dared complain.

A nurse said she suspected the bruised and wounded boys who attributed their injuries to "tripping over a barrack box or walking into wardrobe doors" were actually being abused.

A senior medical officer said he would have been surprised if anyone formally reported abuse because of the Army's "closed shop approach".

Morris says bullying is "a fact of life. Unfortunately, bullies flourish in school environments. The Flashmans and their hangers-on exist today just as they did when Tom Brown attended Rugby. To suffer and endure it is unfortunately the lot of some."

But with that statement, Morris seems to be accepting that the worst vices of hormone-enraged teenagers should be tolerated as inevitable.

Bullying might be part of life, but so is rape, so is murder.

That's why we have a criminal justice system: to regulate the behaviour of the bullies and the sadists.

Society looks to honourable individuals to object to that kind of conduct, whether in civilian or military life.

Individuals like the 24-year-old American helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson, who airlifted civilians out of My Lai and reported Calley for war crimes.

Like the soldiers who are speaking out about brutality in Iraq and Afghanistan.

For even in barracks, even at school, even in a war zone, some things are more important than blind obedience.