By Frank Neisser
Baghdad, Iraq

Former Attorney General Ramsey Clark led 20 delegates on the second Iraq Sanctions Challenge Dec. 8-12, 1998, and brought $250,000 in medicine in defiance of the U.S./United Nations embargo. The delegation also stood in solidarity with the Iraqi people on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit, two representatives of the American Muslims for Global Peace and Justice, one from the American Muslim Council and several other Iraq-American, Arab-American and Muslim activists, and anti-war and solidarity activists from New York, Kansas City, Boston, San Francisco, Atlanta, San Jose and other cities made up the delegation.

The ISC group was in Iraq while Washington stepped up its bellicose threats and provocations against Iraq. Its delegates took part in the Baghdad International Symposium on the 50th Anniversary of the UDHR to assert that economic sanctions must be included as a flagrant violation of the UDHR.

The delegation, seen off by a crew of enthusiastic supporters Dec. 6, held a Dec. 8 news conference in Amman, Jordan. This received wide media coverage and showed the delegates loading medicine for the trip to Baghdad.

Baghdad Symposium on Human Rights

With the ISC group forming the U.S. delegation, the Baghdad Symposium on Human Rights took place Dec. 9 and 10. There were delegations there from 16 countries of Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

Clark was the keynote speaker at the conference Dec. 9. He said it was "the most solemn time to stand with the Iraqi people, who, on the 50th anniversary of the UDHR, are the greatest victims of its violation in its history."

Clark cited articles 1, 5 and 25 of the Declaration which state that "all humans are born free and equal in dignity and rights," that "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment," and that "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care..."

Clark said the "sanctions themselves are weapons of mass destruction and a violation of the International Convention on the Prevention of Genocide."

Other ISC delegates also spoke, including Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, IAC coordinators Deirdre Sinnott and Brian Becker, and Dr. James Jennings of Conscience International.

Bishop Gumbleton described a crying woman who brought her five-month-old daughter Faoud to the hospital after her other four children had already died. He said, "sanctions are war, the hospitals are the battlegrounds, and the children are the casualties."

Sinnott said, "We will break the information blockade and bring the truth about the sanctions back home to the people."

Becker described the anti-war movement in the U.S. where "hundreds of thousands have mobilized against the war moves of the U.S. government, are awakening to the true genocidal character of the sanctions and will, as with the Vietnam War, stand up against their own government."

Delegates from many countries addressed the conference. Iraqi speakers described the impact of the sanctions on health, workers, children, the elderly, education and science. The conference ended by approving the Baghdad Declaration on Human Rights, calling on all states to respect he principles of human rights without bias and demanding an end to the embargo of Iraq.

In addition to the conference sessions, the delegates had several opportunities to witness the genocidal impact of the sanctions directly. On Dec.9 delegates visited the Saddam Children's Hospital in Baghdad. There they saw children dying of leukemia caused by the poisoning of the whole country with depleted-uranium weapons.

Various Iraqi doctors spoke. Dr. Ra'd Aljanabi said their cure rate was zero because of the sanctions.

Delegates saw mothers crying as children were dying of diarrhea and malnutrition because water purification plants have been destroyed and chlorine for water purification is banned by sanctions. These problems were further clarified when the ISC delegates delivered medicine to the Ministry of Public Health.

Iraq's Deputy Health Minister explained that the UN Food for Oil deal allows for only a small part of the medicine required in the country. Also, contracts are delayed and critical supplies--such as sutures for operations or some of the drugs needed for combination therapies-- are blocked. This makes those that are delivered useless.

The delegates also visited an elementary school, where the discipline, spirit and pride of the teachers and students alike compounded the tragedy of students packed four to a desk in classrooms with the wind blowing through broken and missing windows. The Iraqis cannot replace the windows because of lack of spare parts in the glass factories.

Students come to school sick or get sick there, and there is no medicine for them. They are forced to drop out to sell newspapers or cigarettes for their families to survive. Ten percent of university professors are forced to quit each year to take jobs like taxi driving because the monthly wage for professors is less than $10.

The delegates also visited an elderly and homeless home in one of the poorest neighborhoods in Baghdad. Children could be seen playing amid rubble and garbage and rusted-out oil drums. The old people who were resident in the home were there because they had no family left after the bombing and sanctions.

The director, a 34-year-old woman, had died a month earlier from complications in the eighth month of pregnancy because the necessary medicine was unavailable. While the delegates were in the courtyard outside the home, a 12-year-old neighborhood boy was brought over to meet them. The same missile fragment had blinded the boy and killed two of his friends.

Conditions are even worse in other sections of Iraq. ISC delegate Kadouri Alkaysi, who is himself originally from the Iraqi city of Basra, visited with his family. He said, "I feel hurt inside when I see my people suffering. In my home in Basra the school and hospitals are collapsed, there is no transportation or drinkable water, and electricity is only three hours per day even when temperatures are 120 degrees. My sister cries in despair, unable to feed her children."

In ISC meetings with the Iraqi Friendship and Solidarity Association, the Iraqis made their position clear. They are concerned about U.S. provocations and Washington's determination to bomb and to continue sanctions whatever Iraq does. The ISC delegation pledged to intensify the effort to mobilize to stay the hand of the U.S. government and bring an end to the sanctions.

Back to Iraq Sanctions Challenge December 1998

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