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| ELEVENTH VOICES NEWSLETTER (SEPT 2000)
Contents
1) MASS DIE-IN HALTS WHITEHALL Traffic in Whitehall came to a standstill on Monday August 7, as over 300 people gathered to mark the 10th anniversary of the UN economic sanctions on Iraq. A huge range of people - from children to nonagenarians, long time activists as well as many on their first demonstration - walked from Trafalgar Square to the Foreign Office behind a huge banner reading 'Ten years of suffering. Lift the sanctions on Iraq.' What we had in common was a shared understanding of the effects of sanctions on the ordinary people of Iraq, and a wish to put pressure on our own government to end the suffering. On reaching the Foreign Office, those wishing to take part in civil disobedience broke off from the main group and 'died' - lay down - in the road. Those not wishing to risk arrest stood on the pavement, displaying their placards and banners, handing out leaflets and explaining the situation to curious passers-by. The whole of Whitehall was brought to a standstill for half an hour. Around 90 people took part in the civil disobedience, thereby risking arrest and prosecution - a powerful demonstration of the strength of feeling about the sanctions. The die-in continued for over an hour, with sombre music played throughout by dedicated musicians. The police dragged people out of the road repeatedly but it was clear that they had decided in advance not to make mass arrests and in the end only four people were arrested (and later charged with highway obstruction). After the die-in had finished, there was a minute's silence and wreaths to the victims of sanctions were laid on the Cenotaph. success Overall, the die-in was a huge success; more people than we had dared hope for; good media coverage thanks to our tireless press workers; and many people energised and wanting to come back and do it again soon. Watch this space! Thanks to all those who came along and helped to make it so successful - see you next time. Andrea Needham Appreciations Some of the people who helped make the die-in so successful were: Martin Newell of St Margaret's Church, Canning Town, provided accommodation; David Polden, one-man Legal Support Unit; renowned violinist Monica Huggett, Emilia Benjamin, and friends provided wonderful accompaniment; Caroline Lucas MEP (Green Party) and Reggie Norton, former Oxfam Field Director and trustee were part of the die-in; Richard Byrne worked above and beyond the call of duty as press officer; Dave Rolstone (arrestee), launched the weekend by climbing the Millennium Eye, boosting our press profile no end; Nadje al-Ali of Women in Black, fielded tons of interviews on-site; Kathryn Tulip of the Activists' Legal Project (16B Cherwell St, Oxford); Sue Brush, Cedric Knight, legal observers; Emma Sangster, Glenn Bassett, Heather (of Youth and Student CND) and the other stewards; Gareth Evans and Emma Sangster created wonderful placards; Emily and Sue Johns made wonderful wreaths (laid at the Cenotaph); Emily Apple (arrestee) NV preparation facilitator; and many many more. Cornerstones of the whole event: were Andrea Needham and Gabriel Carlyle (who staff the voices Oxford office) who 'slept, dreamt, ate and lived' the die-in for months (and who were the other two arrestees). Next The next action is brewing. Possible planning session on 8 Oct. Please call 01865 243 232 for info. Court Dates Out of 90 die-in participants, only 4 were arrested. All were charged with highway obstruction, and given separate trial dates/times. The four are now trying to get a single hearing, so please call 01865 243 232 closer to the dates below if you would like to attend the trial as a supporter - dates may change. Supporters very welcome. Current dates at Bow Street Magistrates Court are: Thurs 14 Sept. (2pm) Emily Apple and Gabriel Carlyle (in parallel); Mon 2 Oct. (10am) Andrea Needham then Dave Rolstone (one after the other). Dear voices, Patricia King, Wellingborough, Northampton Dear voices, My wife and I attended the briefing on the Sunday and were willing to be arrested should the police decide to exercise the law. It didn't even make the local news. Not a mention on news.bbc.co.uk. Not even a column inch in The Guardian. I feel like such an idiot for being so naive to think that because the media were there, that the issues would actually be drawn to the public's attention as they so deserve to be. Obviously we're disappointed, especially for the people who were arrested, but more than anything we're angry. We need to direct this anger into more action. We're both willing to put time and effort into the campaign and would like to get in touch with any groups in London that we could help. We now realise that the only thing that grabs the headlines (bar scaling the Millennium Eye!!) is the number of people arrested. In any future act of disobedience we will both actively seek arrest and would strongly encourage others to do so too. We look forward to hearing from you and hope to meet up with some of the London based participants of yesterday's action as soon as possible. Andrew Karkut, London 3) MEDIA COVERAGE
Patricia and Andrew have prompted this write up of our British coverage: Radio: We were interviewed on the following radio stations (mostly live): LBC, London Live, Radio Coventry, British Forces Broadcasting Service, BBC Radio 5 Breakfast show, Choice FM, News Direct, BBC Wales, National Greek Radio, Active FM. BBC Local Radio in Essex, Gloucs., Merseyside, Lancs,West Midlands, Belfast, Hereford & Worcester, Sheffield, Newcastle. And the World Service. Nadje, Andrea, Richard on a Radio 5 Live phone-in on the sanctions (prompted by Richard himself). Television: Reggie Norton was interviewed live on BBC Breakfast TV and BBC News 24. Channel 4 News showed Dave's Millennium Eye action, and interviewed Caroline Lucas MEP. Papers: Metro, The Universe, The Tablet; Catholic Times, The Sun (p. 2), The Times (In Brief), The Telegraph (In Brief), Independent (web). References to us here and there, and an Indie Right to Reply. If anyone had any local coverage, for the die-in or for local events, please send clippings to the Oxford office. 4) CLIMBING THE WHEEL
At 7am on Sunday 6 August, the tenth anniversary of the imposition of economic sanctions on Iraq, Dave Rolstone of Narbeth, Wales, began climbing the Millennium Eye in London, in protest against the economic sanctions on Iraq. Dave's mountaineering experience and months of training paid off, as he hauled himself aloft. Dave, who has been to Iraq three times as a sanctions-breaking delegate with voices uk, climbed a quarter of the way up the giant wheel and hung anti-sanctions banners before clipping onto a safety line and staging an 80 minute sit-in. After striking a no-arrest deal with the police, Dave descended from the wheel, to be interviewed by a scrum of journalists. Last year, Dave and Joanne's delegation was featured on British TV. This year, Dave's action garnered press reports throughout the week and throughout the world, including in the Washington Post. 5) WHITE HOUSE SIT-DOWN
'Chanting "Stop the sanctions now!" and carrying loaves of bread, a few hundred people demonstrated outside the White House yesterday morning, and 104 were arrested when they sat on the sidewalk and refused to move. 'It was the second day of demonstrations by a coalition of peace activists and clergy to protest conditions in Iraq on the 10th anniversary of economic sanctions imposed after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait... 'The demonstrators carried a water purifier to the steps of the Treasury Dept. Annex, adjacent to Lafayette Sq. [Washington DC]. The department enforces bans on commerce in such technology to Iraq. 'Those arrested [later at the White House] included Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of the Catholic Arch-diocese of Detroit; the Rev. John Dear, a Jesuit peace activist; and the Rev. Jim Lawson Jr., a retired United Methodist pastor who recently visited Iraq. 'All 104 arrested protesters were out of jail by mid-afternoon. Most were given the option of paying $50 or returning for a court date, and most chose to come back for trial.' David Montgomery, Washington Post 8 Aug. 2000 6) RAISING OUR VOICES
Economic sanctions on Iraq are 'cruel, ineffective and dangerous': 'They are
cruel because they punish exclusively the Iraqi people and the weakest among
them. They are ineffective because they don"t touch the regime, which is not
encouraged to cooperate, and they are dangerous because they... accentuate
the disintegration of Iraqi society.'
Economic sanctions 'simply aren't working other than to harm the ordinary Iraqi people.'
'...it is women and children who are suffering the most from illnesses as a result [of sanctions on Iraq].'
'The potential long-term benefits of sanctions should be weighed against the immediate and long-term costs to children, including the collapse of health and education infrastruc-tures, reduced economic oppor-tunities, increased child labour in informal sectors and increased infant morbidity and mortality. 'The suffering of Iraqi children, as reported by UNICEF, and of children in
the Balkans are troubling cases in point.'
'..short-term emergency assistance is no longer appropriate to the scale of this crisis... additional far-reaching steps are desperately needed in order to comply with human rights and humanitarian principles. 'The deterioration in Iraq's civilian infrastructure is so far-reaching
that it can only be reversed with extensive investment and development
efforts.'
'An emergency commodity assistance program like oil-for-food, no matter how
well funded or well run, cannot reverse the devastating consequences of war
and ten years of virtual shut-down of Iraq's economy.'
The UN Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights says
economic sanctions on Iraq have 'condemned an innocent people to hunger,
disease, ignorance and even death.'
'The prime killer of children under five years of age - diarrhoeal diseases - has reached epidemic proportions and they now strike four times more often than they did in 1990. 'Holds on contracts for the water and sanitation sector are a prime reason
for the increases in sickness and death.' [17 of 18 contracts on hold in
this sector in June were being blocked by Washington.]
'Instead of being about saving children's lives, [oil-for-food]'s about
saving face... In all my years at the UN, I had never been exposed to the
kind of political manoeuvring and pressure that I saw at work in this
program.'
'The outlook for Iraq is pretty awful. It will take virtually all of the
21st century for Iraq to re-emerge as a regional power. You can rebuild the
infrastructure in 20 years or so, but not the people.'
President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia says that all Arab nations
except Kuwait now favor lifting economic sanctions against Iraq:
'Embargoes do not work... You are hurting the people, not the regime...
Iraq used to be the most advanced country in the Arab world. Now the country
is finished.'
On 21 June, Italy's lower house of parliament called for the UN embargo against Iraq to be lifted, by 302 votes to 95. (AFP, 21 June 2000) 'The Americans and their allies won the Gulf War: they are losing the peace
with the continuance of these sanctions.' Fine Gael in government would
'lead the charge' for the dropping of economic sanctions.
'Ten years on, Iraq's people still suffer grievously from sanctions which
the US and Britain alone try to justify.'
'Sanctions haven't exactly crippled Saddam, but they've put the Iraqi people
through hell... sanctions do not a policy make; they're a holding pattern.'
'We should lower to virtual invisibility the bar that Iraq must jump in
order to satisfy the incoming UN weapons inspectors and secure the lifting
of sanctions.'
'Further modifications to the embargo should be examined, including the
option of lifting civilian sanctions while maintaining a ban on arms sales
and financial scrutiny over selected imports.'
'... the UN should also consider substituting the present sanctions regime with an arms embargo and financial sanctions specifically targeted against the ruling elite. 'Such an alternative might be more effective than the current sanctions
policy, which after ten years is unlikely to yield further political
dividend, without creating further human suffering.'
Peter Hain (Minister of State with responsibility for the Middle East) seems to be the Government's chief apologist for infanticide at the moment. cancer drugs With typical disregard for the truth Hain writes in The Independent (7 Aug.) that "It suits Saddam to let his people suffer... It is not the fault of sanctions that half of the anti-cancer drugs delivered to Iraq remain undistributed. It is the result of Saddam's policy." Turning to the Secretary-General's June report we discover that the World Health Organisation "attributes this low distribution rate to the recent arrival of a large volume of supplies and the long periods required for quality testing (21.2 % were undergoing quality testing)". Similarly, Hain continues to cite the difference in child mortality rates in northern Iraq ("where Saddam's writ has not run") and central/southern Iraq as evidence that "Saddam Hussein is playing politics with suffering". He does not mention UNICEF's conclusion that "the difference cannot be attributed to the differing ways in which the Oil for Food Program is implemented in the two parts of Iraq". According to The Economist (10 June) "the main reason for the relative prosperity [of northern Iraq] is that it has an economic life beyond oil-for-food". Hain whines that "it is too easy for critics of our policy to point to the suffering of the Iraqi people and blame the sanctions imposed by the United Nations". If the cap fits, Peter ... Gabriel Carlyle Please see also newsletters 9 and 10, and our briefings A Crude and Cynical Campaign and Spinning the Sanctions. Five Voices US delegates are living in Basra, sharing the conditions of ordinary family life. See www.nonviolence.org/vitw Third Report from Basra, July 27 Lauren Cannon: We eat only the contents of the United Nations "oil-for-food" family ration, which means lentils, rice, salt, sugar, flour and some weak tea. We drink the "chai," and make chubuz - the flat bread - with hosts who are unfailingly gracious. ... we see how easily children become ill, subsisting on the deficient ration. Immunities are lowered, and that means death in streets filled with garbage and raw sewage. Fourth Report from Basra, July 26 Ken Hannaford-Ricardi: A little more than two years ago, I committed my first act of civil disobedience. Early on a raw March morning, seven members of the "Raytheon Peacemakers" prayed, poured our blood, and trespassed onto property belonging to the Raytheon Corporation, the nation's third largest defense contractor and the Tomahawk Missile's manufacturer. On January 25th, 1999, a house on what has come to be known as Rocket Street, Basra, suffered a direct hit from a Tomahawk Cruise Missile. Four young children were killed, and many were wounded, in one of the city's poorest residential districts. On my first day here, I met several examples of President Clinton's "collateral damage" - boys and girls with mutilated legs, burned hands, and scarred faces - children whom Madeline Albright declared were the price worth paying to preserve US hegemony in the Middle East. I have now stood at both ends of the Tomahawk Missile's continuum - the quiet, well-manicured factory where men and women choose to make a weapon whose only purpose is the death of other human beings, and the sandy, garbage-strewn street where children scarred by the attack continue to mourn those who died. Seventh Report from Basra, July 31 Lisa Gizzi: Often, our gracious hosts offer us small gifts.It is touching indeed, when a people who have so little delve into their pockets and drawers and deep into their hearts that they may offer up a token of affection to their grateful guests. Yesterday, after a half-hour long conversation with a young woman about her family's fall from affluence as a result of sanctions, she removed a tiny rainbow-colored clip from her hair and offered it to me in friendship. Today and always, I carry that clip and along with it thoughts of a young woman and a people who are suffocating under the weight of an economic siege. It is her story and theirs that we wish to convey over the next two months in the hope that Americans may see Iraqis not as citizens of a "rogue state" but as a generous, proud, and gentle people who have embraced us as their family. Fasting in Baghdad 'Across a highway from the U.N. compound in Iraq, the four Americans set up a tent under a few trees - scant protection from a fierce sun that has pushed temperatures up to 122 degrees this summer. 'They vowed to consume only water for the next three days. '"What we are doing is nothing compared to the suffering of Iraqis," said Kathy Kelly [of Voices US]. '"We hope that our government will wake up to the fact that thousands of innocent people are dying because of their political ambitions." 'Kelly was joined in the anti-sanctions fast by three other Voices in the Wilderness US activists: Lauren Cannon of Dover, N.H.; Lisa Gizzi of St. Paul, Minn., and Mark McGuire of Winona, Minn. AP news wire, 6 Aug. 2000 In 1998, Andrea and Milan, and in 1999, Dave Rolstone carried out the same fast opposite the UN HQ. 9) VON SPONECK SPEAKS
Article: At the political level, it is obvious that ten years of sanctions have not unseated the Government; they have not brought about changes in Iraq's leadership and they have not even destabilized the elite. At the same time, they have significantly reduced the chances for the emergence of an internal opposition... In economic terms, Iraq after ten years presents a grim reality. 60 per cent unemployed The majority of the civilian industrial enterprises, perhaps more than 70 per cent, is either defunct or operating at a much reduced level; correspond-ingly unemployment has reached an estimated level of 60 to 75 per cent. This, together with the sanctions regulations which forbid the use of oil revenue for local investment, has fostered within the Iraqi population a hand-out mentality and led to a humiliating de-professionalization of a once large and well-trained technical and professional class... All reviews of the oil-for-food programme since operations began in 1996 have shown that this programme is important, yet totally inadequate. At best it has halted social deterioration... us vs the un First, the US State Department criticized the UN for not producing enough data to show these conditions. Then the UN system started to carry out important surveys in nutrition, child mortality, water and sanitation, mental health, etc. The response from the US authorities has been to question the reliability of the data.... Contrary to US/UK statements, the UN has no evidence of wilful withholding of any humanitarian supplies... After ten years of sanctions against Iraq, there can be only one overall conclusion: comprehensive economic sanctions have been unsuccessful; the human cost has been enormous and well beyond the acceptable "humanitarian threshold". Hans von Sponeck, from a statement faxed 7 Aug. 2000 Interview with the Toronto Star: 'I thought it was possible to meet the minimum needs of Iraqis even with sanctions in place,' says Hans von Sponeck, who was director of the United Nations humanitarian relief program in Iraq until he resigned in protest three months ago. 'I was wrong.' Von Sponeck, who spent 32 years as a top U.N. civil servant in Africa, Europe and Asia until his career crashed to a painful end in Baghdad, was the fifth UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq. 'Some 167 Iraqi children are dying every day,' von Sponeck says. 'Maybe the sanctions were once defensible as a temporary measure, but after nine years they are violating international law.' doomed from the start According to von Sponeck, oil-for-food was doomed from the start because the big powers - particularly the United States and Britain - systematically manipulated the program to serve political aims. 'Instead of being about saving children's lives, it's about saving face,' he says. 'In all my years at the U.N., I had never been exposed to the kind of political manoeuvring and pressure that I saw at work in this program.' 'We're treating Iraq as if it were made up of 23 million Saddam Husseins, which is rubbish.'' Interview with Hans von Sponeck by Stephen Handelman, Toronto Star, 25 June 2000 'Here we are in the middle of the millennium year and we are responsible for genocide in Iraq. 'Today the prime minister, Tony Blair, is on the defensive on a range of largely domestic issues. 'His unending endorsement of the Clinton/Albright programme for killing the children of Iraq is seldom mentioned. 'What does that say about us all? Does it say that, after 10 long decimating years of the UN economic embargo on the people of Iraq, we simply do not care? 'Are we really that racist? Are we really that anti-Islamic? Could Britain stand by and watch the same holocaust within a white Christian state? 'End the killing now. Remove any excuse that Baghdad has today for the ongoing catastrophe. 'Let us recognise the calamity of the US/UK-driven UN economic embargo on Iraq. 'Calamitous not only for Iraq and its people, but for us all, including the very survival of the UN itself as a credible instrument for peace and security.' Taken from an article by Denis Halliday, Guardian, 2 Aug. 2000 11) ACTION POINTS
1) Monthly Letter Writing Group In the run-up to the General Election, our letter-writing campaign turns monthly, to be run by Glenn Bassett. Please join! Email glenn@viwuk.freeserve.co.uk or write to him c/o 16B Cherwell Road OX4. 2) Badges are available from Richard Byrne, voices, 17 Perth Rd, Ilford, IG2 6BX (20p each) 3) Postcards 25p each. Design by Emily Johns - to be sent to Tony Blair. 4) Constituency Petitions During the International Week of Action in November (see back page), anti-sanctions groups around the country will be getting signatures for local Constituency Petitions. This will be a national petition campaign coordinated locally through 'Local Contacts' - people who will collect together all the petitions in a particular constituency. The Petition will be useful locally to put pressure on prospective parliamentary candidates, and all the Constituency Petitions will be collected together to form a National Petition. Local Contacts: Please consider becoming a Local Contact. The Constituency Petition idea depends on Local Contacts. Full details available in October in the 'Week of Action Campaigning Pack'. 10 ways to get involved and take action: 1) Join the Letter-writing Group: glenn@viwuk.freeserve.co.uk or write to Glenn, voices uk, address below. 2) Come to an introductory voices meeting and find out how you can get involved. Tues 19 Sept., London. 3) Buy badges (see p. 8) and/or postcards and pass them onto colleagues, friends, family. 4) Order a Campaigning Pack for the November Week of Action (to be ready in October). 5) Register as a Local Contact for the Constituency Petition at 158 Springfield Rd, Brighton BN1 6DG or mil@trinityroad.free-online.co.uk 6) Register your eyewitness account of Tenth Anniversary anti-sanctions activism by email at http://welcome.to/voicesuk (from 7 Sept.) 7) Come to National Coordinating Meeting in Milton Keynes, 23 Sept. to share ideas and experiences. 8) Persuade a friend to go onto the voices mailing list. 9) Come to the next mass action planning meeting - possibly on 8 Oct. Details from 01865 243 232. 10) Invite a voices speaker to address a local community/religious/political/student/union group. 12) WHY WE BREAK THE SANCTIONS
voices uk breaks the economic sanctions by carrying medical supplies to Iraq without export licences. Changes: The UN now has lists of foodstuffs, medical, agricultural, and educational goods, water/sanitation goods, and now even some oil spare parts, which can be imported by Iraq by simply notifying the UN. They don't go to the Sanctions Committee These 'green lists', however, do not cover all the goods needed in these categories, and they leave out important health infrastructure sectors such as power generation. The lists also do not apply to donations, such as the supplies carried by voices delegations. Such donations are still supposed to be approved by national governments and/or the Sanctions Committee. We refuse to submit to this process. We continue to assert the morality and legality of breaking the sanctions. We do not break the sanctions because the application process is onerous or lengthy. We break the sanctions because we do not accept the right of the government to a moral veto over our attempts to help sick people in Iraq. To submit our applications to the Department of Trade and Industry is to accept their right to refuse our applications. We do not accept the legality or the morality of this veto. We break the sanctions because we believe that the licensing system is an integral part of the sanctions regime, and that to cooperate with the licensing process is to grant legitimacy to an illegal and immoral system, and to collude with it. We break the sanctions because we believe that breaking them is an effective way of directly challenging a criminal policy. aid is not the answer We recognise that humanitarian aid from outside, whether from individuals, or from governments, cannot solve the humanitarian crisis in Iraq. We understand that the current crisis is rooted in the destruction of the civilian health infrastructure over the past ten years, and the paralysis of the Iraqi economy. Aid cannot match the scale of these needs. We are convinced that aid is not the answer, and that lifting the economic sanctions is an essential pre-condition to solving the humanitarian crisis in Iraq. voices is not an aid organisation. Our primary purpose is not to deliver (pitifully inadequate) amounts of aid. Our primary purpose is to try to help bring forward the day when the sanctions will be lifted. Breaking the economic sanctions by delivering medical supplies is one contribution to this task. Under Security Council Resolution 1302 (8 June) a group of experts is to prepare by 26 November 2000 a 'comprehensive report' on 'the humanitarian situation in Iraq', with recommendations 'within the framework of existing resolutions'. France, Russia and China had wanted the report to focus on the damage caused by sanctions; the US/UK fought to keep the language more general. Two months later, the only action has been the appointment of a Mr Stoltenberg as project leader. UN sources are nevertheless optimistic. Non-UN sources are less so - concerned that the report may do no more than repeat 1999's humanitarian panel report. Improvements can be made even 'within the framework of existing resolutions ' - a euphemism for the existing macabre human experiment. To make them, though, requires an understanding of Iraq's needs. Unless the report is well planned it risks losing this opportunity. Colin Rowat, CASI cir20@cus.cam.ac.uk 14) COMMONS DEBATE
On 29 June, the House of Commons held a debate on 'The Future of Sanctions' , based on a report on sanctions by the Select Committee on International Development (which was highly critical of sanctions in general, and on Iraq in particular). CASI sent briefings to MPs in advance of the debate, which proved to be disappointing. It began well, with a strong contribution from the chair of the Select Committee, Mr. Bowen Wells, who referred to 'compelling evidence' that 'the policy was having a severe effect on the poorest people in the countries concerned, and very little effect in terms of achieving the aims of the Foreign Office and the international community.' He referred to the Foreign Office's response to the Select Committee report as 'complacent', 'flabby', and inaccurate. Links to all these documents can be found via www.casi.org.uk Eleanor Coghill, CASI 15) NATIONAL COORDINATING MEETING
August's National Coordinating Meeting of anti-sanctions groups decided to call an international week of action against economic sanctions on Iraq from 20 Nov. (Universal Children's Day) to 26 Nov. (when the Security Council receives a new humanitarian report - see p.9). The NCM is not a coalition, but a place to share ideas and experiences to help the anti-sanctions movement. All anti-sanctions activists/groups are invited to Milton Keynes for inspiration/information. Agenda from Mil 01273 508 331 or mil@trinityroad.free-online.co.uk |
5 Caledonian Road, King's Cross, London N1 9DX telephone : 0845 458 2564 voices@viwuk.freeserve.co.uk |
