PEN-L:
Below is a Pax Christi Petition against the Iraq sanctions? The sender,
Leah Wells, just returned from a Voices in the Wilderness delegation to
Iraq. Leah's article about her visit to Iraq follows the petition.
Thanks,
Seth
From:leah wells <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
CC:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject:Pax Christi Petition
Date:Wed, 22 Aug 2001 14:01:18 -0700 (PDT)
22 August 2001
Dear Friends,
Below is a copy of the Pax Christi petition currently
in circulation. Please pass it along to as many
people as you are able, as it will be presented at the
end of September. If you have more questions, please
visit the Voices in the Wilderness website at
www.vitw.org, or call 773.784.8065. Thank you for
your time and persistence in lifting the sanctions
against Iraq.
Peace,
Leah C. Wells
for Voices in the Wilderness
Pax Christi USA
NATIONAL CATHOLIC PEACE MOVEMENT
532 West 8th Street, Erie,
Pennsylvania 16502-1343
Phone: 814/453-4955, fax:
814/452-4784. Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
It is up to the international community in particular
to promote solutions that lead to harmony and renewal
in social life and to take responsibility for avoiding deviations
that could turn populations into innocent victims. �
Pope John Paul II speaking about Iraq on 12/17/98. Pax
Christi USA urgently appeals to the consciences of all
people of faith and goodwill to support efforts to halt the ongoing
humanitarian devastation in Iraq resulting from ten
years of economic sanctions by calling upon the United Nations to end
these sanctions immediately.
Please sign and return this global petition by:
September 30, 2001
We, the undersigned, compelled by our conscience,
stand firmly opposed to the current policy imposed by
the United Nations against Iraq. According to UNICEF,
children under five years of age are dying at more
than twice the rate than before economic sanctions were
imposed. It is reported that more than one million
people have died as a result of these sanctions.
Believing that these sanctions have become a weapon of
mass destruction, we call upon the United Nations to
acknowledge that the economic sanctions imposed on
Iraq are a failed policy that has caused inhumane
levels of suffering and is totally incompatible with
the spirit and wording of the United Nations� Charter
and the United Nations� Declaration of Human Rights.
As members of the global community, we call upon the
United Nations to immediately end these punitive
sanctions and to develop a meaningful new approach
toward Iraq based on restoring human dignity and
developing relations for a lasting and just peace.
Return petition to: Pax Christi USA�s Local/Regional
Office 442 33rd Street West Palm Beach, Florida 33407
USA Phone/Fax: 561-842-7701;
[EMAIL PROTECTED] Also see Pax Christi USA�s Website:
www.paxchristiusa.org
Signed petitions will be presented to the United
Nations in New York, New York, USA by members
of Pax Christi USA and Kathy Kelly of Voices In The
Wilderness on United Nations Day � October 24, 2001.
Name(Please Print)followed by Signature followed by
City/State/Country
and any Affiliation
1. Leah C. Wells Ventura, CA USA
2. Seth Sandronsky, Sacramento, CA USA
Leah Wells in Iraq
Despite the reports from every United Nations
organization dealing with health, agriculture and
children, the United States has maintained unwavering
support for continuing the economic embargo on Iraq.
On my first visit to Iraq in July and August, I
traveled with Chicago-based Voices in the Wilderness
to experience the effects on the people of Iraq who
are suffering needlessly at the hands of our
government. As many people know, travel to Iraq is
illegal and those undertaking the trip do so at the
risk of twelve years in prison and over one million
dollars in fines. For me, to meet teachers, students,
families, doctors, patients, mothers and ordinary
people whose lives have been irreversibly altered as a
result of the mean-spirited policies of my government,
the risk is worth it.
Before I left I had viewed the excellent documentary
by John Pilger and had participated in the
cross-country educational Remembering Omran Bus Tour,
named for a shepherd boy from a farming community near
Najaf who was killed in May 2000 by coalition bombs.
I had already taken a public stand against the
sanctions through written articles as well as in my
classroom where I teach high school nonviolence.
Having returned from Iraq after seeing for myself the
squalor that children play, learn and live in, seeing
for myself the pathetic conditions of health care and
education, and seeing the indomitable spirit of the
Iraqi people, I realize that I know nothing. I know
nothing about patience, about hopefulness and
hopelessness, about just getting by, and about
forgiveness. I realize that we Americans have so much
privilege, time, and resources and that our lives have
gone on since the Gulf War. We are able to forget
about the Iraqi people because our media does not
present us with images from families who boil sewer
water for tea, with images from inside a morgue where
babies are kept in flimsy boxes until their families
can come pick them up, with images from car accidents
on hot asphalt roads caused by blowouts because the
people can�t afford new tires.
I realize that I know nothing about life under siege.
Voices in the Wilderness founder Kathy Kelly describes
our world as a train: some people travel first class,
riding with comfort and ease, some people travel in
cramped third class conditions, and some people are
under the train, and the people of Iraq are under the
US foreign policy train which is rolling full speed
ahead toward annihilation. To stop this runaway
policy of genocide, I can figuratively lay myself down
on the tracks. I can lay down the stories of the
people I know from Iraq. I can lay down the stories
whose raw truth can compel more Americans, more young
people like me, to get involved.
Every day since I returned I have thought about a
mother and her twelve-year-old son and sitting at his
beside while she cried uncontrollably. He was
unconscious, a victim of leukemia caused by toxic
exposure to depleted uranium. I gave her some tissues
and sat with her as long as I could before our
delegation continued on to other sweltering rooms
filled with sick kids and their helpless mothers. It
was at the Saddam Teaching Hospital that I realized
kids cry in the same language and that inconsolable
mothers worldwide feel the burden of responsibility
when their kids won�t get well. The situation in Iraq
is compounded because of the crippling lack of
medicine and hospital supplies, like refined oxygen.
We witnessed some men unloading industrial oxygen
tanks into a hospital hallway which were to be used on
even the most fragile babies because refined oxygen is
unavailable.
During my time in Iraq, I thought about why my country
has made it illegal for me to visit the cradle of
civilization. My only explanation is so that we
cannot see the soul-wrenching, pervasive damage our
government has perpetrated there. I wondered if
people in my government feel any shame for what they
have done to ravage these ancient sites in this
beautiful country. The foundation for disrespecting
pre-existing cultures is nothing new for my country,
though, and I was struck by the similarity of how
millions of Native Americans were killed by European
diseases and uprooted from their native lands in the
name of Western progress. Yet as I stood at the
convergence of the Tigris and Euphrates where they
become the Shatt al-Arab, I felt so privileged to be
in a place very few Americans will ever see. I felt
the timelessness of Iraq and the historical and
religious significance which lies within the
boundaries. Standing on the top of the ziggurat at Ur
and holding seashells which still rest there from the
�Great Flood�, I knew the infinite importance of Iraq.
And I saw the hurt in our guide�s eyes as as I
watched him pull a piece of shrapnel out of the side
of the ziggurat where it stuck after a coalition bomb
struck a few hundred yards from this temple.
Americans largely misunderstand the Arab culture. I
encountered a country full of generous and hospitable
people, welcoming me into their homes even though my
country still bombs them many times each month. Yet
anti-Arab attitudes promote such discrimination and
racism in our country, attitudes fostered by movies
and media which portray them as terrorists and suicide
bombers. Iraqis especially are shown as hating
Americans, burning our flag and cursing our democratic
and freedom-loving nation. The Iraqis I met all said
that they understand that the American people have
good hearts and that we are not our government or
military. Can the average American say that about the
people of Iraq, or do we equate an entire nation of 23
million people with one leader? In addition to
lifting the economic sanctions, we need to eliminate
the institutionalized hatred of Iraqis which enables
the good people of America to sit by and let our
government destroy a beautiful nation.
Iraq does not need to be bombed another time, and it
does not need smarter sanctions. The economic embargo
needs to be lifted and members of the government of
the United States, like our current president and his
two predecessors, as well as the United Nations
officials who have turned a deaf ear on the suffering
of the Iraqi people, need to be put on trial for war
crimes and crimes against humanity. In the past
eleven years under sanctions, the international
community has rendered the Geneva Convention protocol
protecting victims of armed conflicts ineffective
because of the intentional, preconceived, and flagrant
human rights abuses perpetrated in Iraq. This
document exists to protect not just Westernized
countries, but all humans. I live every day knowing
that my government dispassionately kills Iraqis, and
as a U.S. citizen I am partially responsible for this
legacy. We as Americans are guilty of genocide in the
cradle of civilization.
###
_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp
