Voices in the Wilderness is being prosecuted by the US Treasury Department for the crime of exporting medicine to Iraq.

"Sanctions are not intended to harm the people of Iraq. That is why the sanctions regime has always specifically exempted food and medicine."

(U.S. State Department, March 2000)

"For whatever reason, people want to flout embargoes. The bottom line from our perspective is, for us, we enforce the law - and we will continue to do so aggressively."

Tony Fratto, Director of public affairs, US Treasury Department

The US Justice Department is suing Voices in the Wilderness to try to collect a fine of $20,000 for bringing medicines to the people of Iraq. Over the past eight years, Voices in the Wilderness has organized more than 72 delegations to Iraq made up of teachers, veterans, social workers, artists, health care professionals, trades people and people of faith. Many of these delegates carried symbolic amounts of medicine as an act of civil disobedience against the injustice of the economic sanctions; they then returned to the United States to tell about the brutalizing effects of the sanctions, magnified by the US bombing of the Iraqi civilian infrastructure during last 13 years. Voices in the Wiilderness will nonviolently resist all payments, fines, taxes, and laws that perpetuate war and restrict our rights. We will continue to send medicine and relief to Iraq, as a still devastated infrastructure denies the basic human rights of Iraqis, an infrastructure the US systematically destroyed through sanctions, bombing, and occupation.

US Department of Treasury Threats and VITW Responses