wfn.org | Group says Iraq sanctions are weapon of mass destruction

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Note #6486 from PCUSA NEWS to PRESBYNEWS:

11-April-2001
01129

Group says Iraq sanctions are weapon of mass destruction
 
Media silence about mounting death toll is called "a second embargo"

by Evan Silverstein

NEW YORK - The people of Iraq are suffering and dying because of a
decade-long siege conducted by the United States through its policy of
severe economic sanctions.

	That was the message of participants in a workshop for journalists employed
by religious organizations.

	Poverty and disease top the list of Iraqi citizens' concerns since the 1991
Persian Gulf War, which was followed by the U.S. sanctions that so far have
been blamed for more than a million Iraqi deaths. The desperation of the
Iraqi people has attracted little coverage by Western media, which are
focused on military and political issues.

	That was the message of religious and humanitarian officials who took part
last week in a workshop titled, "The News Embargo on Iraq: A Workshop for
Religious and Secular Journalists."

	"Sanctions are war by another name," said Richard McCutcheon, a Quaker who
recently returned from Iraq after devoting seven months to humanitarian
projects sponsored by the Mennonite Central Committee and the American
Friends Service Committee. "The people there are dying, on the one hand, and
are surviving, on the other. I don't believe it's genocide. I believe it's
war."

	Church leaders have been calling for a lifting of economic sanctions since
1992. That plea was renewed often during the two-day workshop, which started
on April 5 at the Interchurch Center in New York City. Participants also
called for more and better news reporting on the Iraqis' human plight. The
program, funded by the Presbyterian Church (USA) and other denominations,
was co-sponsored by the World Association for Christian Communication (WACC)
and that group's North American affiliate.

	"Clearly what is going on in Iraq is unjust," said Ibrahim Ramey, a Muslim
member of the Fellowship of Reconciliation who has spent time in the
country. "Unjust because the women and children are victims of their own
government and the U.S. government and an international arms system and a
war system that they did not create."

	About 60 people turned out for the workshop, including representatives of
the Religion News Service, the United Methodist News Service, Church World
Service, the American Friends Service Committee and former United Nations
humanitarian coordinators. The workshop was one of a global series of
WACC-sponsored meetings intended to bring Christian principles to bear on
specific problems and to challenge religious communicators.

	Tamara Fleming, McCutcheon's wife, who also spoke during the workshop, said
the continuing sanctions represent the "darkness" of the situation in Iraq,
and the people's "sense of survival" is the "light" there.

	"People's spirits (are) trying to make a go of it," she said, "and (they
are)continuing to get up in the morning. … Whatever struggles there are,
people are still getting up in the morning and living their lives."

	The economic sanctions - imposed by the United Nations, but chiefly
enforced by the United States and Great Britain - were imposed after the war
that ensued when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. The U.N. has a four-year-old
"oil-for-food" program designed to ease the impact of the sanctions, but it
has not come close to meeting the needs of the Iraqi people.

	Workshop participants said that, even with the "oil-for-food" program, the
sanctions are the harshest ever imposed. They were intended to force
dictator Saddam Hussein to prove that he has abandoned weapons of mass
destruction, including chemical and biological agents. So far, that hasn't
happened - but the sanctions have turned Iraq from a nation of relative
affluence into one of destitution and death. Speakers at the workshop were
careful to make clear that being against the sanctions does not mean being
in favor of Saddam.

	"The sanctions have been a failure and are causing a humanitarian crisis,
and we (must) start working to get Iraq integrated into the national and
international community," said Peter Lems of the American Friends Service
Committee, who visited Iraq two years ago.

	In 1997, UNICEF estimated that more than 1.2 million people in Iraq,
especially small children, the elderly and the sick, had died as a result of
the sanctions. Since then, the number is believed to have risen to 1.5
million.

	Iraq's child mortality rate, once comparable to those of nations of the
industrial world, is rising alarmingly: According to UNICEF, 8,000 Iraqi
children die every month. One of every four Iraqi children is chronically
malnourished, according to the U.N.

	Contaminated water, deteriorating sewage-treatment plants and a severe
decline in health care services have helped spread disease and malnutrition
among Iraq's children.

        The sketchy coverage of these events, presenters said, has created a
second embargo of sorts against the people of Iraq - a "news embargo."

	"We're also concerned about what is happening with the media in our
country, and why this moral outrage doesn't come forth in all the various
media outlets that we have in the press, with television and so forth," said
Bishop Thomas J. Gumbleton, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Detroit, who
has visited Iraq six times.

	Gumbleton said secular and religious news services alike "simply refuse to
report what is happening" in Iraq, and fail to challenge readers on
important issues.

	"We all know that's the case," Gumbleton said. "That's the main thing
that's happened to our media in this country."

	He accused the media of increasingly putting "corporate profits" before
"serving people" as more and more become properties of giant parent
companies like the Walt Disney Co.

	"We don't really have a free press anymore," Gumbleton said. "It's a
paid-for press. It's a bought press. It's bought by our government."

 	The Gulf War brought about "near apocalyptic results" to Iraq's economic
infrastructure, which up to than had been part of a "highly urbanized and
mechanized society," but now is reduced to a "pre-industrial" level,
Gumbleton said, citing a report compiled by a U.N. committee shortly after
the war ended.

	Gumbleton called the campaign a "direct attack" against the people of Iraq,
and urged churches to continue leading the campaign to stop the killing of
civilians.

	"The whole infrastructure of the nation was destroyed to make it impossible
for the people to survive," he said. "That kind of warfare, beyond any
doubt, must be condemned. I am convinced that no warfare is ever justified,
but certainly the direct attack against people, a non-military population,
can never be justified."

	Gumbleton added that when "we learn to hate and kill, we are destroying the
image of God within. We are destroying ourselves spiritually.

	"You go over there and you visit those hospitals, you go to the schools,
you go into homes and you see it on the streets, it tears your heart to see.
These sanctions are killing people."
In addition to the PC(USA), organizations that provided funding for the
event included the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries, Church World
Service, American Friends Service Committee, Mennonite Central Committee,
Maryknoll Missioners, United Church of Christ and Christian Church
(Disciples of Christ).

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