Iraqi Women's League Press Conference

Since 1952, when it was founded, the Iraqi Women's League (IWL) has played a
significant role in the struggle against tyranny and oppression in Iraq.
The IWL has members of different religions and ethnic minorities.

At a press conference next Monday, IWL-UK will issue an invitation to women
and women's organisations in the UK to march with us in a Women's Contingent
of the End the Occupation of Iraq march, (meet 11am at the tea hut by
Speakers Corner, Hyde Park - look out for the IWL's red banner) to demand,
on behalf of women in Iraq, the end of the US/UK occupation.

All Iraqis are suffering unbearably, but we should know by now from long
experience that women are always more vulnerable to occupying armies. The
message coming from Iraq is: We have no security, water, gas, electricity or
food, and unemployment has risen to 70%. Women the carers, despite the lack
of these necessities for life, are as usual working hardest for day-to-day
survival. Yet women's situation is least likely to be considered.

Therefore we are calling on women to march with us on Saturday 27th Sept.
2003, to make visible women's particular situation, work, struggle and
demands. Only when women's situation is visible, the cost to the Iraqi
people of war and occupation is truly known and understood.

According to the International Conventions and moral responsibilities, the
occupation administration is obliged to restore law and order, provide
security and all the essentials, and rebuild the infrastructure ruined as a
result of their war on Iraq.

The participation of women and women's organisations in a Women's Contingent
of the Anti-Occupation march will help to ensure that the UN takes the
leading role in returning Iraqi society to Iraqis, and takes overall
responsibility for ensuring that Iraqi society is rebuilt. It will help to
accelerate the termination of the occupation and to ensure that the
destruction and killing stop. We demand a new beginning and a better life
for the Iraqi people in general and Iraqi women in particular - women as
mothers, sisters, daughters, wives, have suffered the consequences of three
brutal wars and many years of dictatorship.

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

We say to women in Britain: We look forward to your solidarity and rely on
your support. This will help to put pressure on the occupying forces to
implement the demands above, for a better and humane life for the Iraqi
people.

We enclose the Statement we issued last June describing the impact of the
war on the families and communities women were trying to keep alive and
functioning despite the brutal and inhuman bombing. At the press conference
a new Statement will update this information, outlining what it means for
Iraqis to try to survive the occupation.