27 April 2003

“There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”
-Howard Zinn
Voices Statement on U.S. Foreign Policy and Economic Sanctions

The Gazette (Montreal, Quebec)

April 4, 2003 Friday Final Edition
SECTION: News; Pg. A7
BYLINE: IRWIN BLOCK

Some Voices in the Wilderness have been silenced, for now.

On Tuesday, Montrealers Lisa Ndejuru, Zehira Houfani and 10 others who went to Iraq with the Iraq Peace Team felt it was time to leave.

The road trip from Baghdad to Amman, Jordan, in three vans was uneventful, and author Houfani is on her way back to Montreal. But Ndejuru, who studies religion at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal, is staying behind as a volunteer in the Iraq Peace Team, part of the Voices in the Wilderness initiative that began in 1996 to publicize the effect of economic sanctions on ordinary people. “We want to see what we can do from here to support the team still there, to get the story out,” Ndejuru said from her hotel in Amman.

United Press International
April 4, 2003 Friday
AMMAN, Jordan, April 4 (UPI)

The U.S. humanitarian non-governmental organization “Voices in the Wilderness” described Friday U.S. and British bombardments in Iraq as “extremely ugly.”

The group’s members, who recently returned from Iraq, said they witnessed the sequels of the war and charged that U.S. bombardment transformed the road linking Baghdad to the Jordanian capital, Amman, into a “path of sufferings.”

They said the road was littered with charred cars and blocked by several U.S. roadblocks where cars are stopped and passengers checked while Apache helicopters hover at low altitudes.

Agence France Presse
April 6, 2003 Sunday
SECTION: International News
LONDON, April 6

Six women stripped naked Sunday at a protest against the US-led invasion of Iraq after police arrested five people for obstructing entry to a command centre for British forces in the Gulf.

The nude demonstration occurred midway through a protest by some 170 people at Northwood, north of London, said a spokesman for Voices in the Wilderness UK, who organised the event.

In These Times
April 14, 2003
SECTION: IN PERSON; Pg. 8
BYLINE: BY JOHN MALKIN

For her work as co-founder of Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign to end the economic sanctions against the people of Iraq, Kathy Kelly has twice been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Voices in the Wilderness delivers medicine and other supplies to Iraqis in defiance of U.S. government sanctions. As a result, it has faced tens of thousands of dollars in fines. John Malkin spoke with Kelly in January.

How many times have you been to Iraq, and what kind of supplies does Voices in the Wilderness deliver to the Iraqi people?

When I go this time, I think it will be my 18th trip. We’ve sent 58 delegations and assisted in getting quite a few more groups over there. There are about 15 people over there right now, called the Iraq Peace Team. Mainly we bring medicines and medical relief supplies. Some school supplies. Medical textbooks on compact discs are quite valuable. What we bring is really a pittance in relation to the need. It is like a drop in the ocean. We are by no stretch of the imagination a medical relief group.