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Re: [casi] Doctors tell how children's deaths became propaganda



>Yes, of course the sanctions hurt - but not too
>much, because we are a rich country and we have the ability to get
everything we can by money.
>But instead, he spent it on his palaces."

Hmm, doesn't sound much different to the story we've been saying for many
years. But as always, we were ignored and attacked.

Only a few weeks ago the IPO spokeswoman, Sama Hadad, was questioned and
sometimes attacked for the interview she gave on the moral maze regarding
the answer she gave for sanctions - namely that they hurt but it's Saddam
that made them what they were.

Surely, the focus should now be on aiding reconstruction, trying to get the
economy back into stride, forming democratic institutions to aid in the
transition period, etc.

Iraq needs a lot of help, especially now. if people can put aside their
ideologies and work to help the Iraqi people then maybe the disasters that
this great nation has suffered can never be repeated.

best wishes
Yasser Alaskary
Iraqi Prospect Organisation
----- Original Message -----
From: "AS-ILAS" <AS-ILAS@gmx.de>
To: "casi" <casi-discuss@lists.casi.org.uk>
Sent: Saturday, May 24, 2003 3:06 PM
Subject: [casi] Doctors tell how children's deaths became propaganda



[ Presenting plain-text part of multi-format email ]

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/23/1053585696870.html

Doctors tell how children's deaths became propaganda
By Matthew McAllester in Baghdad
May 24 2003





Throughout the 13 years of United Nations sanctions on Iraq that were ended
on Thursday, Iraqi doctors told the world that the sanctions were the sole
cause for the rocketing mortality rate among Iraqi children.

"It is one of the results of the embargo," Dr Ghassam Rashid al-Baya said on
May 9, 2001, at Baghdad's Ibn al-Baladi Hospital, just after a dehydrated
baby named Ali Hussein died on his treatment table. "This is a crime on
Iraq."

It was a scene repeated in hundreds of articles by reporters who were always
escorted by minders from Saddam Hussein's Ministry of Information.

Now free to speak, the doctors at two Baghdad hospitals, including Ibn
al-Baladi, tell a very different story.

Along with parents of dead children, they said this week that Saddam turned
the children's deaths into propaganda, notably by forcing hospitals to save
babies' corpses to have them publicly paraded.


All the evidence is that the spike in children's deaths was tragically
real - roughly, a doubling of the mortality rate during the 1990s,
humanitarian organisations estimate. But the reason has been fiercely
argued, and new accounts by Iraqi doctors and parents will alter the debate.

Under the sanctions regime, "we had the ability to get all the drugs we
needed", said Ibn al-Baladi's chief resident, Dr Hussein Shihab. "Instead of
that, Saddam Hussein spent all the money on his military force and put all
the fault on the USA. Yes, of course the sanctions hurt - but not too much,
because we are a rich country and we have the ability to get everything we
can by money. But instead, he spent it on his palaces."

Washington and others have long blamed Saddam's spending habits for the poor
health of Iraqis. For years, the Iraqi government, some Western officials
and the anti-sanctions movement said UN restrictions on Iraqi imports and
exports were at fault.

Doctors said they were forced to refrigerate dead babies in hospital morgues
until the authorities were ready to gather the little corpses for monthly
parades in small coffins on the roofs of taxis for the benefit of Iraqi
state television and visiting journalists.

The parents were ordered to wail with grief - no matter how many weeks had
passed since their babies had died - and to shout to the cameras that the
sanctions had killed their children, the doctors said. Afterwards, the
parents would be rewarded with food or money.

"I am one of the doctors who was forced to tell something wrong, that these
children died from the fault of the UN," Dr Shihab said, sitting in his
hospital's staff room with his deputy, another doctor and one of the
hospital's administrators.

"But I am afraid if I tell the true thing . . ." Dr Shihab paused. Using the
present tense in English to describe the prewar past, he continued: "They
will kill me. Me and my family and my uncle and my aunt - everyone."

The last baby parade involving Ibn al-Baladi was in 2001, said Kamal
Khadoum, a hospital administrator. He did not know why the practice was
stopped.



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To contact the list manager, email casi-discuss-admin@lists.casi.org.uk
All postings are archived on CASI's website: http://www.casi.org.uk


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