MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC HECKLE PRIME MINISTER

House of Commons, Wednesday February 4th.

Nine members of the public decided to use Prime Minister's Question Time today to question directly Tony Blair on the important issues of the occupation of Iraq, and the real reasons that the United Kingdom went to war. Refusing to be silent on hearing the Prime Minister's evasions on these important issues, each stood up and made one simple demand: "No more whitewashes, Tony!"

The Oxford residents are all furious at Parliament's inability to hold the Government to account over its war, which resulted in the deaths of over 10,000 Iraqi civilians, and the subsequent occupation which has killed thousands more Iraqis, as well as hundreds of American and British soldiers. The protestors were keen to point out that the war on Iraq, as well as the occupation, was illegal under international law [1], regardless of the presence or absence of weapons of mass destruction. They also expressed their disgust at the latest governmental inquiry into the war, which is to be held in secret and will not address the political reasons for the invasion. Simon Little said: "Two million people told Tony Blair on February 15th that his intelligence on Iraq was laughable, and no basis on which to launch a war. We all know that the government was determined to go to war regardless of the intelligence they received, and Parliament must impeach the Prime Minister on charges of war crimes immediately. He intentionally launched a war of aggression; he is a mass murderer."

The protestors were not just angry over the decision to invade, but also with the current situation in occupied Iraq. Without any democratic mandate, the US and UK occupation forces have imprisoned over 13,000 Iraqis without trial, as well as shooting unarmed protestors and children. The CIA itself has warned that Iraq is at risk of slipping into a three-way civil war; exactly the warning given by the anti-war movement before the invasion. Similarly, the economy of Iraq has been taken over by multinational corporations; trade tariffs have virtually been abolished, US companies are being given billion-dollar contracts at the expense of Iraqi people, and over 200 state-owned enterprises have been privatised[2]. Hannah Dyson said: "We would never do this to our own economy, and yet we are handing the fate of the Iraqi people over to unaccountable corporations, who are treating Iraq as their own private playground."

Notes to Journalists:

[1] Resolution 1441 did not legalise the invasion of Iraq. When the resolution was passed, every Council ambassador other than Washington's made clear the resolution provides no authorization for war. According to Mexico's Ambassador, Adolfo Aguilar Zinser, force could only be valid, "with the prior, explicit authorization of the Security Council." Clearly, a unilateral act of war by the United States and the UK would be a war of aggression, falling outside the norms of international law and thus qualifying as a serious war crime. Principle VI of the Nuremberg Principles of 1946 explicitly states that the 'planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties' is a war crime. Former Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, chief U.S. prosecutor at the first Nuremberg trial, called waging aggressive war "the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

[2] The anti-war movement's contention that one of the reasons for the invasion of Iraq was the demand for new markets has been born out in President Bush's recent statement that "reconstructing" Iraq would serve as the starting point for a "US-Middle East free-trade area" incorporating 22 nations and based on the "free market system". Paul Bremer, the administrator of Iraq, has spoken of the need to "overcome" the Iraqi people's "sense of entitlement" when it comes to basic rights such as health care, food, and education. Importantly, it is clear that the radical economic 'reform' of Iraq is also illegal under international law, as has been confirmed by the Attorney-General, Lord Goldsmith, in whose opinion: "the imposition of major structural economic reforms would not be authorised by international law". He expands: "the longer the occupation of Iraq continues, and the more the tasks undertaken by an interim administration depart from the main objective [of disarming Saddam], the more difficult it will be to justify the lawfulness of the occupation."


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