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I'll try to get Milan and Martin to Cambridge soon (see below). People
elsewhere in the UK, do try to organise a local event...
Seb
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PEACE ACTIVISTS RETURN FROM IRAQ AFTER BREAKING
SANCTIONS BY BRINGING MEDICAL SUPPLIES
Offer to speak to groups
British peace activists Milan Rai and Martin Thomas returns from Iraq this
week after delibrately breaking the UN economic sanctions by taking urgently
needed medical supplies to the country. Milan and Martin, from the
London-based peace group ARROW (Active Resistance to the Roots of War) are
more than willing to talk to groups - big or small - about the current
conditions in the country and the effects of sanctions on Iraq.
The two men have been in Iraq for a week with the US group Voices in the
Wilderness, breaking sanctions by importing children's medicines for
distribution by hand to hospitals. British customs impounded ARROW's
contribution at Heathrow last week, but further children's antibiotics were
purchased in Jordan. Voices in the Wilderness brought $110,000 worth of
medicine with them from the USA.
They visited the Ameriyah shelter on the anniversary of the bombing that
killed hundreds of civilians during the Gulf War, and the Fallujah
marketplace, site of another massacre, where crowds of mourners were
screaming and crying.
Since the Gulf War, UN sanctions have plunged the people of Iraq into
unprecedented misery deprived of adequate healthcare, of basic medicines, of
enough food to eat, even of clean drinking water. In 1995, the UN Food and
Agriculture Organisation reported that 576,000 Iraqi children had died as a
result of sanctions. In November 1997, UNICEF, reported that 'there is no
sign of any improvement since Security Council Resolution 986 (the
'oil-for-food' deal) came into force'. It should be remembered that under
the Geneva Convention 'Starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is
prohibited' (Additiona Protocol 1, Article 54).
To book speakers for a meeting or to talk to Milan or Martin
please contact David Polden on 0171 607 2302
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