Hands traces of
Al Amiriya refugee victims branded in the walls. In this cruel
attack of US Air Force 403 Iraqi civilians were killed, 142 of
whom were children under ten years old
IRAQ is today suffering a brutal process of imperialist
intervention unheard of in Modern History, a genuine medieval-style
siege by which an attempt has been made to make a nation surrender
through hunger, illness and violence.
SINCE August 1990 Iraq has been subjected to a regime
of economic sanctions imposed by the Security Council (SC) of
the United Nations (UN) that violates all International Law on
individual and collective Human Rights by indiscriminately and
generally punishing its population. According to reliable sources,
the embargo against Iraq has caused the deaths of one and a half
million people, more than half of whom were children under 5
years.
FURTHERMORE, between 17 January and 28 February 1991,
Iraq was devastated by a multinational intervention led by the
United States of America in which the civil infrastructure and
means of production of the country were systematically and premeditatedly
destroyed: during the 109 876 bombing missions (one every 34
seconds) 22 000 civil installations of all types -from bridges
and hydrographic dams to museums and schools-, were attacked
with a tonnage of bombs twice to that deployed during the Vietnam
war. According to the UN Report of 15 July 1991 S/22799, the
civil damage caused to Iraq by the multinational coalition was
more than 22 billion dollars. The war also left the deadly legacy
of 300 tonnes of depleted uranium residues, which are currently
seriously affecting its population and which will continue to
do so for generations.
SINCE the war, the embargo against Iraq has continued
to this very day, at the same time as there being new attacks
(the most recent, against Baghdad, in February 2001) and almost
daily raids on the so-called "no-fly zones", which
are illegally maintained by the USA and the UK in the north and
south of the country. The USA and Britain are trying to perpetuate
the embargo with unlimited measures of technological, financial
and commercial controls, additionally imposing arbitrary war
compensation payments of more than 300 billion dollars. The objective
is to chain Iraq in a state of underdevelopment for decades,
keeping its population in poverty and having to beg from the
international community through such pernicious and ineffective
"humanitarian" formulas as the "oil for food"
programme (UNSC Resolution 986) or what are now called "smart
sanctions".
SEVERAL slaughters of civilians occurred during the
aggression against Iraq in 1991, such as the attack on the market
of Faluja, perpetrated by British planes on 17 February, which
caused the deaths of 130 civilians and injured 68 others, the
attacks ordered by General McCaffrey against the military units
and civilian vehicles after the ceasefire had been declared,
and also the murder of Iraqi prisoners. However, the attack against
the shelter of al-Amiriya -a neighbourhood of Baghdad)- may be
considered to be the symbol of this war that combined the technological
sophistication of the most modern military machinery with the
most inhuman brutality of the colonial conquests of the past.
ON the night of 13 February 1991, the US Air Force
launched two missiles against the shelter of al-Amiriya. It was
the twenty-eighth day of the war, of which their were 16 more
to go before the ceasefire. 403 people died in the attack, 142
of them under ten years of age. Each night the shelter took in
Iraqi families from the neighbourhood, as well as Jordanians,
Syrians and Egyptians families. In that cold winter of the war,
more than protection from the air raids, they sought warmth,
light and drinking water in the shelters, in a city that had
been without supplies for almost a month. A first penetrating
missile made a hole in the roof in the only vulnerable point
of its construction, its ventilation system, whose exact location
was provided to the US airforce by the Finnish company that had
built the shelter years before. Scarcely minutes later, a second
missile entered through the hole opened by the first, producing
a fireball of 4 000 C degrees that burnt the occupants to death,
leaving -like in Hiroshima and Nagasaki- only a silhouette of
many of them engraved on the ceiling and walls by the heat.
THE USA justified the attack by claiming that the shelter
housed a military communications centre, a falsehood that the
international press categorically refuted. The Pentagon finally
recognized that an error had been made. However, the attack was
premeditated. The first missile was built specifically for the
purpose. Baghdad was an open city, at that time abandoned by
the majority of its inhabitants, who had sought safety in the
countryside or in other cities. The objective of the attack was
to terrorize the civilian population, creating a feeling of vulnerability
that would encourage a complete surrender.
THEREFORE, to ensure that the memory of the Iraqi victims
and the crimes committed against the people of Iraq remain in
the memory and conscience of the international community, the
Arab Cause Solidarity Committee (ACSC) has undertaken
to set up a centre in Madrid (Spain) that will be named the al-Amiriya
Centre for Documentation and International Initiatives, in memory
of the victims of the shelter in Baghdad that was bombed on 13
February 1991, symbol of the aggression suffered by the Iraqi
people during these years.
THE al-Amiriya Centre will collect information and
encourage international social and legal initiatives in relation
to the Crimes of Genocide, War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity
committed by those responsible in the USA and allied countries
against the people of Iraq. These will include not only those
resulting from the military aggression of 1991 and after but
also those stemming from the economic sanctions that have been
operating against the country since August 1990. To these ends
the Centre will take as its foundation the Accusation Act drawn
up by Ramsey Clark for the International Court, organized by
the Spanish Campaign for Lifting the Sanctions on Iraq (SCLSI)
in Madrid, on 16 and 17 November 1996, as well as its condemnatory
Final Verdict.
THE al-Amiriya Centre will undertake and collaborate
in similar social or legal initiatives, to denounce the criminal
acts committed by the USA against other peoples, supporting the
recovery of the spirit that inspired the creation of the Russell
Tribune, the Permanent Tribune of the People, and the Anti-Imperialist
Tribune of Our America, the proceedings against NATO for its
aggression against Yugoslavia in 1999, as well as the legal case
against the USA for military aggression, sabotage and embargo
in Nicaragua (1984) and Cuba (1999), and the most recent, presented
in Belgium against Ariel Sharon for the slaughters of Sabra and
Shatila in 1982.
THE ACSC invites other organizations in Spain participating
in the SCLSI to commit themselves to and support this new initiative
within the framework of the aforementioned Campaign.
THE ACSC calls for the participation of organizations
and personalities throughout the World -most especially of those
involved in the exercise of Law- in this initiative of solidarity,
to ensure that their objectives can be met efficiently, in a
common effort by which we pay homage to the Iraqi people for
their capacity to resist such an adverse and unjust situation
with dignity, and contribute to a future of prosperity and full
sovereignty for its coming generations.
Arab
Cause Solidarity Committee
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