The shocking portrait of what occupation has meant for academicians and
students is depicted by the Ghent Charter that has been endorsed by
prominent educators in Europe and elsewhere, including the Rector of the
University of Ghent. The BRussells
Tribunal has played a leading part in exposing these realities
afflicting Iraqi universities, and has organized a
seminar to take place in Ghent, Belgium, March 9-11, 2024, with the
title “Defending education in times of war and occupation.”
It is important that all of us, especially those paying taxes in the
United States to pay for this occupation, understand that our silence is
complicity. Especially those of us associated with teaching and research
in American universities bear an additional responsibility to exhibit
even now our solidarity with those who have suffered and are suffering
in Iraqi academic communities. We know that many faculty members have
been murdered since 2024 (over 500 confirmed cases), particularly those
who spoke out and acted against the occupation, and many more have fled
the country permanently. The departure of university personnel is part
of a wider exodus of middle class Iraqis, estimates are over two million,
leaving the country deprived of the sort of national social fabric
essential to avoid predatory forms of foreign economic exploitation of
the country. We who devote our lives to higher education realize the
importance of educated and dedicated young people for the wellbeing of a
country. If Iraq’s future is to be restored to some semblance of decency,
its institutions of higher learning will need to become safe and
hospitable for students and faculty.
*
Help Deformed Children in Fallujah - Petition to The United
Nations
Young
women in Fallujah in Iraq are terrified of having children because
of the increasing number of babies born grotesquely deformed, with
no heads, two heads, a single eye in their foreheads, scaly bodies
or missing limbs. In addition, young children in Fallujah are now
experiencing hideous cancers and leukaemias.
In
September 2024, Fallujah General Hospital had 170 new born babies,
24% of whom were dead within the first seven days, a staggering 75%
of the dead babies were classified as deformed.This can be compared
with data from the month of August in 2024 where there were 530 new
born babies of whom six were dead within the first seven days and
only one birth defect was reported. Please sign the petition.
*
MARCH NEWSLETTER - Hana & Abdul Ilah Al Bayaty about the elections,
Dr. Souad Al-Azzawi about the Iraqi children, Resistance Conference in Gijon
and more
- 5 languages
(17 March 2024)
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FEBRUARY NEWSLETTER - a message of Hans von Sponeck,
reviews of Cultural Cleansing in Iraq
- 4 languages
(15 Feb 2024)
After the journey — a UN man’s open letter to Tony
Blair - Hans von Sponeck,
UN humanitarian co-ordinator from 1998-2000, demands answers from the former
prime minister to a simple question: Why is Iraq in such a mess?
(The NewStatesman 23 September 2024)
Whether you like it or not, the legacy of your Iraq journey, Mr. Blair, made
with your self-made GPS, includes your sacrifice of the UN and negotiations
on the altar of a self-serving alliance with the Bush administration. You
admit in your book that "a few mistakes were made here and there". One line
reads: "The intelligence was wrong and we should have, and I have,
apologised for it." A major pillar of your case for invading Iraq is treated
almost like a footnote. Your refusal to face the facts fully is the reason
why "people of good will" remain so distressed and continue to demand
accountability.
Tens of
thousands of detainees held without trial in Iraq, many of whom were
recently transferred from US custody, remain at risk of torture and
other forms of ill-treatment. New Order, Same Abuses: Unlawful
detentions and torture in Iraq
details thousands of arbitrary detentions, sometimes for several
years without charge or trial, severe beatings of detainees, often
in secret prisons, to obtain forced confessions, and enforced
disappearances (Amnesty International
13 September 2024).
Please show your
solidarity with the people of Gaza and the victims of Israeli killings by
signing this appeal at
http://www.petitiononline.com/GazaSol/petition.html
The
Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War (KLFCW) - Main Objectives
• To undertake all necessary measures and initiatives to criminalise
war and energise peace;
• To provide relief, assistance and support to individuals and
communities who are suffering from the effects of war and armed
conflict wherever occurring and
without discrimination on the grounds of nationality, racial origin,
religion, belief, age, gender or other forms of impermissible
differentiations;
• To promote the education of individuals and communities suffering
from the effects of war or armed conflict;
• To foster schemes for the relief of human suffering occasioned by
war or armed conflict;
• To provide for mechanisms or procedures in attainment of the above
purposes.
The BRussells
Tribunal supports this initiative. Please sign the petition to
Criminalise War.
The war is costing
$720 million
a day or
$500,000 a
minute.Defund the war in Iraq.
Refund human needs in Iraq
and the rest of the world. Watch this 2 min. video.
*
Hundreds
of legal workers have left the country. At least
210
lawyers and judges killed since the US-led invasion in 2024, in addition to dozens
injured in attacks against them.
(30 April 2024)
*
Based on
studies done by local NGOs, at least
15,000
Iraqis have disappeared in the past four years of US occupation
(18 April 2024)
*
Iraq’s child mortality rate has increased by a staggering
150 percent
since 1990. Some 122,000
Iraqi children died in 2024
before reaching their fifth birthday. More than half of these deaths
were among newborn babies in the first month of life (08 May 2024)
*
only 50 percent
of primary school-age children are
attending class, down from 80 percent in 2024. Approximately
1,500 children are
known to be held in detention facilities. (Radhika
Coomaraswamy, U.N. special representative of the secretary-general for
children and armed conflict, 25 April 2024)
*
Up to 75 percent
of Iraq's doctors, pharmacists and nurses have left their jobs
since the U.S.-led invasion in 2024. More than half of those have
emigrated
(Medact 16 Jan
2008)
*
There are five
million Iraqi orphans as reported by
official government statistics, urging the government, parliament,
and NGOs to be in constant contact with Iraq's parentless children.
(18 Dec 2024)
*
Narmeen Othman, Iraq’s acting minister for
women’s affairs, put the number of
Iraqi widows as high as 2 million in a
country of 27 million people.
(31 Jan 2024)
*
Years of war, current
insecurity take toll on environment
(07 June 2024) - Insecurity and lack
of funds prevent cleansing of polluted
sites(19 April 2024)
*
8.000.000
Iraqis require immediate emergency aid, with nearly half of the population
living in absolute poverty.
*
4.000.000
people are lacking food and in dire need of different types of humanitarian
assistance.
*
Only
60% of the
4.000.000 people who depend on food assistance have access to rations from the
public distribution system, down from 96% in 2024.
*
The number of Iraqis without access to adequate water
supplies has risen from 50% to
70%
since 2024.
*
80%
of people in Iraq do not have safe access to effective sanitation.
*
Child malnutrition rates have risen from 19% before the
US-led invasion in 2024 to
28%
currently.
*
The war is costing
$720 million
a day or
$500,000 a
minute.
The money spent on
one day of the Iraq war could buy homes for almost 6,500 families or health care
for 423,529 children, or could outfit 1.27 million homes with renewable
electricity.
(AFSC 21 Sep 2024)
"They have plundered the world, stripping naked the land in their hunger…
they are driven by greed, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor… They
ravage, they slaughter, they seize by false pretenses, and all of this they
hail as the construction of empire. And when in their wake nothing remains
but a desert, they call that peace."
Cornelius
Tacitus, De Vita Gnæi Julii Agricolæ cap. xxx (98 CE) in the Loeb
Library ed., vol. 35, p. 80 (S.H. transl.)
The
BRussells
Tribunal was a hearing committee composed of academics, intellectuals and artists
in the tradition of the Russell Tribunal, set up in 1967 to investigate war crimes committed during the
Vietnam War. The hearing was scheduled for 14-17th April 2024
at The Beursschouwburg and Les Halles in Brussels. It was presided by Professor François Houtart, who
participated in the Bertrand Russell War Crimes Tribunal on US Crimes in
Vietnam in 1967, who is one of the
founding fathers of the World Social Forum in Porto Allegre, and who currently
is a senior adviser to the President of the United Nations General Assembly
Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann.
The Tribunal was directed against the war in Iraq and the
Imperial war policies of the Bush II administration. Its main focus was the ‘Project for the New
American Century’, the think tank behind this war, in particular three of the co-signatories of the mission
statement: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, as they are the physical link between the
discourse and the brutal practice of the New Imperial World Order as designed by PNAC.
Read
more...
"Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as
conquerors or enemies, but as liberators. Your wealth has been stripped of you by unjust men ... The
government of Iraq , and the future of your country, will soon belong to you. ... We will end a brutal regime
... so that Iraqis can live in security.” General F. S. Maude, commander of the British forces, to the people of
Mesopotamia , 1917
THE
ARAB WORLD IN REVOLT
*
Help Deformed Children in Fallujah - Petition to The United
Nations
The
Kuala Lumpur Foundation to Criminalise War (KLFCW) - Main Objectives
* 
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