Press release
Voices in the Wilderness UK
0794 783 9992

Iraqi people’s plea to UK sanctions breakers:
“Stop smart sanctions”

Voices in the Wilderness UK’s (1) eighth sanctions breaking delegation returns at 8.50 am today after 8 days in Iraq, carrying Iraqi scarves, dates and dresses. By importing the goods without a licence from the UK Government, they could face five years in prison.

But the delegates, who delivered medical and educational supplies whilst in Iraq, are defiant, promising to respond to the pleas of Iraqi people.
“Without exception the people of Iraq pleaded with us to do all we could to prevent the ‘smart sanctions’ (2) from being implemented. They have suffered ten years under the economic sanctions that have torn their country apart, killed hundreds of thousands of children and reduced even the educated elite to wretched poverty”

The three sanctions breakers, who visited the site bombed near Mosul last week, are: Christopher Burns-Cox, a retired NHS consultant physician, 64, Bilal Moosa Patel, 33, a web designer from east London and Frances Brodrick, 22, a student of Arabic at Edinburgh University.

They will hand in a letter to No.10 Downing Street at 11am (call to confirm)
The sanctions breaking goods will be auctioned at an anti sanctions conference in east London on Saturday June 30tt , 5pm.

CONTACT VOICES 0794 7839992
Notes
(1) Voices in the Wilderness is a group campaigning for the immediate and unconditional lifting of economic sanctions on Iraq.
(2) The so called “smart sanctions” are the UK/US proposals currently before the UN Security Council. The proposal has been described by Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, former UN Humanitarian Co ordinators for Iraq as “tightening the rope around the neck of the average Iraqi citizen”.


For a briefing on smart sanctions see voices website on www.viwuk.freeserve.co.uk