Washington, D.C., news conference
'No new war against Iraq!'
By Judi Cheng
Washington, D.C.
High-powered television cameras captured the voices of
dissent Jan. 2 and brought those voices into the living rooms
of families across the United States.
International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War & End Racism)
had called a Jan. 2 news conference at the National Press Club
in response to new Bush administration threats to expand the
current war into Iraq. Since 1991, U.S./United Nations-imposed
economic sanctions have caused more than 1.5 million Iraqi
deaths.
Referring to the U.S. war on Afghanistan, former U.S. Atty.
Gen. Ramsey Clark said, "Our glorification of violence has
never been greater, our lack of concern for the lives of others
has never been more total, and our willingness to use
technology against life has become almost absolute."
Media crews and reporters from C-SPAN, CNN, AP, Reuters,
Al-Jazeera, and others had gathered at the National Press Club
to cover statements from a distinguished panel of community
organizers, activists and religious leaders.
"The massive suffering of the Iraqi people of the last
decade as a result of the economic sanctions is a moral evil of
immeasurable proportions," said Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of the
Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit.
"Since 1991, my country has been bombed every single day,
causing 200 civilian deaths a day, and over 1,000 deaths per
month," said Iraq-born Kadouri Al-Kaysi, representing the
Committee in Support of the Iraqi People.
"Those who have killed hundreds of thousands in Nicaragua,
Guatemala and El Salvador in the 1980s, and continue to do so
today, cannot have the moral standing to call for a war against
terrorism," said Chuck Kaufman of the Nicaragua Network.
"We are against all forms of terrorism, including our own
government's support for despotic regimes around the world that
carry out violence and atrocities against innocent people,"
said Damu Smith of Black Voices for Peace.
Marcina Cardenas of the Mexico Solidarity Network reminded
the audience that "The lives of many immigrants in the U.S.
have been transformed since September 11."
Peta Lindsay, National Student and Youth Coordinator of the
International Action Center, explained that on April 27
students will gather in Washington, D.C., for a mass
mobilization to say no to an expanded war, whether it be
against Iraq, or anywhere else in the world.
Protest the U.S.
Patriot Act
Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, a civil rights attorney and
co-founder of Partnership for Civil Justice, encouraged her
listeners to "speak out, demonstrate, and defend their rights,
or else they simply won't exist." She was discussing the U.S.
Patriot Act, a new law that threatens the civil rights and
civil liberties of people here in the United States.
Sarah Sloan, a national organizer with the International
Action Center, said "This war [in Afghanistan] is not about
defending the people in the U.S. against terrorism, but about
U.S. domination of strategic areas like the Middle East for
corporate interests."
Through the coverage on CSPAN-2, which aired the 100-minute
program several times during the days that followed, many heard
the conference. The result was hundreds of calls to the
International Action Center in support of anti-war actions.
The Rev. Grayland Hagler, senior minister of Plymouth
Congregational Church in Washington, D.C., passionately asked
his audience, "Aren't American bombs and aggression as
terrorist as any other form of terrorism? Americans are
becoming the terrorist agents we claim to be against. Aren't
the deaths of others as important as the deaths of our
own?"
Brian Becker, co-director of the International Action Center
characterized economic sanctions as "genocide against the
civilian population, it's a form of terrorism on a mass scale,
it's a weapon of mass destruction."
According to a 1996 World Health Organization report on
Iraq, sanctions had increased the mortality rate for children
under 5 by six times, and the majority of the country's
population was on a semi-starvation diet.
More than 1.8 million Iraqis have died as a direct
consequence of economic sanctions, with living conditions at a
level bordering on famine for at least 4 million people,
according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the
United Nations. International law prohibits starvation of
civilians as a method of warfare.
Speakers pointed out that the blockade violates the Geneva
Convention, the UN Charter, the Constitution of the World
Health Organization, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
and the Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States.
According to U.S. Legal Code Title 18-2331, the economic
sanctions on the people of Iraq are also an act of
international terrorism.
Reprinted from the Jan. 17, 2002, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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