Other King George Abused Prisoners, Too

An interesting and appropriate op-ed piece in today's The New York Times spotlights how the British definition of Continental soldiers as rebels led not only to their abuse and the deaths of thousands but to an eventual change in international law.

Exerpt:

The prisoners of New York left their mark somewhere else, too — in international law. Almost to the bitter end, the British took the position that captured American insurgents weren't soldiers but "rebels" and that defining them as prisoners of war amounted to de facto recognition of American independence. Americans responded that by not according prisoner-of-war status to the captives, the British had opened the door to, perhaps even encouraged, prison abuses.

An additional complication was that rules and standards governing the treatment of prisoners of war had yet to be spelled out definitively in international law. This began to change in 1785, just two years after the British evacuated Manhattan, when the United States and Prussia concluded a treaty that included the first guidelines for the humane treatment of prisoners of war. They mustn't be denied adequate rations and basic "comforts," it declared, nor "be confined in dungeons, prison ships, nor prisons, nor be put into irons, nor bound, nor otherwise restrained in the use of their limbs."

Methinks there might be a lesson in there.