|
Statement of the International Anti-Occupation Network (01 May 2008) To the peoples and governments of the world. |
In vain, the US tries to cover the genocidal occupation of Iraq by calling it a ‘political process’.
In vain, the US tries to cover up its anti-Iraqi-people sectarian killing policies and its endless shifting alliances with militias and warlords by calling it 'national reconciliation'.
Also in vain, the US tries to hide its strategic defeat by waging new battles and surges against Iraqi cities and the civilian population.
Iraq, from the north to the south, is victim of US military operations and bloodletting. The latest besieged cities are Basrah and Sadr City and next will be Mosul and Kirkuk.
Iraq, from the north to the south, rejects and resists — each according to available means — the occupation, its plans and its policies.
The US tries to ignite civil war by dividing Iraq into sects and ethnicities, in order to abolish the concept of citizenship — the basis of any modern state and democracy — so as to plunder its resources by signing agreements, contracts and treaties with the warlords it installed. These warlords have no legitimacy and cannot gain any. The treaties they sign are null and void according to international law and to the will of the Iraqi people.
The US calls its installed warlords a ‘government’, and appeals to other governments to support it. Under their regime, their ‘political process’ and their ‘national reconciliations’, more than one million Iraqis died violently, and so far five million of Iraq's citizens have been forcefully displaced and made refugee both inside and outside Iraq. At least 400,000 Iraqis are either imprisoned or disappeared, and millions more maimed, widowed or orphaned. The neighbourhoods of Iraqi cities became open-air prisons surrounded by walls and checkpoints. All public services have collapsed throughout the country while Iraq ranked 3rd among the most corrupted states in the world in 2006. In reality, there is no state in Iraq and the occupation cannot build a state.
The only solution in Iraq is the sovereignty of the Iraqi people over its life, land and resources via the withdrawal of all foreign occupying forces.
All peoples in the world aspire to democracy as it is supposed to be the expression of their will. There is no democracy in Iraq under occupation. The will of the Iraqi people is oppressed by force for the sixth consecutive year. The Iraqi Resistance is democratic by definition, because it is an upsurge of popular will, and is progressive by definition, because it defends the interests of the people.
Only the national popular Iraqi Resistance is capable and empowered, both as an objective reality and under international law, to determine a path towards peace and stability in Iraq and end this illegal occupation. Only the resistance can build, after liberation, a democratic state.
We must pre-empt US attempts to impose this lackey government, its institutions, plans and policies on the Iraqi population by recognizing the resistance as the sole representative of the will of the Iraqi people.
Retrieve recognition from this foreign-imposed backward 'government' and recognize the Iraqi Resistance!
Initial endorsers:
| Abdul Ilah Al-Bayaty (Writer - Iraq / France) |
| Margarita Papandreou (Former First Lady of Greece, Peace activist and honorary president of Center for Research and Action on Peace - Greece) |
| Cynthia McKinney (Former member of the House of Representatives for the 4th District of Georgia - USA) |
| Salah Al Mukhtar (former Iraqi ambassador to Vietnam and India, Chairman of friendship, peace and solidarity Organzation in iraq) |
| Dr. Hassan Tawfiq Aydinli, Committee for the Defence of Iraqi Turkmens’ Rights |
| Wafaa' Al-Natheema, writer, founder of the Institute of Near Eastern & African Studies (INEAS) |
| Marc Pilisuk, writer, Professor Emeritus,The University of California, Professor, Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center, Berkeley-CA, USA |
| Hana Al Bayaty (filmmaker / journalist - Iraq / Egypt / France) |
| Dr. Souad Naji Al-Azzawi (Asst. Prof. Env. Eng. - Iraq) |
| Sara Flounders (co-director, International Action Center, USA) |
| Michael Eisenscher (National Coordinator, U.S. Labor Against the War) |
| Bert De Belder, MD (coordinator Medical Aid for the Third World - Belgium) |
| Edward S. Herman (Professor Emeritus of Finance, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania - USA) |
| Niloufer Bhagwat (Vice President of Indian Lawyers Association - Mumbai / India) |
| Hisham Bustani (Writer / Activist, Secretary-Socialist Forum, Jordan) |
| Karen Parker (Attorney - USA ) |
| Association of Humanitarian Lawyers, USA |
| Dirk Adriaensens (coordinator SOS Iraq) |
| Gideon Polya (retired senior biochemist, author: biochemical scientific publications and global avoidable mortality - Australia) |
| Texans for Peace |
| Amir Al Ani (Sociologist - Iraq / France) |
| Dr. Dahlia Wasfi M.D. (Anti-war activist, speaker, - Iraq / USA) |
| Sami Rasouli (Muslim Peacemaker Teams - Najaf, Iraq / USA) |
| Dr. Ian Douglas (editor and correspondent for the Cairo-based Al-Ahram Weekly) |
| Sarah Meyer (Independent researcher living in Sussex - UK) |
| Carlos Varea (Coordinator of SCOSI - Spanish Campaign against Occupation and for the Sovereignty of Iraq - Spain) |
| John Catalinotto (managing editor, Workers World newspaper, USA) |
| Charles Jenks (Peace activist - USA) |
| Mike Powers, Sigyn Meder: Iraq Solidarity Association in Stockholm - Sweden. |
| Merry Fitzgerald - Europe-Turkmens of Iraq Friendships |
| Paul Vanden Bavière (Former journalist De Standaard, publicist and editor of webzine Uitpers - Belgium) |
| yasmin Jawad (Sociologist - Iraq/The Netherlands) |
|
Suzanne Esmat (Egyptologist, |
| April Hurley, MD, Iraq Peace Team, Baghdad 2003 |
| Jan-Erik Lundström (Sweden) |
| Chantal Van de Cruys (Iraq activist - Belgium) |
| Kris Merckx (founder of Medical Aid for the People (WPB) - Belgium) |
| Saul Landau (Fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies - USA) |
| David Peterson (independent writer and researcher - Chicago, USA) |
| Jan Buelinckx (lid van Comité voor een Andere Politiek (CAP) - Belgium) |