Press statement: Steve (03) 9427 9837 or Sharon 956 9647
Australian peace activists condemn sanctions on Iraq
"We condemn both the inhumane sanctions on Iraq and the US military
for its proposed new massive sustained bombing campaign of Iraq which
is likely to kill more than 10,000 people," stated Sharon Wathen
spokeperson for the peace, community, and ethnic groups planning to
assemble Sunday on the lawns of the State Library at 1pm, celebrating
the 8th anniversary of the 1991 allied bombing of Iraq.
The Australian peace protest is part of a planned worldwide campaign
initiated by former US attorney general Ramsey Clark and against
plans for a new bombing campaign that would last several weeks made
public in recent days by various wire services.
"More recently in the December 17-20 4 day bombing the US Pentagon
estimates that up to 2,000 Iraqi soldiers died and is silent about
civilians casualties," Sharon Wathen said.
According to a survey by UNICEF, the UN Children's Fund, and the
World Food Program (WFP) , the US/British bombing in December
destroyed or damaged 12 hospitals, a granary, a huge rice storage
center in Baghdad, the principal oil-refining factory used for Iraq's
domestic consumption, and other vital elements of Iraq's economic
infrastructure necessary to sustain civilian life
Since August 6, 1990, the forty-fifth anniversary of the incineration
of Hiroshima by an atomic blast, US/UN Security Council sanctions
have killed more than a million and a half people in Iraq, mostly
infants, children, elderly and chronically ill and left millions more
stunted, with crippled bodies, shortened lives, and minds scarred by
the realization that rich nations forced this devastating
impoverishment and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment on their
entire people.
DU bamed for Gulf War syndrome
"The common explanation for Gulf war syndrome is environmental
pollution caused when chemical and biological centres were blown up
but radiation from depleted uranium rounds remains the most plausible
explanation," said Sharon Wathen. Depleted uranium is used to weight
shells rendering them highly effective in piercing tank armour. It is
flammable and releases radioactive substances
In Iraq, the health authorities say that at least three times more
children are being born with congenital deformities than before the
Gulf war. Now, in both Britain and the United States, veterans of
that same war are coming forward with reports of sick and dying
children.
"The brutal irony is that the most likely origin of this gene-
twisting force is not Iraqi, but Western. During the 100-hour ground
war of February 1991, coalition planes fired at least one million
rounds of ammunition coated in a radioactive material known as
depleted uranium, or DU," Wortham said.
Australian image hurt
"This shows a clear and intentional targeting of the civilian
infrastructure of Iraq. And it was supported by the Federal
government!! A new US bombing campaign will backfire on Australian
trade right around the world," another activist, David Muller said.
Iraq recently threatened to cancel Australian wheat because the
government support of US bombing.
"The bombing of Iraq's cities and infrastructure had nothing to do
with driving Iraq from Kuwait. It was intended to cripple a
developing Non-aligned nation that was a politically independent
military power in the region; that was rich in oil and committed to
its own economic development.
"But the rulers of Kuwait were far from blameless", Keith Langford
said. "The Kuwaiti Government was slant drilling from al-Rumaylah oil
fields in Southern Iraq, he said.
Since day one of the crisis eight years ago, the strategy of the
United States was to weaken Iraq. It would like to create a puppet
regime in Baghdad. Now 8 years later President Clinton has signed
into law, the Iraq Liberation Act of 1998, which authorised $97
million for the military overthrow of the current Iraqi government.
It is the obligation of all people of conscience, of all anti-racist
and peace organisations to stop the genocide of the Iraqi people.
1999 will determine whether tens of thousands of people in Iraq live,
or die, and millions sustain painful, crippling permanent injuries
from further malnutrition and sickness which could have been avoided
altogether, or quickly cured if medicines and clean water had not
been denied by the US dominated Security Council.
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Dante found the hottest places in the Inferno were reserved for those
who in time of moral crisis did nothing.
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