![]() This wall is their grave [Albasrah_english] Daily Articles and News (27/04/2007)
Statement by The BRussells
Tribunal Committee (25 April 2007)
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Plans for Al-Adhamiyah confirm that the US occupation and its
puppets in Iraq
can build nothing but open-air prisons. It will fail.
No military strategy can impose on the Iraqi people an occupation
it overwhelmingly refuses. Its resistance is national and continues.
What kind of government walls-in its own people? One desperate and illegitimate, tied to the fate of a defeated occupation.
The latest US ploy to subjugate
Baghdad —
exemplified in plans to wall-in the district of Al-Adhamiyah —
reveals in c
larity the Great Lie of the US-led occupation of Iraq. This is nothing more than the implementation of apartheid and sectarianism by a foreign military police state, aimed to break the will of Iraqis who refuse to cede their country, its resources and future to foreign powers and their local lackeys.
Neither this tactic nor others will defeat the heroic resistance of
the Iraqi people, which is borne both of situation and history,
culture and progress. Sectarianism and apartheid cannot break the
geopolitical unity of
Iraq , which
is a historical, social, economic and cultural reality.
The writing is already on the wall: the US-led occupation is
bankrupt, morally, politically, economically and militarily;
Maliki’s puppet government exposed as the desperate, mercenary,
sectarian, seditious, incompetent, corrupt and backward cabal that
it is.
Apartheid, not protection
While US troops and contractors work in haste by night, and under
military cover, to wall-in “selected” neighbourhoods in
Baghdad ,
Maliki says one thing and his advisors another. Confronted by the
ignominy of the similarity between the barricades his government
shunts the Iraqi people behind and the vast Zionist offensive
fortification splitting occupied Palestine, Maliki backtracked,
saying there are “other ways to protect”
Baghdad.
But these walls — vast concrete blocks that the US occupation is
manufacturing at a rate of 2000 per week — continue to be
constructed and have nothing to do with protection and everything to
do with instituting a sectarian division of
Baghdad ahead
of plans to divide the whole of
Iraq along
sectarian lines.
By plain logic, when the occupation builds barriers in
Iraq it
imposes the existence of sectarian or ethnic differences. This
sectarianism was brought with the US occupation and is a keystone of
its strategy. That
Baghdad and
Iraq continue to be united in the heart of the population is
a defeat for the occupation. Walls are imposed to break this unity,
while at the same time they are proof of the failure and despair of
the occupation and its puppets.
Not only immoral, but illegal under international law
The option of general imprisonment is not a new strategy, nor
limited to Al-Adhamiyah. Al-Dawra, Al-Ghazaliyah, Al-Amiriya,
Al-Amel and Al-Adl — all in
Baghdad —
are among 10-30 other
Baghdad
neighbourhoods slated to be sealed to the outside world, joining Tel
Afar, Fallujah,
Al-Qaim, Samarra,
Yathreb, Al-Ratba,
Haditha, Hit and Al Khalidiyah as besieged “gated
communities”, leaving hundreds of thousands of people under de facto
house arrest and whole cities, towns and districts in de facto
solitary confinement.
“Public order” and the exigencies of “security” cannot be used as
justification for ghettoising whole neighbourhoods, towns and cities
when the US-led invasion of Iraq was illegal, the subsequent
occupation illegal, the puppet government but a furtherance of those
illegalities, and current US military tactics but an attempt to
quash the legal resistance of Iraqis to colonialism, occupation and
aggression in violation of their right to self-determination.[i]
International humanitarian and human rights law prohibits collective
punishment, mass civilian imprisonment, and grave violations of
rights to freedom of movement.[ii]
Occupying powers are also prohibited from engineering demographic
changes in occupied countries under the laws of war. Forcible
division of the population of Iraq — whether nationally or locally —
is a war crime.[iii]
Plans for Al-Adhamiyah reveal other more nefarious aims common to
plans to wall-in other
Baghdad
communities: Al-Adhamiyah is a historic bastion of culture, science,
progress, and resistance to colonialism and imperialism. It is a
centre of the national sentiment from which has emerged a sustained
popular resistance to occupation. Walling-in Al-Adhamiyah is prelude
to a wave of assassinations, mass violations of human rights, and
political ethnic cleansing.
Stop the walls; stop the occupation!
Despite four years of brutal military aggression, the
United States
refuses to understand that by definition the Iraqi resistance is the
entire Iraqi population resisting occupation. This desperate bid to
create ghettos that can be cleansed of that legal resistance is
assured to fail, short of complete annihilation of the entire
resisting national population.
With polls reporting that over 80 per cent of Iraqis refuse the
occupation, the US and its sectarian puppets will have to pacify,
imprison or kill over 18 million Iraqis to succeed. America ’s
destiny in Iraq
is thus a destiny of being rejected. The US occupation should accept
its defeat and get out.
Every past attempt to ghettoise, wall-in or collectively imprison a
population — from
Warsaw to
Vietnam and
Algeria , through
South Africa
and occupied Palestine — has failed morally and militarily. US plans
for Al-Adhamiyah, and indeed the entirety of
Iraq , will
likewise end up in the rubbish bin of history.
We call on people of integrity and conscience — workers, lawyers,
parliamentarians, syndicates, activists, militants and practitioners
— to raise their voices in protest, disgust and action:
Stop the military funding.
Stop the walls.
Stop the torture.
Stop the rapes.
Stop the assassinations.
Stop the plunder.
Stop the lies.
Stop the impunity.
Stop the illegalities.
Stop the occupation.
Recognise the resistance!
The BRussells Tribunal
Committee
Please endorse and circulate this statement widely.
For information contact and endorsement:
info@brusselstribunal.org
[i]
The principle of self-determination of peoples is enshrined in the
United Nations Charter and
reaffirmed by UN General Assembly Resolution
2625 (XXV) of 24 October
1970, pursuant to which “Every State has the duty to refrain from
any forcible action which deprives peoples referred to [in that
resolution] … of their right to self-determination.” Article 1
common to the
International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights and the
International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights reaffirms the right of all peoples to
self-determination, and lays upon state parties the obligation to
promote the realisation of that right and to respect it, in
conformity with the provisions of the UN Charter.
The Commission on Human Rights has routinely reaffirmed the
legitimacy of struggling against occupation by all available means,
including armed struggle (CHR
Resolution No. 3 XXXV, 21 February 1979 and
CHR Resolution No. 1989/19, 6 March 1989). Explicitly, UN
General Assembly Resolution
37/43, adopted 3 December 1982: “Reaffirms the legitimacy of the
struggle of peoples for independence, territorial integrity,
national unity and liberation from colonial and foreign domination
and foreign occupation by all available means, including armed
struggle.” (See also UN General Assembly Resolutions
1514,
3070,
3103,
3246,
3328,
3382,
3421,
3481,
31/91,
32/42 and
32/154).
Article 1, paragraph 4 of the
1st Additional Protocol to the Geneva
Conventions, 1977, considers self-determination struggles
as international armed conflict situations.
The Geneva Declaration on Terrorism
states: “As repeatedly recognised by the United Nations General
Assembly, peoples who are fighting against colonial domination and
alien occupation and against racist regimes in the exercise of their
right of self-determination have the right to use force to
accomplish their objectives within the framework of international
humanitarian law. Such lawful uses of force must not be confused
with acts of international terrorism.”
In the exercise of their right to self-determination, peoples under
colonial and alien domination have the right “to struggle ... and to
seek and receive support, in accordance with the principles of the
Charter” and in conformity with the
Declaration on Principles of
International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Co-operation
among States. It is in these terms that Article 7 of the
Definition of Aggression
(General Assembly Resolution
3314 (XXIX) of 14 December
1974) recognizes the legitimacy of the struggle of peoples under
colonial or alien domination.
See also
Only Resistance is Legal, by
Hana Al Bayaty, Abdul Ilah Albayaty and Ian Douglas (05 October
2006).
[ii]
On the prohibition of collective punishment, see Article 50 of
The Hague IV Regulations,
1907: “No general penalty, pecuniary or otherwise, shall be
inflicted upon the population on account of the acts of individuals
for which they cannot be regarded as jointly and severally
responsible”; Article 33,
The Fourth Geneva Convention,
1949: “Collective penalties and likewise all measures of
intimidation or of terrorism are prohibited”; and Article 51,
the
1st Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions, 1977.
On freedom of movement, Article 12, paragraph 1 of the
International Covenant on Civil and
Political Rights provides that: “Everyone lawfully within
the territory of a State shall, within that territory, have the
right to liberty of movement and freedom to choose his residence.”
US plans to construct “gated communities” would also impede the
exercise by Iraqis of the right to work, to health, to education and
to an adequate standard of living as proclaimed in the
International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
and in the
UN
Convention on the Rights of the Child.
[iii]
The construction of walled-in districts and their associated
regimes, by contributing to demographic changes in
Iraq and
potentially entrapping protected persons in dangerous locations,
contravene Article 49, paragraphs 1 and 5 of
The Fourth Geneva Convention
Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in the Time of War,
1949, and as such — as violations of the laws of war — constitute
war crimes.
URL for this webpage:
http://www.brusselstribunal.org/Wall.htm
First endorsers:
The
BRussells
Tribunal executive Committee
( Dirk Adriaensens , Hana Al Bayaty, Jean Bricmont , Patrick De
Boosere, Lieven De Cauter , Inge Van De Merlen)
Dr. Ian Douglas
Abdul Ilah Al Bayaty
Janet Stoody Canada
Dr. James Harding
Canada
Laith al-Saud
Charles Jenks, Traprock Peace Center
Karen Parker
Ghazwan Al-Mukhtar
Joachim Guilliard
Paul V. Rafferty, Editor-in-Chief, U.N. OBSERVER & International
Report
(identification only if we need to)
Jennifer Van Bergen
Dahlia Wasfi, M.D.,
www.liberatethis.com
Bert De Belder, intal/Medical Aid for the Third World
Sabah AL-MUKHTAR President ARAB LAWYERS ASSOCIATION ( UK )
Herman De Ley Em.Prof.Dr.Herman De Ley,Ghent Univ.
April Hurley, MD
Souad N. Al-Azzawi
Nilofer Bhagwat
Dr. Curtis Doebbler
Eman A. Khammas
David Swanson
AfterDowningStreet.org
Hussein Al-alak, The
Iraq
Solidarity Campaign
... and many others.
Iraqi National Resistance
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