No Attack on Mosul!: An Emergency Statement of Intellectuals and Activists
Brussells Tribunal | 07.02.2008 17:13 | Anti-militarism | Iraq | Terror War | World
Bush’s failure in Iraq requires a new “success”. While the blood-soaked US occupation in Iraq declares one victory after another since nearly five years, it stages massacre after massacre of the people of Iraq.
Bush’s failure in Iraq requires a new “success”. While the blood-soaked US occupation in Iraq declares one victory after another since nearly five years, it stages massacre after massacre of the people of Iraq.
Now the occupation declares a new “decisive” success is imminent, this time against the population of Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq. Its pretext is always the same: to eradicate “Al-Qaeda”, while Al-Qaeda from its mouth means Sunnis, Baathists, Arabs and all patriotic Iraqis.
Although the occupation has on many occasions declared its victory, the fact that it needs to attack yet again an entire city and its population proves that it couldn’t and cannot eradicate the legal resistance of the Iraqi people. The only thing decisive is that the occupation by its tactics announces its defeat.
The occupation has escalated its air bombing campaigns by 400 per cent [1] in the past year and openly promises more indiscriminate attacks on populated urban areas. It uses disproportionate force indiscriminately against civilian populations in a pattern of actions that constitutes genocide under international law.
The imminent attack on Mosul — another urbicide following the ones of holy Najaf, martyred Fallujah, Al-Qaim, Tel Afar, Haditha, and whole neighbourhoods of Baghdad, among others — will only result, as with its precedents, in horrific killings, destruction and mass population displacement, thereby changing the historical, sociological and demographic makeup of the city.
This imminent attack is a pre-announced genocide. It is blood, death and destruction for oil. As the spreading of the resistance to Southern and Northern provinces proves, this new attack is in vain. The Iraqi people rejects — and will always reject — the criminal US occupation.
This imminent attack should raise condemnation, disgust and protest from peace loving people and human rights defenders worldwide. Five years of destruction and death should have taught the Bush administration that its litany of killing serves no purpose and leads only to moral suicide for the United States.
Humanity is in distress in Iraq. Our role and duty is to save it.
Act to stop the massacre in Mosul!
5 February 2008
Abdul Ilah Albayaty, member of the BRussells Tribunal Executive Committee – Iraq / France
Hana Al Bayaty, coordinator, Iraqi International Initiative on refugees – Iraq / Egypt.
Margarita Papandreou, Former First Lady of Greece, Peace activist and honorary president of Center for Research and Action on Peace - Greece.
Dr. Saadallah Al-Fathi, former head of the Energy Studies Department at OPEC - Iraq.
Buthaina Alnasiri, Iraqi writer and activist.
Prof. Em. François Houtart, Director of the Tricontinental Center - Cetri, co-founder of the World Social Forum.
Sr. Anne Montgomery RSCJ, Christan Peacemaker Teams - USA
Sara Flounders, Co-Director, International Action Center.
Dr. James E. Jennings, PhD, President Conscience International – USA.
David Swanson, Co-Founder AfterDowningStreet coalition - USA.
Dr. Gerri Haynes, past president, Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility, Kirkland, Washington.
Dr. Hassan Aydinli, President, Committee for the Defence of the Iraqi Turkmens’ Rights.
Muhamad Tareq Al-Deraji, Director of Monitoring net of human rights in Iraq - Executive Director of Studies Center of human rights and Democracy in Fallujah.
Riad El-Taher, Chair of FAF Organisation - UK.
Hans-Peter Richter, chair, German Peace Council.
Socorro Gomes, president, Cebrapaz - Centre Bresilien de Solidaritré avec les peuples et de lutte pour la Paix.
Niloufer Bhagwat, Vice President of Indian Lawyers Association - Mumbai / India.
Dr. Curtis F.J. Doebbler, International Human Rights Lawyer - USA.
Karen Parker, Attorney, Association of Humanitarian Lawyers - USA.
Jennifer Van Bergen, journalist, author writing about civil liberties, human rights and international law - USA.
Jan Fermon, Lawyer of Court case against General Tommy Franks in Brussels, Progress Lawyers Network - Belgium.
Prof. Em. Peter d'Errico, Legal Studies Department, University of Massachusetts / Amherst - USA
Prof. Kazashi Nobuo, Faculty of Letters, Kobe University, NO DU Hiroshima Project - Japan.
Jan-Erik Lundström, photographic historian and director of the BildMuseet in Umea, Sweden
Michel Chossudovsky, Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa, founder of Centre for Research on Globalisation - Canada
Salah Al Mukhtar, former Iraqi ambassador to Vietnam and India.
Naji Haraj, former Iraqi diplomat.
Carlos Varea, Coordinator of CEOSI - Spanish Campaign against Occupation and for the Sovereignty of Iraq – Spain.
Marion Küpker, International Coordinator against nuclear-and uranium weapons for GAAA and DFG-VK, Germany.
Dr. Ian Douglas, editor and correspondent for the Cairo-based Al-Ahram Weekly and visiting professor in the Department of Political Science at An-Najah National University in Nablus, Palestine.
Dr. Imad Khadduri, former nuclear scientist - Iraq.
Felicity Arbuthnot, Journalist - UK.
Dirk Adriaensens, member of the BRussells Tribunal Executive Committee, Coordinator SOS Iraq.
John Catalinotto, International Action Center - USA.
Dr. Dahlia Wasfi, M.D., Anti-war activist, speaker, Global Exchange - Iraq / USA.
Merry Fitzgerald, Committee for the Defence of the Iraqi Turkmens’ Rights.
Nermeen Al-Mufti, member of the BRussells Tribunal Advisory Committee - Journalist.
Michael Parenti, Author and scholar – USA.
Prof. Em. Edward S. Herman, writer, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
Prof. Stephen Soldz, Director, Center for Research, Evaluation, and Program Development Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis, Psychoanalysts for Peace and Justice - USA.
Prof. Em. Gideon Polya, retired senior biochemist, author: biochemical scientific publications and global avoidable mortality – Australia.
Prof. David Miller, Professor of Sociology at Strathclyde University, co-founder of Spinwatch – UK.
Prof. Paola Manduca, Geneticist, University of Genoa, Newweapons working group - Italy.
Prof. Glen D. Lawrence, Long Island University, USA.
Prof. Dr. Jean Bricmont, scientist, specialist in theoretical physics, U.C. Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium.
Prof. Stephen Eric Bronner, Professor of political science, Rutgers University - USA.
Prof. Jim Harding, Past Director, School of Human Justice, University of Regina - Canada.
Dr. Thomas M. Fasy, MD PhD, Clinical Associate Professor, Mount Sinai School of Medicine – USA.
Dr. Pol De Vos, Public Health Researcher, chair, Stop USA – Peace movement, Belgium.
Anne Burns, U.S. Academics For Peace / Conscience International - USA.
David Peterson, writer and researcher, Chicago, USA.
Eman Ahmed Khammas, Former co-director of Occupation Watch - Journalist - translator - Iraq.
Comaguer, Anti-war Committee Marseille - France.
Sigyn Meder, Iraq Solidarity Association in Stockholm - Sweden.
Joachim Guilliard, Journalist, Anti-war movement - Germany.
Sarah Meyer, Independent researcher living in Sussex – UK.
Cynthia Banas, Iraq Peace Team member, 2002-2003 - USA.
José Reinaldo Carvalho, Cebrapaz, Brazil.
Ludo De Brabander, chair, Vrede – Peace Movement, Belgium.
Hans Lammerant, chair, Vredesactie - Peace movement, Belgium.
Paul Rafferty, chair, UNObserver.
Frank Vercruyssen, Actor, TG Stan - Belgium.
Luc Pien, filmmaker - Belgium.
April Hurley, MD - USA.
John LaForge, Nukewatch - USA.
Karen Hoover, USA.
Frans Dumortier / Charles Ducal, Poet - Belgium.
David Hungerford, Iraq support activist - USA.
Suror Merza
Zuhair Alkadiri
Othman Al-Rawi
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1]
http://www.dedefensa.org/article.php?art_id=4589 - http://www.slate.com/id/2176464/ - http://www.slate.com/id/2176619/ - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/16/AR2008011604148.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Further reading:
- Iraq says Mosul to be "cleansed" of al Qaeda (IHT 30 Jan 2008)
- Mosul, between hammer and anvil (04 Feb 2008)
* An Urgent Call to save Mosul - Action 4 Mosul Group:
We wish to draw the attention of all the world to the deteriorating situation in Mosul and the considerable threats the City facing. We call upon all those with conscious all over the world to this ongoing onslaught on the City , its people and the grave facing this ancient city. There is an apparent indifference to the plight of the people of Mosul. We need your support to form an action group to raise the profile of the city and the crisis it is facing. Please pass this information and our contact details to your friends and colleagues. We need enthusiastic dynamic volunteers to lead this Action Group. We are looking particularly for people with media, journalists and lobbying experience but all help is sought urgently.
Please let me know if you wish to help in coordinating the Action for Mosul in your area/country.
Dr Ismail Jalili, UK
Action for Mosul
action(AT)mosul.org (please replace (AT) with @
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Quinquireme of Nineveh
'Quinquireme of Nineveh, from distant Ophir, rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine, with a cargo of ivory and and apes peacocks, sandalwood, cedar wood and sweet white wine'. wrote John Masefield (b.1878)
In Mosul irrigation is believed by some to have been developed nearly twelve thousand years ago. The nearby golden temples at Hatra were built at the same time as Petra: 'rose red city, half as old as time.' The winged bulls - humanity's heritage, which guard the palace at Nimrud; archeological pearls abound, strewn before the occupation-born swine. The imagination of the inspired thrown aside with the people whose forbears gifted the world with beauty, academia and that we call civilised. Under the west's watch, their descendents are disenfranchised,slaughtered, kidnapped, raped, displaced, degraded.
Am I emotional, as sometimes accused? You bet I am. Just when it seems our shame can be plumbed no deeper another horror in the name of those chilling, nauseating words :'freedom and democrocy' - which should be banned forthwith from dictionaries, speech and school books - rears its head.That two headed monster, 'Freedom and Democrocy' seems to translate directly into state or state condoned terrorism.
Felicity Arbuthnot
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Now the occupation declares a new “decisive” success is imminent, this time against the population of Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq. Its pretext is always the same: to eradicate “Al-Qaeda”, while Al-Qaeda from its mouth means Sunnis, Baathists, Arabs and all patriotic Iraqis.
Although the occupation has on many occasions declared its victory, the fact that it needs to attack yet again an entire city and its population proves that it couldn’t and cannot eradicate the legal resistance of the Iraqi people. The only thing decisive is that the occupation by its tactics announces its defeat.
The occupation has escalated its air bombing campaigns by 400 per cent [1] in the past year and openly promises more indiscriminate attacks on populated urban areas. It uses disproportionate force indiscriminately against civilian populations in a pattern of actions that constitutes genocide under international law.
The imminent attack on Mosul — another urbicide following the ones of holy Najaf, martyred Fallujah, Al-Qaim, Tel Afar, Haditha, and whole neighbourhoods of Baghdad, among others — will only result, as with its precedents, in horrific killings, destruction and mass population displacement, thereby changing the historical, sociological and demographic makeup of the city.
This imminent attack is a pre-announced genocide. It is blood, death and destruction for oil. As the spreading of the resistance to Southern and Northern provinces proves, this new attack is in vain. The Iraqi people rejects — and will always reject — the criminal US occupation.
This imminent attack should raise condemnation, disgust and protest from peace loving people and human rights defenders worldwide. Five years of destruction and death should have taught the Bush administration that its litany of killing serves no purpose and leads only to moral suicide for the United States.
Humanity is in distress in Iraq. Our role and duty is to save it.
Act to stop the massacre in Mosul!
5 February 2008
Abdul Ilah Albayaty, member of the BRussells Tribunal Executive Committee – Iraq / France
Hana Al Bayaty, coordinator, Iraqi International Initiative on refugees – Iraq / Egypt.
Margarita Papandreou, Former First Lady of Greece, Peace activist and honorary president of Center for Research and Action on Peace - Greece.
Dr. Saadallah Al-Fathi, former head of the Energy Studies Department at OPEC - Iraq.
Buthaina Alnasiri, Iraqi writer and activist.
Prof. Em. François Houtart, Director of the Tricontinental Center - Cetri, co-founder of the World Social Forum.
Sr. Anne Montgomery RSCJ, Christan Peacemaker Teams - USA
Sara Flounders, Co-Director, International Action Center.
Dr. James E. Jennings, PhD, President Conscience International – USA.
David Swanson, Co-Founder AfterDowningStreet coalition - USA.
Dr. Gerri Haynes, past president, Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility, Kirkland, Washington.
Dr. Hassan Aydinli, President, Committee for the Defence of the Iraqi Turkmens’ Rights.
Muhamad Tareq Al-Deraji, Director of Monitoring net of human rights in Iraq - Executive Director of Studies Center of human rights and Democracy in Fallujah.
Riad El-Taher, Chair of FAF Organisation - UK.
Hans-Peter Richter, chair, German Peace Council.
Socorro Gomes, president, Cebrapaz - Centre Bresilien de Solidaritré avec les peuples et de lutte pour la Paix.
Niloufer Bhagwat, Vice President of Indian Lawyers Association - Mumbai / India.
Dr. Curtis F.J. Doebbler, International Human Rights Lawyer - USA.
Karen Parker, Attorney, Association of Humanitarian Lawyers - USA.
Jennifer Van Bergen, journalist, author writing about civil liberties, human rights and international law - USA.
Jan Fermon, Lawyer of Court case against General Tommy Franks in Brussels, Progress Lawyers Network - Belgium.
Prof. Em. Peter d'Errico, Legal Studies Department, University of Massachusetts / Amherst - USA
Prof. Kazashi Nobuo, Faculty of Letters, Kobe University, NO DU Hiroshima Project - Japan.
Jan-Erik Lundström, photographic historian and director of the BildMuseet in Umea, Sweden
Michel Chossudovsky, Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa, founder of Centre for Research on Globalisation - Canada
Salah Al Mukhtar, former Iraqi ambassador to Vietnam and India.
Naji Haraj, former Iraqi diplomat.
Carlos Varea, Coordinator of CEOSI - Spanish Campaign against Occupation and for the Sovereignty of Iraq – Spain.
Marion Küpker, International Coordinator against nuclear-and uranium weapons for GAAA and DFG-VK, Germany.
Dr. Ian Douglas, editor and correspondent for the Cairo-based Al-Ahram Weekly and visiting professor in the Department of Political Science at An-Najah National University in Nablus, Palestine.
Dr. Imad Khadduri, former nuclear scientist - Iraq.
Felicity Arbuthnot, Journalist - UK.
Dirk Adriaensens, member of the BRussells Tribunal Executive Committee, Coordinator SOS Iraq.
John Catalinotto, International Action Center - USA.
Dr. Dahlia Wasfi, M.D., Anti-war activist, speaker, Global Exchange - Iraq / USA.
Merry Fitzgerald, Committee for the Defence of the Iraqi Turkmens’ Rights.
Nermeen Al-Mufti, member of the BRussells Tribunal Advisory Committee - Journalist.
Michael Parenti, Author and scholar – USA.
Prof. Em. Edward S. Herman, writer, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA.
Prof. Stephen Soldz, Director, Center for Research, Evaluation, and Program Development Boston Graduate School of Psychoanalysis, Psychoanalysts for Peace and Justice - USA.
Prof. Em. Gideon Polya, retired senior biochemist, author: biochemical scientific publications and global avoidable mortality – Australia.
Prof. David Miller, Professor of Sociology at Strathclyde University, co-founder of Spinwatch – UK.
Prof. Paola Manduca, Geneticist, University of Genoa, Newweapons working group - Italy.
Prof. Glen D. Lawrence, Long Island University, USA.
Prof. Dr. Jean Bricmont, scientist, specialist in theoretical physics, U.C. Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium.
Prof. Stephen Eric Bronner, Professor of political science, Rutgers University - USA.
Prof. Jim Harding, Past Director, School of Human Justice, University of Regina - Canada.
Dr. Thomas M. Fasy, MD PhD, Clinical Associate Professor, Mount Sinai School of Medicine – USA.
Dr. Pol De Vos, Public Health Researcher, chair, Stop USA – Peace movement, Belgium.
Anne Burns, U.S. Academics For Peace / Conscience International - USA.
David Peterson, writer and researcher, Chicago, USA.
Eman Ahmed Khammas, Former co-director of Occupation Watch - Journalist - translator - Iraq.
Comaguer, Anti-war Committee Marseille - France.
Sigyn Meder, Iraq Solidarity Association in Stockholm - Sweden.
Joachim Guilliard, Journalist, Anti-war movement - Germany.
Sarah Meyer, Independent researcher living in Sussex – UK.
Cynthia Banas, Iraq Peace Team member, 2002-2003 - USA.
José Reinaldo Carvalho, Cebrapaz, Brazil.
Ludo De Brabander, chair, Vrede – Peace Movement, Belgium.
Hans Lammerant, chair, Vredesactie - Peace movement, Belgium.
Paul Rafferty, chair, UNObserver.
Frank Vercruyssen, Actor, TG Stan - Belgium.
Luc Pien, filmmaker - Belgium.
April Hurley, MD - USA.
John LaForge, Nukewatch - USA.
Karen Hoover, USA.
Frans Dumortier / Charles Ducal, Poet - Belgium.
David Hungerford, Iraq support activist - USA.
Suror Merza
Zuhair Alkadiri
Othman Al-Rawi
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[1]
http://www.dedefensa.org/article.php?art_id=4589 - http://www.slate.com/id/2176464/ - http://www.slate.com/id/2176619/ - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/16/AR2008011604148.html --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Further reading:
- Iraq says Mosul to be "cleansed" of al Qaeda (IHT 30 Jan 2008)
- Mosul, between hammer and anvil (04 Feb 2008)
* An Urgent Call to save Mosul - Action 4 Mosul Group:
We wish to draw the attention of all the world to the deteriorating situation in Mosul and the considerable threats the City facing. We call upon all those with conscious all over the world to this ongoing onslaught on the City , its people and the grave facing this ancient city. There is an apparent indifference to the plight of the people of Mosul. We need your support to form an action group to raise the profile of the city and the crisis it is facing. Please pass this information and our contact details to your friends and colleagues. We need enthusiastic dynamic volunteers to lead this Action Group. We are looking particularly for people with media, journalists and lobbying experience but all help is sought urgently.
Please let me know if you wish to help in coordinating the Action for Mosul in your area/country.
Dr Ismail Jalili, UK
Action for Mosul
action(AT)mosul.org (please replace (AT) with @
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Quinquireme of Nineveh
'Quinquireme of Nineveh, from distant Ophir, rowing home to haven in sunny Palestine, with a cargo of ivory and and apes peacocks, sandalwood, cedar wood and sweet white wine'. wrote John Masefield (b.1878)
In Mosul irrigation is believed by some to have been developed nearly twelve thousand years ago. The nearby golden temples at Hatra were built at the same time as Petra: 'rose red city, half as old as time.' The winged bulls - humanity's heritage, which guard the palace at Nimrud; archeological pearls abound, strewn before the occupation-born swine. The imagination of the inspired thrown aside with the people whose forbears gifted the world with beauty, academia and that we call civilised. Under the west's watch, their descendents are disenfranchised,slaughtered, kidnapped, raped, displaced, degraded.
Am I emotional, as sometimes accused? You bet I am. Just when it seems our shame can be plumbed no deeper another horror in the name of those chilling, nauseating words :'freedom and democrocy' - which should be banned forthwith from dictionaries, speech and school books - rears its head.That two headed monster, 'Freedom and Democrocy' seems to translate directly into state or state condoned terrorism.
Felicity Arbuthnot
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Brussells Tribunal
Homepage:
http://www.brusselstribunal.org/Mosul050208.htm