By David A. Love, The Black Commentator. Military authorities claimed she committed suicide in her tent in Iraq, but autopsies revealed she had been brutally attacked and raped.
Have you heard the story about LaVena Johnson?
LaVena Johnson, a high school honor student, decided to enlist in the Army to pay for college. On July 19, 2005, after serving eight weeks in Iraq, she was killed, eight days short of her 20th birthday.
Pvt. Johnson — she was posthumously promoted to private first class — was found dead on a military base in Balad, Iraq, in a tent belonging to military contractor KBR, a spinoff and former subsidiary of Halliburton, Dick Cheney’s company. She was the first woman from Missouri to be killed in Iraq or Afghanistan.
The U.S. Army officially ruled her death a suicide, saying she shot herself in the head, case closed. But this is where the story begins.
Johnson’s family knew something was wrong. They had talked to her on the phone a few days earlier, and she was in a great mood as usual, and was planning to come home for the holidays, earlier than expected.
Questions were raised when Johnson’s family viewed her body. There were suspicious bruises, and while the military claimed that this right-handed soldier had shot herself in the head with an M-16 rifle, the gunshot wound was on the left side of her head.
But the truth began to make itself known when the family received the autopsy report and photos they had requested under the Freedom of Information Act:
The 5-foot tall, 100-pound woman had been struck in the face with a blunt instrument, probably a weapon. Her nose had been broken, and her teeth knocked back. There were bruises, teeth marks and scratches on the upper part of her body. Her back and right hand had been doused with a flammable liquid and set on fire. Her genital area was bruised and lacerated, and lye had been poured into her vagina. The debris found on her suggested her body had been dragged.
And despite all this mutilation, she was fully clothed when her body was found in the tent, with a blood trail leading to the tent.
Despite the overwhelming evidence, the Army has refused to investigate. Through an online petition, ColorofChange.org demanded an investigation by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Johnson’s story is really several stories in one, and is about more than an individual Black woman who was raped and killed by her fellow soldiers. African Americans have full story here
Leave a comment
No comments yet.
dreysay 
Leave a Reply