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Human croquet in Absurdistan?
(First published http://www.ukprogressive.co.uk/)
The ‘most famous woman in Afghanistan’, Malalai Joya, has decided not to stand for re-election to Parliament because it is too corrupt, the commander of multinational forces, General Stanley McChrystal, has been dismissed and American politicians have temporarily cut off aid to the Afghan government after it emerged that billions were being ‘redirected’. Coalition deaths are above 1,800, Afghan civilian deaths are unknown – and there are fears that Afghan women may be airbrushed out of yet another key International Conference in Kabul on 20 July. Against this depressing background a wedding took place that gave some small cause for hope.
PICTURES by David Gill.
IMAGINE a drama, co-authored by Franz Kafka and Lewis Carroll, in which a dark game of human croquet is played daily. The game has no point and there are no winners, because every evening the human ‘hoops’ that have been negotiated move. The play is called ‘Contradictions’ and the imaginary country it is set in is called Afghanistan – a place where answers neatly segue away from questions – and half the population (i.e. the female half) is virtually mute.
For nine years this theatre of the absurd has played to global audiences. Transfixed by rhetoric about human rights, counter-terrorism and drug eradication Western ‘theatregoers’ – politicians, journalists, military personnel, security staff, civil servants and aid workers – have bought their tickets to watch or participate.
But recently there have been rumblings, that this long-running drama might be nearing its end. With a fatal review by ‘Rolling Stone’, a new leading man cast in the role of ISAF Commander, a British coalition Government disinclined to bankroll indefinite performances and a body count more bloody than Macbeth, the augurs are not good!
Not long ago there was a much-vaunted Peace Jirga. In the expat compounds of Kabul, where diplomats, NGO staff and hacks congregate, a ‘Mask of the Red Death’ mentality obtains. Poe would have loved Absurdistan! In the homes of ‘ordinary’ Afghans a more ‘pig with lipstick’ attitude prevailed. Another triumph of experience over hope.
Two days before it started, when security in the city had already started to ramp up, Farah Senator Belquis Roshan said, “I condemn it. It is just way of ‘squaring the circle’ of getting the Taliban back into Government. But these warlords and Taliban are killers who have raped women, children and boys . . . they should be in jail. The devastation of Kabul reflects their crimes. The evidence is all around us.”
In fact, the debate was nugatory. The Taliban failed to show up then . . . and have since indicated that they have no desire, or need, to sit round the table with an ‘enemy’ who has nothing to offer them.
The jirga’s start was not auspicious. Its 1,600 delegates, gathered in a huge air-conditioned tent, soon came under attack despite days of police planning. A few RPGs were lobbed into the surrounding area; there were armed clashes, but no delegates were hurt. Even the protests, it seemed, were off the mark.
President Karzai called the gathering “the hope of our Afghan nation to reach a peace agreement” and appealed to the Taliban to join the peace process. But to women like Roshan and suspended MP Malalai Joya his words were hollow.
Roshan, a single woman and former provincial council member for Farah Province, was cynical and disillusioned. Like Joya, of whom she speaks with pride and admiration, she is tough, blunt and has reason to be concerned for her personal security. From the safety of a supporter’s house in Darulaman, she showed me her invitation to the jirga and laughed scornfully.
“In 2001 we (Afghans) accepted foreigners in our country for the first time in 30 years, to rebuild our country and its infrastructure. They have let us down – brushed aside our hopes. They do these token PR exercises pointing out what they have done, but we didn’t get any real benefit. Crime increased, corruption rose, poppy production grew.”
Like Joya she advocates NATO withdrawal, claiming that in many ways things were better under the Taliban rule. “Of course it was bad for women, but at least they had rules and there was security of a kind.”
Today she describes Afghanistan as a series of fiefdoms, ruled by gangsters, and claims the word ‘taliban’ is meaningless and no longer describes any discrete entity.
“The US and NATO allies take credit for building schools for girls, but four years ago there were schools all over Afghanistan. Now people still want education but are too afraid to send their daughters.”
“Two years ago, in the Khak Safed District of Farah, one of the local warlords had a teenage girl murdered just because she left home. Nothing happened to him.”
IWPR reports catalogue routine interventions by Taliban taking a cut of aid funding. Explanations of why it should – and should not – be tolerated are predicated on pragmatism rather than ethics. This is Farah, not Utopia!
Roshan and Joya believe that 2001 was NATO’s chance to win the hearts and minds of Afghanistan’s people by arresting its many war criminals. Roshan said “In Iraq they had no compunction about hunting down and executing criminals. Here such men were allowed to take seats in Parliament, where they sat with their guns and pistols.”
They subsequently voted themselves amnesty from prosecution and crudely intimidated anyone who opposed them. Joya, who openly condemned them in her now famous speech to the Loya Jirga, became a particular target. She later described her experiences in parliament as ‘pure torture’.
To Joya and Roshan the Peace Jirga was simply the next step in the process of legitimising Taliban and other criminal elements. Roshan said “I asked a question in the Senate recently and was told ‘We will give you the answers after the Peace Jirga’. I said, no – this is wrong. You should say now how we want things to be, not wait to be told.”
The picture painted by both women is bleak. They describe the Presidential elections as a farce citing their own province as an example. Farah is a large, lawless area, sandwiched between Pakistan and Helmand
Roshan said through her interpreter “In some areas there were no polling stations, yet votes were returned. It is well known that deals were done and votes bought. The Governor and local warlords bought votes for Karzai; Dr Abdullah Abdullah – he also bought some votes. Only (Ramazan) Bashardost got true votes. In Farah some Talibs even fired rockets into the city to stop people voting . . . this is not democracy.”
I put it to her that untimely NATO withdrawal would simply leave a power vacuum that criminals, warlords and Taliban would quickly fill, turning the country into a battleground again. She acknowledges this and concedes that corruption and fear rule out any hope of security or an honest rule of law being delivered by the Karzai Government. “In fact we have no ‘government’” she says dismissively.
But this didn’t, in Roshan’s eyes, excuse the Peace Jirga’s role as a reconciliation platform. “My point of view is the same as that of my people. They don’t want Taliban back in government where they can (legitimately) use their powers against the us. This ‘Peace Jirga’ – I condemn it! The foreigners should have supported us – but they didn’t. The US and its Allies are doing just the same as the Taliban – killing local people with their air strikes. Our people are fed up of foreigners. People want them to withdraw from Afghanistan because civilian casualties are increasing day by day and the security is getting worse. Secondly, if foreigners really want to help Afghanistan become a democratic state they should support democratic minded people in and take our views to their leaders.
“We don’t want their troops to die here – they are also victims. Ordinary people in the international community should put pressure on their governments to support true democrats. They arrested Saddam Hussein in Iraq – why can they not do the same with Dostum, Sayaaf and the other criminals here!”
In the event, Roshan did go to the Peace Jirga. As it drew to a close she tried to speak. She was told it was not appropriate and microphones were switched off. Only two media outlets reported her attempt. Hopefully more are aware of it now.
WEDDING
Two days before meeting Roshan I had attended a wedding. Hosted by Malalai Joya it celebrated the marriage of a rape victim from the northern province of Sar-e Pul. It was a seminal event in Afghanistan where violated women are socially annhiliated by rape.
Friba, a spokeswoman for RAWA (The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan) – an organisation that profiles and publicises human rights atrocities – told me that there were no reliable statistics available on rapes in Afghanistan: “Because first rape usually goes unnoticed and in most cases the victim and families try to keep silent because they think if the case is made public, it will be a “shame for the family”. We have cases where the rape victim has been killed by guardians to “keep their honor” in society.
“We have seen rare cases where rapists were prosecuted . . . . but most of the rapists are warlords and powerful men that Afghanistan’s corrupt and rotten system can’t bring to justice. And unfortunately, due to backward tradition in Afghanistan, a rapist does not feel any shame and many of them proudly announce that they raped a girl or a boy, but again the rape victim is regarded with shame in the society. And if they file a case against the rapist, they will be victims in the court too and the powerful rapists may pressure them to keep silent.
“Even more tragically you can find women in Afghan prisons who have been raped and then arrested and charged for committing ‘Zena’ (”adultery”), while the actual rapists are free. And many imprisoned women are raped while in custody.
“Last year, two sons of a powerful warlord in Helmand province, raped a small boy and also filmed their savage act, then they proudly released their film in public, although the family of the boy filed a case and raised their voice for justice, but no action was taken against the rapists because their father is a warlord and their mother (Bibi Laeiqa) is a member of Provincial Council of Helmand.”
When I told her about the wedding of Joya’s bodyguard and his sweetheart she was incredulous. “We have never heard of any rape victim ‘make a full recovery and marry’. Especially those whose cases are public, their entire life is bleak and we have examples where the victims commit suicide.”
The wedding that Joya facilitated was a rare beacon of hope for women whose fate once featured so prominently in talk of Millennium Development Goals for Afghanistan. Roshan was also one of the guests. She said later “This wedding was special and I applaud what the bodyguard did. Really, Faramarz is a hero because here in Afghanistan no-one marries a raped girl. This does not come from the Koran, its just a tradition – people think that women are second-hand if they have been raped and we must struggle to change this view.”
The weight of prejudice is oppressive. How can attitudes be changed? Roshan’s interpreter says “It is only possible with positive attitudes, coming from politicians, and the provision of education. Things are a little better in Kabul, better than in Kandahar, Helmand and Farah; they are the most conservative provinces.”
Roshan believes there are ‘good laws’ for dealing with rape, and in theory married men who commit rape attract even more even more severe punishments. “The problem is that there is no implementation” she shrugs.
Joya’s critics will probably dismiss the wedding she brokered as a publicity stunt, but to was clear to everyone who attended the ceremony, and spent time with the couple in the days following their marriage, that the only thing Joya ‘arranged’ were the formalities and logistics.
The bride and groom were obviously in love. A handsome, and immediately likeable man, Faramarz is one of Joya’s most loyal bodyguards and clearly has great admiration for her. He described his new bride as “a victim, a holy girl, a wholly innocent young woman”. When she agreed to marry him he recalled “I was so happy I didn’t know whether I was in the clouds or on the earth”.
As he led his bride out of her parents house, on the day of their marriage, the sun momentarily blinded him. As he blinked, our eyes locked, and he gave me a smile of pure happiness.
YouTube video still records the days after his bride’s assault. Abducted by eight men, she was gang raped and marked for death. She escaped and her family tried repeatedly to get justice. In the byzantine ways of ‘Absurdistan’ her father ended up being arrested for bringing the reputation of a powerful local businessman into disrepute. The family now live in safety – and grinding poverty – in a suburb of Kabul.
That this is a familiar tale, eliciting no more than sighs and shrugs in some quarters, is an outrage.
Roshan and Joya are iconoclasts – brave individuals who want to appeal directly to the people of the international community who have become stakeholders in their destiny. Roshan said “My message to the people of the USA and UK is that we are not such conservative or people; if our own people can provide security, in my village for example, all the men and women will allow their sons and daughters to go to school.”
Joya is a self-confessed ‘secular moslem’ who sees education as the key to liberation of Afghanistan’s women. After the wedding she translated for me as Faramarz explained that one of his hopes for his new bride was to get some proper schooling. “Education is the best revenge on those cruel, evil men who hurt her” he says. “ And I will help her. “
*In the run up to the Kabul Conference on 20 June women are battling to get a voice, wider represenation and a guarantee that five key issues of development ( higher education, employment, leadership/management, agriculture and security) are both on the agenda and addressed. At the request of organiser Dr Ashraf Ghani a group led by activist Palwasha Hassan of wrote: “The Kabul Conference is an occasion for the Government of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to reconfirm its commitments to its people and realign its development priorities to their needs. Women’s civil society groups in Afghanistan have always contributed to these discussions by clarifying the needs and concerns of women who constitute over 48% of the population. The aim of this document is to urge the Kabul Conference to contribute to the empowerment of women through enabling immediate implementation of commitments that the government has already made in various policy documents such as the Constitution of Afghanistan, the Afghanistan National Development Strategy, the National Action Plan for Women in Afghanistan, the Millennium Development Goals reports and the Communiqué of the London Conference among others.”
The paper concludes with a positive suggestion: “Select at least three hundred to five hundred of the brightest girls in Afghanistan and invest in their education overseas in various fields such as foreign diplomacy, agriculture, medicine, engineering, civil service, natural resource and mines management, etc. This way, the country will be sure to have at least 300 top notch professionals to fuel the growth of this country. This kind of program, in fact, should continue over a period of 15 years until such time that the country has a critical mass of young women who could lead the country.”
Just days before the conference Dr Vic Getz, a sociologist and gender adviser based in Kabul, asked the question on everyone’s lips – “Where are the women? “ And she added “There has been zero gender analysis in or attention to women’s voices in the preparations for the Conference.
FOOTNOTES:Kandahar’s SurgarWeekly recently reported: “In the first quarter of 2010, 44 cases of violence against women have been reported in Kandahar, which shows an increase in the violence against women in the same period last year.
Rolling Stone, in the now infamous McChrystal feature, quotes Andrew Wilder, an expert at Tufts University who has studied the effect of aid in southern Afghanistan: ”Throwing money at the problem exacerbates the problem. A tsunami of cash fuels corruption, delegitimizes the government and creates an environment where we’re picking winners and losers” – a process that fuels resentment and hostility among the civilian population. So far, counterinsurgency has succeeded only in creating a never-ending demand for the primary product supplied by the military: perpetual war. There is a reason that President Obama studiously avoids using the word “victory” when he talks about Afghanistan. Winning, it would seem, is not really possible.”
Why this war is about women – and one in particular.
Reprinted from UK Progressive – 15 February 2010
by Glyn Strong
Inter-Parliamentary Union: Committee On The Human Rights of Parliamentarians. (Case No AFG/01 – Malalai Joya – Afghanistan)
The Inter-Parliamentary Union’s Committee on the Human Rights of Parliamentarians holds its next session from 27 March to 01 April, in Bangkok. That will be its last chance to call for the reinstatement of suspended Afghan MP Malalai Joya whose term of office ends in September.
Joya has been in an administrative wilderness since her expulsion in 2007, but has not been silent – and as news broke that NATO’s much-publicised Operation Moshtarek had already claimed the lives of 12 Afghan civilians, she repeated her claim that ‘defenceless and poor people’ would be its principal victims.
Parliamentary sketches are fun and functional. They remind us that politicians are human and shouldn’t take themselves too seriously – or the electorate too lightly. Recently one of them targeted the Commons Defence Select Committee for making the plight of Afghan women “one of its chief concerns.” The Committee was berated for avoiding any mention of equipment, casualties or logistics . . . while fretting about “the burqa-clad memsahibs.”
A point nicely made by its (male) author, perhaps, but one that struck a jarringly discordant note.
There is nothing funny about having to wear a burqa. And those same ‘memsahibs’ are the mothers and widows whose disaffected offspring make it so easy for the Taliban and other private militia to recruit.
Sixty percent of Afghanistan’s population is under the age of 25; anecdotally, around 70,000 widows are believed to be begging on the streets of Kabul and more than half its 37,000 street children have widowed mothers.
These children have grown up knowing nothing but the grinding poverty or abuse that Afghan women without a male protector have to endure.
The unintended consequences of ignoring these women are legion and frightening. What the Afghan Government, NATO and a plethora of NGOs operating in Afghanistan fail to address, others will.
It’s hard to grasp the bigger picture, or make informed lifestyle choices, when you are homeless and starving.
Far from ridiculing MPs for “raising worries about Afghan wimmin” (sic) with the CDSC, parliamentary sketch writers might be better occupied reflecting on how effective ‘asymmetrical targeting’ of the country’s youth and female population might be – if addressed strategically.
Malalai Joya is one of the more notable ‘memsahibs’; a woman whose polemic speech in the 2003 Loya Jirga made her both a marked woman and a thorn in the flesh of the unreconstructed warlords and drug traffickers she would join in Parliament just two years later, as the country’s youngest MP. She despises the burqa and wears it only for her own safety.
Joya may have been the people’s choice for Farah Province, but her persistent attacks on her fellow parliamentarians earned her only death threats and, in May 2007, suspension from Parliament.
Three years later she inhabits a dangerous limbo, despite repeated calls by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) to reinstate her. During that time, many of the things Joya predicted have come true: civilian and military casualties have mounted and corrupt elections have further eroded Afghans’ faith in the democratic process.
Apparently only one Afghan woman was invited to the recent London Conference, an event that Joya dismissed as a meeting of vultures hovering over the prey that was Afghanistan.
She said afterwards “The Afghan Government begs for funds from the so-called international community in the name of Afghan people, but the billions of dollars poured into the country are looted by warlords, drug-lords, national and international NGOs and government officials, and much of it goes back into the pockets of the donor countries.
“According to US Government sources, since 2001, over $60 billion in aid has been given to Afghanistan. Such a huge amount could change Afghanistan into a paradise if it was properly spent. However, little of it reached the needy people, so I am sure any other amount sent to Afghanistan in the future will have no impact on poor Afghans. Instead it will only widen the gap between rich and poor.”
Joya is a controversial woman. A correspondent from the IPU asked her Defence Committee if she planned to stand for re-election in September adding “This would certainly be a very perilous exercise for her.”
Against the wider background of the war on terror, elections, conferences and troop surges the fate of one woman may well seem irrelevant, but the ‘Joya effect’ is seismic. She is a bellweather for Afghanistan’s future and those who have mocked or ignored her would do well to consider this.
Many of the women who have put their heads above the parapet have been threatened; others like activist Sitara Achakzai and policewoman Malalai Kolkhar have already paid with their lives. Women are much needed in the Afghan National Police force (ANP) which, alongside the Afghan Army, is seen as a key element of post-Moshtarek ‘re-building’.
Joya’s views on this are, as ever, unequivocal “They are very weak and ill-equipped. And more importantly the former warlords are the main actors in both forces, so in fact this is an army of warlords. The Chief of the Afghan, Army General Bismullah Khan, is a former Jehadi commander – a key man in the Northern Alliance who has placed many former Jehadi warlords in key Army posts. And recently (President) Hamid Karzai reassigned the infamous Rashid Dostum as the Army’s Chief of Staff.”
She describes a scenario where ANP members watch helplessly while historical artifacts and drugs are trafficked into Pakistan – too ill-equipped or corrupt to intervene. “The Afghan police force is the most corrupt institution in Afghanistan. Bribery is common and if you have money, by bribing police from top to bottom, you can do almost anything. In many parts of Afghanistan people hate the police more than the Taliban. In Helmand, for instance, people are afraid of policemen who commit violence against people and make trouble. The majority of the police force in this province is addicted to opium and cannabis.”
RIGHT TO SPEAK
Whether people support Malalai Joya, or passionately disagree with her, few would challenge her right to speak – and it is this right that is being ignored, with impunity, by an administration whose actions indicate no will to respect the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights to which it is a party.
Publication of her book (‘Raising My Voice’), where she characteristically ‘names names’ at international level, has sparked a new wave of threats and anti-Joya articles. If assassinated she will become a martyr, if allowed back into parliament she will once more have an official platform from which to accuse.
Many feel it is far better hobble the process of reinstating her until her appeal is timed out.
The IPU’s exhortations to expedite Joya’s case have achieved little. Over the period of her suspension they have:
Recalled – that parliamentary colleagues who called her a prostitute and a whore and called for her to be raped or killed were neither suspended nor asked to apologise to her.
Drawn attention – to the fact that Article 34 of the Afghan Constitution guarantees freedom of expression and that, in accordance with Article 101, members of the assembly should not be prosecuted on account of opinions they express.
Deplored – the fact that she has not been reinstated. In failing to do so the House of Representatives has prolonged a situation that infringes its own Standing Orders and continues to violate her right to exercise the mandate entrusted to her by her constituents and their right to be represented in parliament.
Some Afghan MPs have gone on record in media interviews saying Joya’s suspension is illegal and contrary to the rules of the house. Among others she cites Ramadan Basherdost, Gul Pacha Majidi, Dr. Mohammad Ali Stegh, Saima Khogeani, Shukuria Barakzai, Ahmad Behzad, Mir Ahmad Joenda and Sardar Rahman Ogholi.
Quietly confident that media coverage of one woman’s appeal will have no chance of deflecting attention from wider NATO activity, all Joya’s enemies have to do is sit and wait. And most Afghans are good at waiting; even Joya, whose impatience and frustration frequently erupt into passionate outbursts.
In Paragraph Three of its January summary the IPU expresses its fear that “her prosecution has not so much to do with a quest for justice, but rather the forthcoming election campaign and effort to eliminate her from the political process in Afghanistan.”
So what does the future hold for Malalai Joya? Supporters in Afghanistan urge her to her to stand for re-election and she says she will announce her decision soon.
She is resigned to the fact that her reinstatement is highly unlikely and is contemptuous of the recent presidential election – “A game full of fraud and double-dealings.” She fears the parliamentary election will be the same: “Warlords are much more powerful and have the upper hand in all official posts of the State so they will strongly influence the votes and there will be large scale fraud in the coming election.”
If Joya is not re-elected she will continue her fight for justice and against the warlords in other ways. Many of her Afghan supporters ask her to form an organised party in Afghanistan so they can formally join it and work together.
“Whatever it is,” she insists, “I want something practical not just something existing in name only.”
Republished with the permission of Glyn Strong © January 2010.
Counting the cost of Op Moshtarek
Joya Condemns ‘ridiculous’ military strategy – by Glyn Strong
The Independent – 15 January 2010.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/joya-condemns-ridiculous-military-strategy-1899547.html
“It is ridiculous,” said Malalai Joya, an elected member of the Afghan parliament. “On the one hand they call on Mullah Omar to join the puppet regime. On another hand they launch this attack in which defenceless and poor people will be the prime victims. Like before, they will be killed in the Nato bombings and used as human shields by the Taliban. Helmand’s people have suffered for years and thousands of innocent people have been killed so far.” Her fears were confirmed when Nato reported yesterday that a rocket that missed its target had killed 12 civilians at a house in Marjah.
Dismissing Allied claims that Nato forces won’t abandon Afghan civilians after the surge, she said: “They have launched such offensives a number of times in the past, but each time after clearing the area, they leave it and [the] Taliban retake it. This is just a military manoeuvre and removal of Taliban is not the prime objective.”
Ms Joya believes that corruption is endemic, citing uranium deposits and opium as incentives for Nato and Afghan officials to retain a presence in Helmand. Operation Moshtarak is described as an inclusive offensive, depending for its longer-term success on involvement of Afghan forces. But Ms Joya said: “The Afghan police force is the most corrupt institution in Afghanistan. Bribery is common and if you have money, by bribing police from top to bottom you can do almost anything. In many parts of Afghanistan, people hate the police more than the Taliban. In Helmand, for instance, people are afraid of police who commit violence against people and make trouble. The majority of the police force in this province are addicted to opium and cannabis.”
The suspended MP was not invited to the recent London Conference that discussed her country’s future, but she is pessimistic about its outcome. Politicians regard Joya as a loose cannon: quick to criticise but slow to suggest solutions.
Her uncompromising position has, however, earned her legions of supporters. It has also gained her enemies and, after allegedly insulting her fellow parliamentarians in 2007, she was suspended from operating as an MP.
Reflecting on the London Conference, Joya said: “Ordinary Afghan people say it was like a meeting of vultures coming together to discuss how to deal with the prey which is Afghanistan.” Joya sees moves towards any reconciliation with the Taliban ‘ an exclusively male and cruelly anti-female group ‘ as a betrayal.
The Female Face of Afghanistan – Edited by Glyn Strong and Fiona Hodgson
http://www.glynstrong.co.uk/files/The%20Female%20Face%20of%20Afghanistanf.pdf
(*Please be patient – this 60 page booklet may take a while to download)
Launched at the House of Commons on Human Rights Day – 10 December 2009.
“Discrimination lies at the root of many of the world’s most pressing human rights problems. No country is immune from this scourge. Eliminating discrimination is a duty of the highest order.”
Navi PillayUnited Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights
“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”. These first few famous words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights established 60 years ago the basic premise of international human rights law. Yet today the fight against discrimination remains a daily struggle for millions around the globe. Nowhere is this more evident than in Afghanistan where the international community is actively and publicly involved.
“All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”. These first few famous words of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights established 60 years ago the basic premise of international human rights law. Yet today the fight against discrimination remains a daily struggle for millions around the globe. Nowhere is this more evident than in Afghanistan where the international community is actively and publicly involved.
Ashraf: A stay of execution?
Yesterday (15.12.09) Khalil Abadi, 44, stood in the December chill of London’s Whitehall, just 100 yards or so from the Ministry of Defence, not far from Downing Street and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
It was a bleak day; the day Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki had declared that Khalil’s relatives in Iraq’s Ashraf refugee camp, along with the other 3,400 men women and children who had lived there for nearly 24 years, would be forcibly relocated to a grim former prison camp in the desert.
Khalil is one of many Iranian exiles, and British supporters, who staged a hunger strike outside the US Embassy in London’s Grosvenor Square at the end of July, in protest at the brutal assault on Ashraf by Iraqi security forces. Weak ,after more than 70 days without food, he and his companions were eventually rewarded by news that the 37 hostages taken in that attack had been released.
Yesterday the thoughts of Khalil and his companions were once again focused on Ashraf as Lord Robin Corbett (pictured) waved a statement from the Iranian Embassy – attributed to ‘The Closure Committee of the New Iraq Camp’ – and berated those politicians ‘across the road’ whose failure to act had allowed the parlous situation to develop.
Ironically the year long media ban on entering Ashraf was lifted by Baghdad just days before the scheduled eviction and an escorted tour of the closure preparations hastily arranged. A reported bomb blast near an area where reporters were gathered was quickly blamed on the PMOI (People’s Mujahedeen Organisation of Iran) to which Ashraf’s refugee resident’s belong.
Spokeswoman Laila Jazayeri, in London supporting the rally, said “It’s pathetic to try to blame the PMOI. We have wanted media to have access to the camp for months. This is just a government attempt to crudely spin publicity and frighten them away.”
In Iraq, police with loud hailers drove around Ashraf reminding residents of the deadline set by Prime Minister Al-Maliki for their removal – but PMOI representative Mehdi Farahi told Iraqi officials that residents would not leave the land they had bought and lived on for so long.
He said “Any attempt to expel us forcibly will lead to the same clashes and confrontations as those of July 28 and 29. The manner in which the Iraqi Government is acting is contrary to international law.”
As Khalil and others started to assemble in London, later to be joined by Lord’s Robin Corbett and Brian Cotter, and lawyers David Vaughan and Nigel Pleming, 37 police vehicles had already entered the camp with officials from the Iraqi Committee for Closing Ashraf (CCA). Journalists and photographers were allowed in with them.
Ashraf’s residents offered no resistance and left all doors and buildings open for visits by the police, Iraqi officials and reporters.
After a meeting between CCA officials and PMOI representatives Iraqi forces took to the streets distributing pamphlets and announcing through loudspeakers that “the Iraqi Government is determined to relocate the residents of this camp to another location” and “willing individuals can refer to the police station or any one of the patrolling vehicles.”
Residents were invited to leave Ashraf and move to ‘luxury hotels in Baghdad’. According to the NCRI not one of the 3,400 residents responded to the offer and the minibuses which had come to displace them returned empty.
By mid afternoon all Iraqi forces had left Ashraf, taking with them all the journalists they had brought.
With nothing resolved, but a growing awareness that the eyes of the world are now on Ashraf both sides are uneasy. Back in London Jazayeri said: “The threat of violence is still very real as the Iraqis could attack the camp and do what they did last time at any moment. There are no guarantees, no written assurances about this. These people are all ‘Protected Persons’ under the terms of the Geneva Convention and all they are asking for is their basic international and humanitarian rights to be respected by the Iraqi Government. ”
In a ‘relocation’ as questionable as that which saw Germany’s Jews transported to concentration camps in WW2, Ashraf’s population of men, women and children have been told that their new home will be Neqrat al-Salman, a desolate military prison that has been compared to the notorious Abu Ghraib.
A grim fortress in the as-Salman desert region of Al-Muthanna it was used by US forces until last year. Neqrat as-Salman has housed many political prisoners over the years and thousands have died there. It is several days walk from the nearest oasis and the closest location with drinking water is approximately 90 miles away. Hellishly hot in summer it inhabits a landscape replete with snakes, scorpions and no vegetation.
Iraqi army Colonel Bassel told journalists “Camp residents have been aware since October 19 that they are to be cleared out and moved elsewhere while respecting international human rights standards. If they refuse, a high committee will decide what measures to take and we will resolve the problem in a peaceful manner,” he added.
The statement from the Iraqi Prime Minister announcing the camp’s closure was released on 10 December ; it said “We have taken the decision to get them (the PMOI) out of Iraq . . . and the process of their moving to Neqrat al-Salman is a step on the way of taking them out of the country.
“Their presence in Ashraf represents a danger because of their historical relations with certain political groups, notably with the remains of the former (Iraqi) regime and members of Al-Qaeda.”
The United States said last week that it expected the Baghdad government to act legally and humanely when it relocates the camp residents. “The Government of Iraq has assured us that they would not deport any of these citizens to any country where they would be having a well-grounded fear of being treated inhumanely,” said State Department spokesman Ian Kelly. But he did not question Iraq’s right to move the refugees.
As Tuesday’s protestors in Whitehall dispersed Khalil’s thoughts were with his relatives. Curious pedestrians attracted by flags and impassioned speeches began to drift away as the speeches ended. “What was that all about then?” a passing photographer asked me.
Laila shrugged. “People should know what is happening. Why is the UN Secretary General silent. Why are the media silent? Why is the UK Government silent?”Sir John Chilcot’s inquiry into events between 2001 and 2009, covering the decision to invade Iraq, is headline news – a retrospective scrutiny of a conflict that is already becoming part of history. Ashraf’s parlous future, and Iran’s hold over the Iraqi regime, is part of its legacy.
Ashraf: Countdown to genocide . . .
“We’ve got to do all we can to raise awareness of this so that people will know what is going on – but more importantly, so that the Iraqi Government knows that the world is watching and that if what they did in July is repeated there’s going to be, again, a huge question mark about why British troops, men and women, gave their lives to give a new chance for Iraq to build a society that’s free and democratic.” – Lord Corbett of Castle Vale, 10 December 2009
Ten days before Christmas more than 3,000 people face eviction from their home of 20 years in what Labour peer and civil liberties champion Lord Robin Corbett has described as ‘a pact with the devil’.
The men, women and children facing forcible displacement are Iranian refugees, members of the People’s Mujahedeen Organisation of Iran (PMOI), a pro-democracy group granted safe haven under the Geneva Convention. They live in Ashraf, an isolated desert encampment 60km north of Baghdad, dependent on deliveries by road for its survival. Their forced removal comes with the endorsement of Iraqi President Nouri al-Maliki whose website publicised a 15th December ‘deadline’ for the evacuation.
While the Iraqi Government now claims that ‘agreement’ has been reached with Ashraf residents the message from those inside is that this is untrue and they are under siege. For days deliveries of meat, vegetables, medicine, fuel and hygiene products have been blocked. Food rots outside the gates. Doctors and journalists are denied access.
To some Iraq’s fixation with a refugee camp in the middle of nowhere is perplexing and dismissed as a domestic issue. But as Iran’s nuclear capability comes under increasing scrutiny and Iraq’s internal stability is shaken by bomb attacks on the capital a bigger picture becomes clearer.
During Iran’s sham elections Ayatollah Khamenei officially demanded that the Iraqi President and Prime Minister agree to expel the PMOI from their country as soon as possible.
President-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, Mrs. Maryam Rajavi, in a message to British supporters, explained “Ashraf is the frontline bastion in defending democracy and human rights in Iran. If the regime is defeated in its bid to destroy Ashraf, it cannot contain the people’s uprising.”
Ashraf has achieved iconic status among freedom-loving Iranians, exerting an influence well beyond its geographical boundaries. Paradoxically, this was enhanced by the Iraqi assault on its inhabitants in July.
Mrs. Rajavi told British peers and MPs “The UN High Commission for Refugees, the International Committee of the Red Cross and UN Assistance Mission Iraq has warned repeatedly against forced displacement of Ashraf residents in violation of international human rights law.
“The mullahs are horrified at the rising protests. They insist on distancing Ashraf as far from the (Iranian) border as possible in order to eliminate the dedicated women and men who act as inspiration to the Iranian people’s struggle for freedom. The inhuman siege on Ashraf is the prelude to this plot.”
Speaking only hours ahead of the publicised eviction deadline Lord Corbett asked why the Iraqi president was so exercised about removal of refugees when the country’s capital, Baghdad, was being wrecked by explosions.
“Is this all President Al-Maliki has on his mind? The young, struggling democracy that people are trying to build in his country is still under threat from extremists and one finger we know is in that pie, determined to make life difficult for the new Iraq, belongs to those across the border (in Iran) who, in this pact with the devil, have demanded that whatever force is needed will be used against Camp Ashraf.”
Addressing a cross party assembly of MPs, peers and guests Lord Corbett expressed his disgust at the British Government’s inertia and lambasted Ivan Lewis, Minister of State for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, who still regards the refugees as members of a terrorist organisation.
(In fact the “terror-tag” was formerly lifted from the PMOI last year by the POAC (Proscribed Organisation Appeal Commission). The then Home Secretary Jacqui Smith’s appeal against the POAC decision was not only thrown out but branded by the Appeal Court as “capricious and speculative”).
Lord Corbett said “I wrote to Ivan Lewis at the end of last month (November), to make sure he knew about the threat to Camp Ashraf made on the 29th of October. He treated with contempt the decision of the POAC and the Court of Appeal and the Council of Ministers of the European Union . . . . The FCO hangs on to stale allegations about the PMOI that have no current relevance. And in many cases the source of the allegations cannot be confirmed.
“When Ivan Lewis wrote back to me, on December 2nd, his letter didn’t even mention the threat to use force against Ashraf in 120 hours time. I find this shaming and I have written to tell him so.”
“I said please do not waste time repeating the many undertakings Iraq has given about its responsibility in ensuring the safety and security of Iranian dissident refugees in Ashraf. Its government violently breached those in a brutal attack on defenceless residents on the 28th of July; residents who offered only passive resistance against thugs in security uniforms who attacked with chains, axes, poles and live ammunition, killing 11 and wounding 500.”
To suggestions that there was no evidence Lord Corbett said “He has had – as have others in the FCO – a DVD of those events. And the Embassy in Baghdad has had copies of the DVD because I gave it to someone in the FCO who said his colleague was going out there the next day.”
Quoting from his latest letter to Ivan Lewis at the FCO he read “We will not support Iraq dancing to Iran’s tune. The UK is part of the coalition still in Iraq and silence on the issue of proper respect for human rights and international law is no adequate response. Your silence at this looming outrage will shame our Government.”
Frustration about FCO inaction and seeming lack of interest by the British media has baffled many people including Lord Corbett. His response to FCO appeals to ‘trust Iraqi undertakings’ is scathing: “They are not worth the paper they are written on. While the (Iraqi) Minister for Human Rights is giving these assurances to our Embassy Staff, the Prime Minister is making it clear that come December 15th, whatever force is needed to remove people from Ashraf and to raze it to the ground, they are prepared to use.”
And the consequence of further non-intervention is something he is clear about.
“If this attack takes place there will be murder in the desert. The only real way to stop this massacre happening – and that’s what it’s going to be – we really must see a UN force of some kind stationed at Ashraf.
“We’ve got to do all we can to raise awareness of this so that people will know what is going on – but more importantly, so that the Iraqi Government knows that the world is watching and that if what they did in July is repeated, there’s going to be, once again, a huge question mark about why British troops, men and women, gave their lives to give a new chance for Iraq to build a society that’s free and democratic.”
The PMOI opposed both the Shah and the equally undemocratic fundamentalist clerical regime that replaced him. In the 1980s they were accused of orchestrating a bombing campaign against new Islamist leadership in which many senior officials were killed. As exiles the PMOI were welcomed by former Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, who was at war with Iran at the time. He funded and armed the PMOI’s military wing, the National Liberation Army of Iran, which fought alongside Iraqi troops.
But in 2003, following the invasion of Iraq, the PMOI disarmed and, following an investigation by the UN in which every resident was individually interrogated, the people of Ashraf were duly accorded “protected person” status under Article 4 of Geneva Convention.
A US force was tasked with overseeing this, but its protection was withdrawn in January 2009 and six months later 36 Ashraf residents were detained by the Iraqi authorities after a violent assault on the camp. The attack was captured on video that showed Iraqi police and soldiers shooting and beating camp residents with clubs and chains. The film, shot by residents using mobile phones, recorded the violence that resulted in 11 deaths and many injuries. It also showed US troops looking on passively before driving away in their humvees.
The July assault provoked a worldwide protest and, in the UK, a 72-day hunger strike outside the American Embassy in Grosvenor Square supported by the Archbishop of Canterbury and multi faith leaders from across London.
Although it resulted in release of the Ashraf hostages the victory was short-lived. Pressure to isolate the residents continued.
Members of the British Parliamentary Committee for Iran Freedom see the threatened transfer of the refugees to Murat al-Salman, near the Saudi border, as appeasement of the Iranian regime, the prelude to slaughter and the first step in exile or destruction of the group seen as a beacon of hope to dissenters in Teheran.
Former Home Secretary Baron David Waddington QC, a former Conservative MP, said “The Iranian regime continues to defy United Nations and world opinion as, hand-in-hand with the expression of dissent in the country . . . it carries on with its programme of uranium enrichment. How much longer can our government afford to tolerate this defiance which, if allowed to continue, will allow Iran and the mullah’s to become a nuclear power with weapons threatening the peace of the Middle East and far beyond?
“As to Ashraf; Britain and America have a special responsibility here and it is to restrain the Iraqi authorities from illegal action against the residents. There is no doubt that the people of Ashraf are entitled to protection under international law, as has recently been recognised by the National Court of Spain. What is clear is that if America and Britain do not act to bring home to Iraq its responsibilities under international law, they themselves risk having to accept responsibility in the court of public opinion for what may well turn out to be a terrible tragedy.”
“Already the people of Ashraf are being denied medical supplies and assistance – assistance even to those who suffered under the attack in July. Already there have been further cuts in the supplies of fuel, with tanker drivers attempting to get in being arrested and put in jail.”
Laila Jazayeri, spokeswoman for the National Council of Resistance, later issued a statement: “While the international community has been enraged by plans to forcibly displace Ashraf residents and Amnesty International has strongly denounced such an act, some international media have told the Iranian Resistance that the spokesman of the Iraqi government had told their correspondents based in Baghdad that the government had reached an agreement with the residents of Ashraf on their displacement, planned for December 15, and had obtained their consent. This claim is totally unfounded and untrue.
“It is only intended to deceive the public opinion.”
END
Remember, remember . . . .
Photograph: Glyn Strong
Guy Fawkes for some, poppies for others. Remembrance Sunday approaches and the familiar blood-red blooms appear on the streets . . . . later tonight fireworks will illuminate the London sky. To the uninitiated it sounds like gunfire, but if you’ve heard the real thing it’s a benign parody.
The man pictured above, on the left of the crowds, is a volunteer from Veterans Aid ( http://www.veterans-aid.net/ ) a Victoria-based homelessness charity that does exactly what it says on the tin. From 6.30am he and ex-Servicemen like him have been ‘tin-rattling’. Or rather, they haven’t. For the most part they stand quietly, waiting for people to approach them. Nigel (above) speaks Italian and is able to satisfy the curiosity of a visitor who asks what the poppies mean. He explains patiently and simply. She is young but nods and buys one.
An older man, wearing a Veterans badge, also stops to speak. He doesn’t need to buy a poppy – but pauses to acknowledge a fellow veteran. Something unspoken passes btween them. They have never met before, but for that moment they share something. A recognition.
Many people simply pass by in a blur – heading for their offices, looking for hotels or taxis, ears glued to Blackberries or blocked by earphones that plug them into private worlds.
Many of the commuters who pass Nigel will go home this evening to bonfires celebrating a failed attempt to send a message to Parliament. Nigel, who suffers from Parkinson’s Disease, will go home to his ‘family’. They are ex-Servicemen men like him who live in VA’s Limehouse hostel.
The military mantra ‘man down’ is something that veterans understand.
Nigel’s story, like that of every former homeless veteran, is unique. This is it:
http://www.rewritetomorrow.eu.com/reflections/personal-stories/my-unwanted-friend/
Hungry for justice – dying to tell
Watch film on:
Lord Brian Cotter who described himself as ‘dumfounded’ at the lack of
action over Ashraf speaks to the Foreign Office from outside the US Embassy.
Picture and film: Glyn Strong
CAMP ASHRAF PROTEST – DAY 68
Dear Mr Obama . . .
Dear Mr Obama . . .
Twenty hunger strikers outside the US Embassy in London’s Grosvenor Square will be joined by hundreds of supporters tonight (Saturday, 3rd October) between 6.00pm and 8.00pm. Some of those fasting have not eaten for 68 days and are seriously unwell.
Since the original 12 friends and relatives of those living in beleagured Camp Ashraf started their vigil many non-Iranians have joined them, for short or extended periods, including British barrister Margaret Owen and activist Leon Menzies Racionzer. Similar protests are taking place around the world.
Appeals by Amnesty, Reporters Without Borders, the Chartered Institute of Journalists, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carlile, Lord Cotter, Lord Clarke and many MPs and MEPs neither the British, nor the US governments have engaged with the protestors.
An open letter to Mr Obama, signed by hundreds of concerned supporters people and all hunger strikers, will be presented at the event this evening. There will also be a performance showing how the 36 hostages have been forcefully removed from prison by Iraqi security forces and taken to an unknown location in Baghdad. Many were injured in the original assault on Ashraf – all are weak. Fears are mounting that they will be tortured and deported to Iran.
On Tuesday, 29 September 2009 AFP reported: “Iraqi authorities have refused to allow 36 Iranian dissidents seized in a July raid to return to their base despite a court ruling they must be released, a judicial official said today.The members of the People’s Mujahedeen, an exiled opposition group, were arrested by Iraqi police during a raid on Camp Ashraf, in Diyala province north of Baghdad, which left 11 camp residents dead. “I released them; I said that they should go back to Camp Ashraf,” Judge Ali al-Timimi told AFP, referring to a decision he delivered on Sunday.
A judicial official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Iraqi authorities had refused to release the group because they considered them having illegally infiltrated Iraq. “It … became clear that the allegations were unfounded from the start and were meant for covering up the crimes against humanity that took place in Ashraf,” People’s Mujahedeen spokesman Shahriar Kia said in an e-mailed statement. Earlier this month, US Ambassador Christopher Hill vowed to press the Iraqi government, which the Mujahedeen say answers to Tehran, to live up to assurances to treat the residents humanely and make sure they are not repatriated to Iran.
The group was founded in 1965 in opposition to the shah of Iran. It has subsequently fought to oust the clerical regime which took power in the 1979 Islamic revolution. The group set up Camp Ashraf in the 1980s – when former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was at war with Iran – as a base to operate against the Tehran government.”
British barrister joins London hunger strike
A British barrister and activist has joined Iranian hunger strikers protesting in London about the savage attack on Iranian refugees in Iraq. Seventy seven-year-old Margaret Owen, (left) Director of Widows for Peace through Democracy, started a fast of her own two days ago when it became apparent that neither the British Government nor mainstream media were interested in the fact that 12 men and women were starving themselves to death on the steps of the US Embassy. This is a shortened version of her appeal which will appear in full on the Open Democracy site:
“I too have started a (short) hunger strike on behalf of the people of Ashraf and the Iranian hunger strikers now into their 62nd day. Answer the following questions and we will all stop.
– What is the real reason for the ominous blanket of silence in the UK media about the brutal “pogrom” at Camp Ashraf on the 28th and 29th July?
– Why has there been no reference to these atrocities, perpetrated in flagrant breach of humanitarian law, clearly orchestrated by Iran in collusion with Iraq, even when every day now the iniquities of the Teheran regime are making front page news and generating a mass of comments?
We and the US are physically still there – in Iraq –and our governments are well aware of what occurred and what may yet happen any time now in the following days. How can we wash our hands of responsibility as if, to misquote Neville Chamberlain “ this is happening in a far-away country of which we know nothing”
(Fuller accounts of the background to these events, and the statements of Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Chartered Institute of Jornalists etc appear on their respective websites)
3, 400 Iranian refugees (including 1,000 women), members of the PMOI (People’s Mujahadeen of Iran), who oppose the fundamentalist regime in Teheran, have lived in Ashraf for the last 20 years. In a desert area some 60 km north of Baghdad, they built themselves a city where equal rights, justice and democracy flourished, and where the excellent health and education services were made also available to the surrounding Iraqi population. When the US invaded Iraq in 2003, the PMOI disarmed, and, following an investigation by the UN in which every single resident was individually interrogated, the people of Ashraf were accorded “protected person” status under Geneva Convention IV.
In the meantime, PMOI members in Iran have been systematically hunted down, tortured and killed although there is ample evidence that as a body, the PMOI have renounced violence, so there are well-grounded fears that if anyone in Ashraf was forced to return, his or her fate would be sealed.
The “terror-tag” was formerly lifted from the PMOI last year, the ruling of the POAC (Proscribed Organisation Appeal Commission) confirmed by the Court of Appeal throwing out our Home Secretary’s appeal against their verdict as “capricious and speculative”. But do David Miliband and Barak Obama still want to regard the PMOI as terrorists in order to “appease” Iran?
Built into the January 2009 agreement that the US would withdraw from its occupation role in Iraq and release sovereignty to the Iraqi government, was a guarantee that the Iraqis would respect the Geneva Convention and continue to protect the people of Ashraf.
Alas, in June of this year, Iraq, in a bilateral treaty with Teheran, undertook to deport the 3,400 refugees back Iran. In the meantime, the Iraqi Foreign Minister assured Teheran, “we will make their life intolerable”.
And so they did, obstructing the delivery of food and medicines into the city – so that people began to fall sick and die, and refusing to allow either relatives or journalists into Ashraf.
From the moment that the US released responsibility for Iraq, the fears of the Ashraf people grew, terrified each day of a massive Nazi-like forced deportation, although such acts would be contrary to the principle of “defoulement”, which prohibits deporting people to where they are likely to be tortured or killed.
Then on July 28th the inevitable happened, but more brutally than anyone could possibly imagine. The BADR (Iraqi Security Forces who are thought to be under the direct orders of Iran and actually were heard speaking farsi) stormed the camp with bulldozers, and, armed with guns, axes, chains, ropes, and wooden planks, set about to cause maximum suffering to the residents.
Women who linked arms peacefully, carrying white flags, bravely attempting to protect their men, their houses, their possessions were brutally beaten. The videos from mobile phone pictures are shocking as they show the bleeding heads, and beaten bodies, the shattered houses, the horror like a sort of Kristalnacht. Worse still, the BADR seized, at random, 38 hostages, capturing them by lassoing them with ropes used to tether animals. Several of these men had been shot.
On July 28th they were taken away and kept in detention in a police station in Al-Khallas, some 30 km away from Ashraf. In spite of three rulings by the Iraqi Criminal Court in Al-Khallas – the last only last week – that the detentions are unlawful as there were no grounds for the arrest, and the men should be immediately released and returned to their homes, they remain captive, and, reports say, are on hunger strike, many with untended gunshot wounds. All this some 60 days since the day of the invasion.
It is quite clear that the US remains responsible Article 45 of the Geneva Convention IV for ensuring that these Iranian refugees remain “Protected Persons” in international law. The UK is also responsible and it is bitterly shameful that both governments have sought to shift their responsibility on to the government of the pro-Iran Shia government of Maliki.
There is now not another moment to lose. The people in Ashraf, wounded, without food or medicine, are living in terror, fearful that any day the BADR will be back and they will be thrown into the living hell of torture followed by agonising death.
But if the press will not cover events in Iraq, they should surely be reporting on what is taking place on the streets of London.
Every day, for the last 62 days since the attack on Ashraf many Iranians have been on hunger strike, rallying outside the US Embassy in Grosvenor Square, as the NRI (National Resistance of Iran) calls for the immediate release of the hostages, for the UNAMI (UN Mission in Iran) to enter Ashraf as a monitoring force, and for the US to fulfil its obligations under international law by formerly taking back responsibility for Ashraf since Iraq has broken its guarantees. As in the other 25 countries around the world where Iranian émigrés are on hunger strike, a further humanitarian tragedy is waiting to happen. The London hunger strikers are weak; several already have organ failure. A young woman had a heart attack and another is going blind and some have been hospitalised
Yet while people are risking death through voluntary starvation on a fashionable square in London’s Mayfair, our political leaders – Tory, Labour and Lib Deems – and our media remain silent. Even when distinguished lawyers have clearly set out the legal obligations of both the US and the UK governments. (By contrast the German press has been following the story in some detail)
On Thursday, the 24th September, again outside the US Embassy, a press conference was called to hear members of the Church of England Clergy adding their voices to the protests, endorsed also by a statement from Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. Inside the tent, prone on camp beds and covered with blankets, lay those among the hunger strikers who were still j able to make it to the press conference. But when the priest from St James Church Piccadilly asked those who were press to raise their hands, it was clear that not a single journalist had turned up.
It was at that point that I decided I would start my “short” hunger strike, hoping that by so doing others would follow suit and in this way we could persuade those already so ill to cease their strike, take food, recover and find other ways to express their protests.
I am only on to my 2nd day, taking tea and water, and hoping and praying that someone from the BBC, or from the press will think it worthwhile to write about why I am doing this, and so finally break through the conspiracy of silence and get the action now urgently needed.
Our newspapers fully covered the breaches of humanitarian law in Burma, on the streets of Teheran – even in Sri Lanka. But about this, not a word.
Born of Jewish parents, whose own parents fled “pogroms” in Eastern Europe in over a hundred years ago, I don’t need to be told what the word means. And as the Jewish Fast Day of Yom Kippur approaches on Monday, the 28th September I am hoping that Sir Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, might join the Catholic and the Church of England Clergy in pleading with the UN and our government to take action. Is the real truth that both Barak Obama, Hillary Clinton, Gordon Brown and David Miliband still, on this issue, need to “appease” Iran for the sake of oil and the nuclear energy negotiations? Shame on them!
Margaret Owen Director Widows for Peace through Democracy
Footnote: Despite warnings by British parliamentarians such as Lord Corbett, who have kept closely in touch with the situation in Camp Ashraf, that the complete withdrawal of the US and Britain would place the residents in mortal danger, the handover to the Iraqis was allowed to proceed. Even if the occupying powers accepted Iraqi assurances in good faith, they were cynically and culpably deceived, as the tragic outcome makes only too evident.
This is a desperate human crisis. There is no time to lose. The US and British governments must now urgently implement Article 45 of the Fourth Geneva Convention to protect the Camp Ashraf residents from further violence and from eviction. They must enlist the assistance of the United Nations and in particular the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) to establish a full-time protective presence within the camp.
Pictures by Glyn Strong (c) 2009.
See also: http://www.ukprogressive.co.uk/hungry-for-justice-–-dying-to-tell/article6223.html