THE HANDSTAND

SEPTEMBER 2003

 HUMAN RIGHTS AMERICAN STYLE
..Since the United States have taken over their oil,
Iraqis are surviving on charity


More than 4 million Iraqis have lost their jobs following the invasion of their country by the United States. To take the measure of the drama represented by this figure, it must be multiplied by five to obtain the 20 million Iraqis (women and children) who survive on little bits of nothing under the indifference of the new masters of Iraq, all too busy with their looting strategy and subcontracting of power in this country.


 From the first bombardments to this day, that is almost six months,workers and their families have been without resources and their situation is deteriorating day by day. To make their demands in what isnow pompously called 'The New Iraq', they have created the Union of the Unemployed. This organisation has made repeated requests to the occupation forces, without any result whatsoever. Once again, it mobilised its members for another demonstration on Abu Nawas street, Tuesday July 29th. The rallying point was an old bank building, burned down during the war, which was now home to the Communist Party of Iraq.


Actually, unemployed workers were not the only ones gathering there. Other action groups such as the Organisation for the Freedom of the Iraqi Women, the Union of Iraqi Workers, among others, had come to show their support. There was a lot of activity all around the offices of the party. The street was alive with approximately 800 persons, in small groups, while interviews and other meetings with journalists covering the event were taking place in the offices inside the building. The preparation of placards and slogans was being completed.

"This is the 8th demonstration we've had since May 1st , 2003 ", declares Kacem Madi, secretary-general of the Union of the Unemployed. But he maintains that this action will be different from the previous seven. The demonstrators are ready to continue their action until they obtain their rights, which means either a job or an unemployment allowance. In reality, they all know that they will not have a job, since all the infrastructures destroyed by the US army have remained in that state. And even salesmen can no longer work because of the bandits and other thieves who steal their merchandise before they reach their sales point. For all these workers, the Union is asking an unemployment allowance, until the occupation forces restore security and employment in Iraq.

There are still no statistics to know exactly how many Iraqi men and women have lost their employment because of the war. According to Kacem, there are around four million. Among them, a large majority have had no income over the last six months. " This is truly a tragedy for these families who have already lost so much in this war ", stresses Kacem Madi.

The Union which he represents has organised 8 demonstrations for the same demands: a job or an unemployment allowance. "At each demonstration, he recounts, the representatives of the occupation forces meet and discuss with us, promise to solve the problem, but each time
their promises are not fulfilled and we are forced to take to the streets again" . From Major Patterson to David Jones (of the Oil for Food programme) as well as from other US military and civilian people in charge, the Union has obtained nothing but empty promises. This situation lead to a decision to change their program of action.

This Tuesday's demonstration takes place in torrid heat and the demonstrators, not the least discouraged, are shouting slogans calling for democracy, employment and the end of the occupation. The demonstration then proceeds to the headquarters of the Council commonly
called El-Beit Al-madani.  For nearly one hour, the demonstrators shout slogans in front of the building guarded by US soldiers equipped with heavy artillery. Later, the demonstration becomes a sit-in. This was the new initiative introduced in the protest programme of the Union of the Unemployed. They had adopted a resolution to set up a tent in front of the building to establish a permanent presence. They call this action " civil disobedience ". But all they got back from the Americans was a "Bush style" ultimatum: Disperse the demonstration, otherwise there will be no talks !

But the Iraqi workers are encouraged by the presence of the media and by the messages of support they have received from outside; and they have drawn the lessons from the preceding fruitless meetings.  So they refuse to submit and decide to continue their action and to camp on location, as planned. After all, isn't peaceful demonstration a democratic right? But things will quickly take a turn towards dictatorship. At 8:30 pm, there is a first visit from soldiers who come to ask the demonstrators to leave the premises. But the latter show the permit to demonstrate that was granted to them and refuse to comply. The 3 soldiers leave, only to return later in stronger numbers around 1:00 am, during the curfew. And they have not come to discuss. They invade the tent and arrest all the coordinating team, 21 persons in total, who are taken away and locked up in a room. They are regrouped together in a corner of the room, forced to sit on the floor, and then isolated with barbed wire. They were detained in these conditions, without water and without food, until 11:00 am the following day. " We could not even move, declares Ali Djaafri, aged over fifty, my knees and legs were really aching but each time I was trying to stand to alleviate my pain, the soldiers were shouting 'sit down!'. It was very humiliating. At no other time during the occupation has my resentment towards the US soldiers been that strong. I became fully conscious of my colonised situation and I was ashamed in front of the younger Iraqis in our group. I would have preferred death rather than having to live through this at 58 years old ".

Amar Djaafri is one the the 120,000 members of the Union of the Unemployed. He has worked all his life in a local administration which was totally burned down, after being looted and vandalised like the vast majority of the infrastructures of the Iraqi state.  The country was no longer keeping up with technology. Almost everything was operating on paper, not computers: universities, administrations, hospitals, etc. All the archives have vanished in the fires. Which makes Khaled, another unemployed worker, say: "No other country has known the kind of colonisation that we are living in Iraq. The US army has torn down everything which Iraqi life was made of. We have no references anymore, anywhere."

By burning the archives of a State, and destroying the history and culture of a people, the United States have truly committed an unprecedented crime. All in Iraq, workers, students, or any other sector of Iraqi society are unanimous in saying that the future does not look
promising. And all are preparing for it, notably by organising the struggle against the occupation of their country. "There are 35 million American citizens living in poverty and injustice in the United States, it is unthinkable that the US authorities establish a democracy for the Iraqis! "declares Kacem of the Union of the Unemployed."
Baghdad, August 4th, 2003.

Zehira Houfani (writer and journalist),
Montreal,member of the Iraq Solidarity Project (PSI/ISP)
Thanks to
Zehira Houfani and Raymond Legault

****************PAUSE FOR THOUGHT.**********************

AN EXECUTIVE ORDER - As ordered, it's about oil
Sat Aug 9 22:08:27 2003

AN EXECUTIVE ORDER can be a surreptitious way of making policy. It often makes an end-run around Congress and frequently escapes the media's attention as well. It is, in short, a way of making policy by fiat.President Bush has signed a slew of executive orders that have gone unreported for weeks or months -- most notably, changes to environmental regulations and restricted access to former presidential papers and Freedom of Information Act information.Now, a potentially explosive executive order has just been discovered by SEEN, the Sustainable Energy and Economy Network. Signed on May 22, it appears to give U.S. oil companies in Iraq blanket immunity from lawsuits and criminal prosecution.

Here's what happened: On May 22, the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 1438, which provided gas and oil companies in Iraq with limited immunity until Dec. 21, 2007. Their reason? To protect the flow of oil revenues into the development fund that will be used to reconstruct Iraq. The U.N. resolution, however, did not provide immunity from human rights violations or environmental damage. Nor did it protect any employee or any company after the oil was produced and extracted in Iraq.Notice what President Bush changed when, on the same day, he issued Executive Order 13303 -- called "Protecting the Development Fund and Certain Other Property in Which Iraq Has an Interest." Unlike the U.N. resolution, the president's order appears to place U.S. corporations above the law for any activities related to Iraq oil, either in that country or in the United States.It also declared a national emergency as the justification for sweeping aside all federal statues, including the Alien Tort Claims Act, and appears to provide immunity against contractual disputes, discrimination suits, violations of labor practices, international treaties, environmental disasters and human rights violations. Even more, it doesn't limit immunity to the production of oil, but also protects individuals, companies and corporations involved in selling and marketing the oil as well.

Unlike the U.N. resolution, therefore, the order provides immunity for more of the industry's activities, as well as for a broader swath of individuals, companies and corporations.These are the kind of legal protections that most corporations could only dream of enjoying. If, for example, a U.S. oil company engages in criminal behavior in California, and its assets can be traced back to Iraqi oil, it could be immune from any kind of prosecution.Tellingly, the president's order provides no such legal immunity for companies who are helping to reconstruct Iraqi communications, computer or electrical infrastructure."In terms of legal liability," said Tom Devine, legal director of the Government Accountability Project, a Washington nonprofit group that defends whistle blowers, "the executive order cancels the concept of corporate accountability and abandons the rule of law. It is a blank check for corporate anarchy, potentially robbing Iraqis of both their rights and their resources."Taylor Griffin, a spokesman for the Treasury Department, told me that this is a "tortured and incorrect reading of the executive order and what it hopes to achieve: protecting the revenue that belongs to the Iraqi people." When asked why the order did not exempt human rights or environmental damage, he responded, "When the regulations are written, they will address these."

But Betsy Apple, managing director and an attorney with EarthRights International, a Washington, D.C., human rights organization, thinks this is disingenuous and described the executive order as "an outrage" in a telephone interview. "It is a green lig
ht for oil companies to do business in Iraq, without worrying about legal liability," she said.
For some critics, the executive order supports the suspicion that the invasion of Iraq was always about gaining control of that country's oil. Jim Vallette, senior researcher at the liberal Institute for Policy Studies, said, "This order reveals the true motivation for the present occupation: absolute power for U.S. corporate interest over Iraqi oil."
The Institute and the Government Accountability Project have now asked Congress to investigate -- and repeal -- this order. The president's order is an outrage and Congress should act immediately. In our democracy, no one is above the law.E-mail Ruth Rosen at rrosen@sfchronicle.com

******************BACK TO BAGHDAD**********************

Without electricity and water, 52 degrees in the shade,
Resist or burst! according to the American « convention »

"Under Saddam's regime, despite all the post-war constraints, it took 48 days to re-establish electricity in Baghdad after the destruction of the first Gulf War," says Nahla, artist and owner of a Baghdad art gallery. And she adds indignantly : "Why have the Americans, the most powerful country on the planet, not restored it more than four months after having destroyed our networks and infrastructure?  See how water is getting rare in these boiling hot temperatures. I have a child of 7 years old and I suffer twice over to see him enduring this terrible heat. Just think of the millions of deprived Iraqis, babies, the ill, the aged, who are suffocating in the heat. How dare people in the American administration talk about our well-being when they are torturing us?" At that very moment the electricity was cut. "There you are!" cried Nahla. "We are entering four hours of hell!" Actually, the instant the ventilation stopped, a dreadful heat enveloped us. It was 52°C in the shade today. And it is like that for months.

The whole week I stayed in Baghdad, people never stopped complaining about the deterioration in their living conditions since the arrival of the American forces. Even those who believed the invasion was the evil for the good, no longer hesitate to say that the American army has colonised Iraq to seize its oil. "They have been spending our money for four months without concern for us, or our essential needs like electricity, water and security. Iraq has never had abductions of children or women for ransom before. I've been hearing about this for a few weeks and I think that it is extremely serious for Iraqi society. It really was better in Saddam's time, believe me. Today, I cannot stop crying about what has become of my city, Baghdad, disfigured by bombs, looting, vandalism and all this machinery of war, the soldiers and the barbed wire that criss-crosses our streets. It is as though we are living in a vast prison under the yoke of the United States."

Such chaos is reigning in the country that many people are saying that they miss the stability of Saddam's time. The absence of authority has allowed the rapid development of all sorts of social scourges. In the hospitals, they are saying that the victims of the violence which is destroying what remains of Iraqi social fabric are being admitted in the hundreds. Many Iraqis maintain that the occupation forces want this chaos; they cannot believe that the occupiers would have difficulties in controlling the situation. In Nahla's opinion, an army that can cross the world to invade Iraq and possesses an arsenal (land, sea, air) sufficient to occupy the entire planet, certainly has the capacity to satisfy the elementary rights of Iraqis. "It is impossible for me to believe otherwise," she added, continuing, "I will give you the example of the trouble they impose on us, and mostly to poor people, just to buy a bottle of gas. You have to join a 500 meter line-up, under the burning sun for hours, to get gas. Many people don't have the strength to withstand this form of collective punishment that the occupation army is imposing on us. Is it acceptable to treat people in this manner?  We could be served ten times as fast if they had 10 wickets instead of one. It's the same thing for the thousands of Iraqis without salary who begin to form endless lines at dawn in order to get a few dollars. I find this humiliating for my people and that's why I was saying that I cannot stop myself from crying when I go out in Baghdad."

At that point the young woman forced back the surge of tears which dimmed her eyes. The moment was as painful to me as to the Iraqi artist. I thought it best to change the subject and asked Nahla what she thought of the Governance Council. She smiled slightly and then, "We have seen nothing positive coming from the Americans. And this is also true of the Governance Council which they have woven for us."

The artist maintained that any Iraqi speaking in good faith would say two things about this famous Council. "First off, they in no way represent the Iraqi people, but rather foreign interests and those who represent them; and next, it has been structured in a way which will not advance the reconstruction of Iraq, but will sow discord and division among Iraqis."  On this point, Nahla's worries are shared by many Iraqis and by foreign observers who think that the composition of the Council is not in the best interest of the Iraqi people. To prove her point, Nahla continued, "Since its constitution, and despite the critical problems that we are living out, its members have done nothing besides fight among themselves under the auspices of the American Paul Bremer. Moreover, all that the press has reported on this subject, corruption scandals, lack of integrity, diversion of funds, have discredited the majority of its members. My opinion is that this Council has no authority, nor legitimacy.

Politicised or not, Iraqis, both women and men, are beginning to organise to protest the attitude of the American authorities towards the dramatic situation of the population. In increasing numbers, they are taking to the streets after 35 years of dictatorship. This is a new form of struggle and Iraqi activists say they are counting on the support of international organisations in order to struggle effectively for their democratic rights and the end of the occupation of their country.

Baghdad, 2 August 2003
Zehira Houfani (writer and journalist)
Montreal, member of the Iraq Solidarity Project

Thanks to International News Mohamed S. Kamel
internationalnews-owner@yahoogroups.com
www.apm-ram.com