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RE: [casi] See men shredded, then say you don't back war



Ann Clwyd talks about Cambodia, but not the USSR: she mentions the depostion
of Idid Amin but fails to recognise (perhaps she does not know) that the
murders and rights violations continued under the Obote regime.

Leaving aside the issue of whose client Saddam was when he committed the
worst of his crimes, the main (and to my mind sufficient) argument against
the 'war of liberation'  position is that the policies of the US/UK are a
conveyor belt that create more Saddams: each nurtured and led on, to be
smashed not when they torture people, but when they step out of line. I see
no long term US/UK committment to democracy and human rights: not even in
Afghanistan when you might expect them to have made an effort at least for a
couple of years.

Last week the war crimes trial in Sierra Leone sat for the first time. They
indicted the rebel leaders against whose criminal armies the British
intervened . . . and the current Interior Minister, on behalf of whose
criminal army the British intervened.

I'll cheer as loudly when Saddam dies as I did when I heard about Zia or
Savimbi: but the people whose job it is to depose him are Iraqis.

Chris Williams


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Sama Hadad [SMTP:bintilhuda@lycos.com]
> Sent: 18 March 2003 15:11
> To:   casi-discuss
> Subject:      [casi] See men shredded, then say you don't back war
>
>  TIMESONLINE
> http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3284-614607,00.html
> March 18, 2003
> See men shredded, then say you don't back war
> By Ann Clwyd
>
> "There was a machine designed for shredding plastic. Men were dropped into
> it and we were again made to watch. Sometimes they went in head first and
> died quickly. Sometimes they went in feet first and died screaming. It was
> horrible. I saw 30 people die like this. Their remains would be placed in
> plastic bags and we were told they would be used as fish food . . . on one
> occasion, I saw Qusay [President Saddam Hussein's youngest son] personally
> supervise these murders."
> This is one of the many witness statements that were taken by researchers
> from Indict - the organisation I chair - to provide evidence for legal
> cases
> against specific Iraqi individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity
> and genocide. This account was taken in the past two weeks.
> Another witness told us about practices of the security services towards
> women: "Women were suspended by their hair as their families watched; men
> were forced to watch as their wives were raped . . . women were suspended
> by
> their legs while they were menstruating until their periods were over, a
> procedure designed to cause humiliation."
>
> The accounts Indict has heard over the past six years are disgusting and
> horrifying. Our task is not merely passively to record what we are told
> but
> to challenge it as well, so that the evidence we produce is of the highest
> quality. All witnesses swear that their statements are true and sign them.
> For these humanitarian reasons alone, it is essential to liberate the
> people
> of Iraq from the regime of Saddam. The 17 UN resolutions passed since 1991
> on Iraq include Resolution 688, which calls for an end to repression of
> Iraqi civilians. It has been ignored. Torture, execution and
> ethnic-cleansing are everyday life in Saddam's Iraq.
>
> Were it not for the no-fly zones in the south and north of Iraq - which
> some
> people still claim are illegal - the Kurds and the Shia would no doubt
> still
> be attacked by Iraqi helicopter gunships.
>
> For more than 20 years, senior Iraqi officials have committed genocide,
> war
> crimes and crimes against humanity. This list includes far more than the
> gassing of 5,000 in Halabja and other villages in 1988. It includes serial
> war crimes during the Iran-Iraq war; the genocidal Anfal campaign against
> the Iraqi Kurds in 1987-88; the invasion of Kuwait and the killing of more
> than 1,000 Kuwaiti civilians; the violent suppression, which I witnessed,
> of
> the 1991 Kurdish uprising that led to 30,000 or more civilian deaths; the
> draining of the Southern Marshes during the 1990s, which ethnically
> cleansed
> thousands of Shias; and the summary executions of thousands of political
> opponents.
>
> Many Iraqis wonder why the world applauded the military intervention that
> eventually rescued the Cambodians from Pol Pot and the Ugandans from Idi
> Amin when these took place without UN help. They ask why the world has
> ignored the crimes against them?
>
> All these crimes have been recorded in detail by the UN, the US, Kuwaiti,
> British, Iranian and other Governments and groups such as Human Rights
> Watch, Amnesty and Indict. Yet the Security Council has failed to set up a
> war crimes tribunal on Iraq because of opposition from France, China and
> Russia. As a result, no Iraqi official has ever been indicted for some of
> the worst crimes of the 20th century. I have said incessantly that I would
> have preferred such a tribunal to war. But the time for offering Saddam
> incentives and more time is over.
>
> I do not have a monopoly on wisdom or morality. But I know one thing. This
> evil, fascist regime must come to an end. With or without the help of the
> Security Council, and with or without the backing of the Labour Party in
> the
> House of Commons tonight.
>
>
> The author is Labour MP for Cynon Valley.
> End of Cynon Valley's Column.
> INDICT's Website is at: http://www.indict.org.uk/
> Amnesty International's website:  http://www.amnesty.org/
> For a Human Rights Watch report, visit:
> http://hrw.org/reports/1992/Iraq926.htm
>
>
>
>
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