U.S. crimes against humanity in Iraq

WW photo: G. Dunkel

Human-rights fighter Ramsey Clark was the keynote speaker at a Sept. 13 meeting at New York’s Community Church to condemn the U.S. government for the crimes against humanity it has committed against the people of Iraq during the last two decades.

Clark, the former U.S. attorney general, said these crimes have led to “1.5 million being killed during the period of U.S. sanctions from 1990 to 2003” and to “another million deaths from the war and occupation of Iraq.”

Clark, who has been to Iraq nearly every year since 1990, remarked how the quality of life has deteriorated even since the worst days of the sanctioned regime. Now, he said, everyone fears for the lives of their children and themselves, and people will no longer come out to the streets as they did even in those difficult times.

Almost one-third of the 25 million Iraqis need emergency help to survive. There are 2 million external and 2 million internal refugees.

Clark blamed the U.S. regime for these crimes and called for the impeachment of President George W. Bush.

Sara Flounders, a co-director of the International Action Center, also spoke at the meeting. Flounders reported on the humanitarian crisis in Iraq in the Sept. 13 issue of Workers World (workers.org). At the meeting, she encouraged the activists present to participate in the Sept. 22-28 encampment and the Sept. 29 demonstration in Washington, D.C., called by the Troops Out Now Coalition.

LeiLani Dowell, a national leader of the youth group FIST—Fight Imperialism, Stand Together—chaired the meeting.

—John Catalinotto