June 16th to June 30th
Initiated by Jubilee Iraq* and Voices in the Wilderness**

Participants also include members of Jubilee USA and Progressive Democrats of America

As international social justice activists, including citizens of Iraq, the U.S. and the U.K., we stand united and resolved to seek an end to the ongoing economic exploitation of Iraq. Such exploitation is a form of violence which must be resisted. Those of us who are citizens of the U.S. and U.K. bear a special responsibility as it is our respective countries which created and held firm to the economic sanctions regime which devastated Iraq’s health care, education, water and electrical infrastructure.

Dr. Thamiz Aziz Abul Rahman, a General Practitioner at Al-Kena Rehabilitation Hospital in Baghdad. Al-Kena is the only hospital in Iraq that makes prosthetics and provides rehabilitation services. The hospital is critically under-funded and undersupplied.

Download PDF of “Iraqi Hospitals Ailing Under Occupation”

Dahr Jamail reports on the struggling health care situation in Iraq. The report surveys 13 Iraqi Hospitals, examines the actions taken by US military against hospitals and care workers that constitute war crimes as defined by the Geneva conventions, discusses and documents cases of US medical personnel complicit in torture through failures to document the visible signs of torture on their patients, and much more.

This report is endorsed by the B/Russell/s Tribunal, El Taller International, Asian Women’s Human Rights Council, Association of Humanitarian Lawyers, SOS Iraq, and Medical Aid for the Third World.

Download PDF Version of Iraqi Hospitals Ailing Under Occupation

Read the web version of Iraqi Hospitals Ailing Under Occupation

Please help with media outreach! Help highlight this message of debt cancellation and reconstruction by sending this press release to local media. You can also download the PDF version of this press release for printing and faxing.

Issued by Fast for Economic Justice for Iraq

For Immediate Release June 21, 2005

Contact: Jeff Leys at +41-076-5327845
Kathy Kelly at +41-076-4203126

Geneva, Switzerland–June 21–This week the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development is meeting in Geneva to discuss issues of debt accumulated by countries around the world. The debt crisis in Iraq is a central point of discussion during today’s session.

Eight international social justice activists enter the 5th day without food in Geneva and Amman, Jordan demanding economic justice for Iraq. A central fast demand is that the odious debt incurred by Saddam Hussein’s government be cancelled outright and without any economic conditions attached to the cancellation. Debt claims against Iraq would be submitted to an international arbitration tribunal. This tribunal would determine whether the debt is odious–that is, whether it was incurred by Saddam Hussein’s regime to advance his own interests at the expense of the Iraqi people. All such odious debt would be cancelled.

Reflections from a month in Iraq
by Joe Carr
Christian Peacemaker Teams

My month with the Christian Peacemaker Teams in Iraq gave me a much greater understanding of the U.S. occupation and my role in ending it.

Iraq is a very difficult place to be. A cloud of sadness and hopelessness hangs over the country; I couldn’t help but feel isolated and depressed for most of my time there. The security situation makes it difficult to go anywhere, and the heat and electricity problems keep daily life rather wretched. I struggled with boredom and inactivity as much as I did fear and insecurity.

by Ewa Jasiewicz
Big Issue Scotland — June 2005 Issue

‘What Bleeds Leads’ has been the mass media’s narrow angle when it comes to stories on Iraq. Soaring death-tolls, explosions, wailing mourners, harried police, - these are the bloody images of a typical Iraq news story.

The story that didn’t make the news last month though was that of one of Iraq’s most powerful unions – the 23,000 strong General Union of Oil Employees – holding a historic conference on Privatisation.