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Women's Contingent on the Anti-Occupation March

Iraqi Women’s League-UK | 30.09.2003 13:05 | London

Leaflet for Anti-Occupation march + photos. The Iraqi Women’s League-UK appeals to all women and women’s organizations to join our Women’s Contingent at the Anti-Occupation march on Saturday 27th Sept, 2003 to demand the end of the US/UK occupation of Iraq. How dare the US presume that they can oversee the writing of our constitution!

Women’s Contingent at the Anti-Occupation march
Women’s Contingent at the Anti-Occupation march

Women’s Contingent at the Anti-Occupation march
Women’s Contingent at the Anti-Occupation march


We demand that:
The UN plays a leading role in the post-Saddam period, ensuring the urgent reconstruction of Iraq.
The Iraqi people are enabled to organise our own security and stability. Essential rebuilding must be paid for by those who have bombed our water supply, hospitals, and other infrastructure.
The Iraqi people must not be prevented from establishing our own federal democratic regime in which we can practise our complete freedom and independence.
The outrageous sell-off of Iraqi resources must stop immediately, and all barriers to the sovereignty and integrity of Iraq must be removed.
Saddam and all his gang must be put on trial.

Many of us have family members living in Iraq, who tell us of the unbearable suffering of all Iraqis - hundreds are being killed each week and many more are dying from malnutrition, dirty water and the effects of depleted uranium. But everyone knows from long experience that women are always more vulnerable to occupying armies. Women have given up going out to work because the streets are not safe. Women are harassed at military checkpoints, just as Palestinian women are, against the traditional treatment of women. The message coming from Iraqi women is: We have no security, no water, no gas, no electricity, no medicine, little or no food at prices we can afford. (The occupying armies have plenty of food, electricity, etc.)

Unemployment is 70%. Women the carers must work hardest trying to ensure everyone’s survival despite the lack of basic necessities.

We call on women to march with us to make women’s survival work, deprivation, vulnerability, struggle and demands visible. Only when women’s situation is visible, is the real cost of war and occupation truly known and understood.

We demand a new beginning for the Iraqi people in general and Iraqi women in particular – women as mothers, sisters, daughters, wives, who suffered the consequences for themselves and their families of three brutal wars and many years of dictatorship. A Women’s Contingent of the national march will put added pressure on the occupying forces to leave, for the destruction and killing to stop, and for the rebuilding of Iraqi society to begin.

We extend our heartfelt support to women in other countries, including in Palestine and Afghanistan, who are also suffering the consequences of war and occupation.

The media have recently uncovered the reality of the Saddam Hussein regime by showing mass graves in which bodies even of children and the elderly were buried. They do not mention that if the countries now occupying Iraq hadn’t armed and supported that regime as it carried out these atrocities against us, we could have got rid of him much earlier.

Women in Britain: We look forward to your solidarity, and rely on your support. Supportive men welcome.

Iraqi Women’s League-UK
- e-mail: lppc@ukonline.co.uk

Comments

Hide the following 5 comments

help the Iraqi womens league

01.10.2003 13:42

Please indymedia will you put this back on open newswire as the first posting had very large pics and this one has small.
At the fairly boring and predictable march on sat they had a meeting in Hyde park which attracted a big crowd,they had very good speakers and they do need some publicity,so could you take the other post off if you have to.

sil


mea culpa

01.10.2003 14:30

Saw there were two copies of this on the newswire, but I removed the wrong one! Sorry everyone...

The other version, with hi-res versions of these pictures, and a couple of additional comments, is at:

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/09/278250.html

Z


But Iraqs regime was genocidal!

02.10.2003 09:38

But Iraqs regime was genocidal, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and the torture and imprisonment of hundreds of thousands more! Aswell as that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis had been forced to flee the country as refugees, especially the Kurds. Iraqi refugees living in Britain didn't go on any anti-war marches because they knew first hand the brutality of Saddam's regime and knew that it simply had to be overthrown even if it meant war. There was simply no other way Saddam's brutal genocidal regime could have been overthrown other than by war as the Iraqi security forces had made a coup or popular uprising impossible. Fior example at the end of the first Gulf War there was a popular uprising against Saddam, but it was easily crushed within days because of the shear strength of Iraqs security forces. Only a massive war waged by Britain and America could have toppled the Saddam regime!

Rockwell


Denying the facts

02.10.2003 10:51

Oh I must have hallucinated them then... obviously Rockwell, who says he didn't go on the march, knows better whether any Iraqis took part than those of us who were actually there.

Z


RE: Denying facts?

02.10.2003 11:35

The vast majority of Iraqi refugees were pro-war. A few might have attended anti-war marches but most did not! Haven't you ever seen the put Saddam on trial picket which has been held by Iraqi exiles every Saturday afternoon in Trafalgar Square for the past five years?

Rockwell