Skip to content or view screen version

What You Can Do About the Massacre In Iraq

Captain Swing | 10.04.2004 14:44 | Analysis | Anti-militarism

What to Do

This is an appeal to the anti-war movement, to the peace movement, eco-action movement, animal rights movement, anti-fascists, everybody active, everybody who can respond, can call a demo, can organise a protest, an office occupation, an embassy storming, a road blockade, mass civil disobedience, industrial shut-down, work-place occupation, solidarity work stoppage, blockade the US Embassy, Fairford Military Base action campaign? What's taking off at Fairford? Are B52s being deployed? Shannon Peace Camp protestors- are there new movements at Shannon airport?

We need to address this, we need to resist this. We become the solidarity resistance in Iraq by taking action in our neighbourhoods and in our cities. Print up a leaflet. Paint up a banner. Take to the streets. Only a small group can make a change. Show people in Iraq that we are standing by them. 700 more British troops have been flown in to quell the uprising in the South. No Pasaran. Take to the embassies, the bases, the US interests, the streets.

 http://www.usembassy.org.uk/ukaddres.html - addresses of US Embassies in
London, Belfast, Edinburgh and Cardiff

 http://cndyorks.gn.apc.org/caab/ - Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases ? this site has a list of the locations of all the main US air bases used in the UK

 http://www.caat.org.uk/links/companies.php - full list of arms companies. BAE Systems, and Lockheed Martin have been principal supplies of weapons of mass destruction for the war on Iraq

 http://www.caat.org.uk/support/confronting-companies.php - tips on confronting arms companies by Campaign Against the Arms Trade

 http://english.aljazeera.net/HomePage - Keep up to date with Al Jazeera

Sample Leaflet Text

As you read this, a massacre is taking place in Falluja, Iraq. Falluja is a town which has been resisting the occupation of Iraq since June. US troops have been forced to the border of the town since then. It has fought hardest and most uncompromisingly and has regularly pummelled by F16 fighter jets and apache helicopter gunships since then, with civilians being slaughtered on a regular basis.

Well over 470 people have now been slaughtered by US troops in Falluja, this week. 1700 have been injured. The deathtoll is expected to rise due to the siege nature of the military cordon around the town. ambulances are being fired upon and followed by sniper sights if they attempt to enter the town. Eyewitnesses have reported seeing bodies lying dead in the streets. Hospitals have been attacked. Medical supplies and bed shortages are at crisis levels. Residents are calling it a massacre. People from all over are attempting, some succeeding, to get into Falluja to help evacuate the injured by car. People are donating food, medical supplies and water to those fleeing. All of Iraq is watching and sympathising with Falluja say people on the ground there.

There is at the time of writing (10/04/04) a 13km column of Falluja residents fleeing the bomb-smashed town, trapped in the desert and surrounded by US troops which eye-witnesses report have been firing on them. Most of the desert marooned refugees are elderly men, women and children.

For US soldiers stationed near the town, they have been in an impossible situation and their blood too is being shed for the market-profit-power chasing interests of the US and UK government and corporate interests. Recently, the long-time brewing discontent, frustration, humiliation, and mounting rage against the occupation has exploded. The occupation is being fought for its very existence, its racism, its violence. Its recycling and re-empowerment of a neo-Baathist ruling elite, its re-training and re-hiring of over 10,000 Baathist torturers and intelligence agents, its re-writing of Iraq?s laws through Coalition Provisional Authority Orders (principally Order 30 on Salaries and Employment Conditions for Civil Service Employees which sets the minimum wage for Iraqi Public Sector workers at 69,000 ID ($40 per month ? less than half the recommended wage of a sweatshop worker in a free trade zone in neighbouring Iran), plus Order 39 on Foreign Investment which allows for 100% foreign ownership ' privatisation ' and slashes the highest rate of income tax from 45% to 15%) has resulted in insurrection.

The climate in Iraq has moved on from protest to resistance, and now to insurgency. Demonstrations have been taking place every day all over the country since the occupation began, with protestors ranging from students to pensioners, unemployed, women, former soldiers and children. This new uprising has been labelled a revolt in support of the anti-Occupation cleric Muqtada al Sadr, but the reality is that it is widespread, uncontrollable, inchoate and varied. It is not Islamic, it is not just nationalist, it is not Baathist. It is a generalised struggle against the Occupation - the biggest incitement to violence in the country.

Please stand in solidarity with the people in Iraq during this upheaval and time of bloodshed. Please join the protest against the bloody massacre in Falluja, which will spread if the occupation armies continue unchecked and un-challenged.

Stop the ongoing war on Iraq.

Troops out of Iraq.

Captain Swing

Comments