15 June 2008

Document – Iraq: Rhetoric and reality: the Iraqi refugee crisis
Full report
Amnesty International
…Zahra11is a 44-year-old Shi’a widow with four children. Her Sunni husband was abducted and killed in May 2007 in Baghdad, reportedly by members of an armed group. Zahra told Amnesty International that the family lived in the Rasheed district of Baghdad where, in early 2007, they and several of their neighbours received threatening notes believed to be from armed groups. Zahra said that one note threatened that they would be killed if they did not leave their houses. On the day Zahra’s husband was abducted, he had left the house in the morning to take exams at the Mustansiriya University of Baghdad. In the afternoon, Zahra received a phone call from the kidnappers demanding a ransom. Zahra put about US$50,000 in a bag which was collected by a group of unmasked men. Despite this, her husband was killed – shot in the head, according to the death certificate. After the killing, Zahra moved to a predominantly Shi’a neighbourhood in the Karkh district of Baghdad but she was advised not to stay as she was known to be the widow of a Sunni. In September 2007 she fled with her children, mother and sister to Damascus, where they received emergency aid from UNHCR. The children have suffered psychological problems since their father was killed. Zahra told Amnesty International: “I will never return to Iraq where they killed my husband and took our house away. What can I tell my children? That their father was killed because he was a Sunni?”..

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=44907

Political Schizophrenia…
Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues
…Today Amnesty International in a damning report states that 5 million Iraqi refugees represent the WORST refugee crisis since World War II. Even worse than the Palestinian one. One of the main culprits behind this mass exodus is none other but Muqtada Al-Sadr whom some of you shamelessly praise. These 5 million Iraqis are subjected daily — to deportation, imprisonment, insults…They are not allowed to seek any form of employment. Their children are not allowed to go to school or universities. They are not allowed to move around. And they are not allowed to VOICE themselves. That same report states that there is an ever increasing POVERTY, MALNUTRITION, LACK OF MEDICAL CARE, DWINDLING RESOURCES, DEEP PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAUMA, PHYSICAL ILLNESSES AND INFIRMITIES, CHILD LABOUR and PROSTITUTION. It also says that the TOTAL forgetfulness and abandonment of the Iraqi refugees by the international community is unprecedented. – While others are singing to the tunes of the new Iraqi family and it’s “democratic” structure, over 250 journalists have been murdered in Iraq. This new Iraq is considered to be the most dangerous place for journalists and free speech. Under the “dictator”, no journalist was murdered. Today, anyone who speaks against the government, the sectarianism, the sectarian shia parties who form the government, anyone who speaks against the militias tied to these parties whether it is the Jaafari clan, the Dawa clan, the Sadr clan or the Badr clan is silenced by death…

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Document – Denmark: Forcible return / torture and other ill-treatment
Amnesty International
The Danish authorities are preparing to forcibly return four men to Iraq, where they would be in danger of human rights abuses including torture or death. Denmark is a state party to a number of treaties that expressly prohibit them from returning anyone to a country where they would face this kind of danger…Any asylum-seekers or refugees forcibly returned to Iraq would face very real risks of being tortured or otherwise ill-treated, detained arbitrarily by the security forces or even killed, or kidnapped for ransom by the various armed groups operating in the country. Amnesty International remains opposed to the forcible return of any Iraqi refugee or asylum-seeker to any part of Iraq…

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Iraqi refugees facing desperate situation
Amnesty International
Iraq remains one of the most dangerous places in the world. Its refugee crisis is worsening. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), since the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, an estimated 4.7 million have been displaced both within and outside Iraq and for many the situation is desperate…”Many refugees are finding it difficult to survive,” said Philip Luther, Deputy Director of Amnesty International’s Middle East and North Africa Programme. “They are banned from working and unable to pay rents, buy adequate food for themselves and their families, or obtain medical treatment. Those lucky enough to escape Iraq rely on savings which, for many, are rapidly running out.” Many families are destitute and facing impossible choices and new risks, like having to resort to child labour and the prospect of being forced through circumstances to undertake “voluntary” return to Iraq…

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Iraq: World governments misleading and failing Iraqi refugees
Amnesty International
…Amnesty International said that the Government of Iraq and states involved in the invasion of Iraq in 2003, in particular the USA and the UK, highlight “improved” security or “voluntary” returns to Iraq out of political expedience, to demonstrate that their military involvement has been a success. “Rhetoric cannot hide the reality that the wider human rights situation in Iraq remains dire,” said Amnesty International. “People are being killed every month by armed groups, the Multinational Force, Iraqi security forces and private military and security guards. Kidnappings, torture, ill-treatment and arbitrary detention pervade the daily lives of Iraqis. People continue to attempt to flee, something that is now very difficult with the recent imposition of visa restrictions on Iraqis by Jordan and Syria.”..

According to the latest estimates of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the number of Iraqis who have fled their homes has now reached 4.7 million, the highest since the US-led invasion of Iraq and the subsequent internal armed conflict.

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Gaza: Humiliation and Dying Children
Ramzy Baroud
…The story struck me beyond its value in attempting to analyze mainstream reporting, or the callousness required of a military spokesperson to defend the decapitation of a 6-year-old as necessary retaliation. What is equally disturbing is the fact that Palestinian factions fail to see in Hadeel’s untimely death a compelling reason for unity, and carry on with their political sparring as if they have the luxury of endless time, while helpless Palestinians are victimized daily; victimization that is followed by no serious repercussions, save the firing of useless rockets that are used to fuel yet more Israeli ‘retaliation’, thus justifying the slow genocide and the starvation of the imprisoned Palestinians of Gaza. Some Palestinians, especially those in Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas’ camp, are still struggling with their sense of priorities…

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This was done in your name
clammyc
…Brain damage, cleft palate, deformities, cancer, early death, Down’s Syndrome, stillborn babies, miscarriages, heart defects and missing limbs are just some of the “abnormalities” that are being seen at an alarming rate in Iraq over the past few years, not to mention bodies where the skin basically melted off after exposure to these dangerous and immoral chemical weapons use. And by the way, this is not limited to Iraqis. As noted last year, Iraq vets have an alarming increase in cancer rates as well..

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Narratives Under Siege: (15) “We Could not Even Bury our Daughter”
PCHR – Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
On June 11, eight year old Hadeel Al-Sumairi was killed when her home in south eastern Gaza was shelled by the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF). Less than a week earlier, eight year old Aya Hamdan Al-Najjar was killed by a rocket fired from an IOF helicopter. These two young girls had been living just a few kilometers apart, in villages in south eastern Gaza, near the border with Israel. Their violent deaths highlight both the continual dangers facing families who live anywhere near the Israeli border – and the grim and rising child death toll in the Gaza Strip. Sixty two children have been killed by IOF in the Gaza Strip this year – almost double the number of children who were killed by the IOF in Gaza during the whole of last year. The Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) is still investigating the circumstances of Hadeel Al-Sumairi’s death. Her uncle, Amin Suleiman Ahmad Al-Sumairi, has given PCHR an eye-witness account of the IOF invasion of Al-Qarara village near Khan Yunis, where Hadeel was killed…

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Disunity worsens Gaza plight
AlJazeera.net
One year after Hamas, the Palestinian movement, seized control of the Gaza Strip from President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah party, leaders say Palestinian unity remains an elusive dream. Ghazi Hamad, a senior aide to Ismail Haniya, the leader of Hamas in Gaza, has acknowledged that the infighting has damaged the Palestinian cause. “This is a catastrophe, a disaster. We have to go back to national unity,” Hamad said on Saturday. On the first anniversary of the Hamas takeover, Palestinian newspaper colunmists echoed similar sentiments, calling on leaders to settle their differences through talks…

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Many at Guantanamo had low-level or no terrorism ties
TOM LASSETER, McClatchy Newspapers
…An eight-month McClatchy investigation in 11 countries on three continents has found that Akhtiar was one of dozens and perhaps hundreds of men whom the U.S. has wrongfully imprisoned in Afghanistan, Cuba and elsewhere on the basis of flimsy or fabricated evidence, old personal scores or bounty payments. McClatchy interviewed 66 released detainees along with a number of local officials, primarily in Afghanistan, and reviewed available U.S. military tribunal documents and other records. Most of the 66 were low-level Taliban grunts, innocent Afghan villagers or ordinary criminals, the McClatchy investigation found. At least seven had been working for the U.S.-backed Afghan government and had no ties to militants, according to Afghan local officials…

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A THOUSAND AND ONE CHALABIS
Malcom Lagauche
Many Americans knew nothing about Ahmed Chalabi until the illegal March 2003 invasion of Iraq. From 2002 until the staged toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad in April 2003, Chalabi was portrayed by the administration as Iraq’s George Washington. However, U.S. plans to have him take over Iraq fizzled and Chalabi is out of the loop for a leadership role. Despite his political demise, Chalabi is still raking in the bucks (dinars) in massive amounts in Iraq with his shady dealings. I have known of Ahmed Chalabi for about a decade and a half. His organization (started and funded by the Clinton administration), the Iraqi National Congress (INC), has followers in the city of El Cajon, California, a metropolis of more than 100,000 inhabitants located just outside San Diego. El Cajon, with surrounding towns, is home to more than 30,000 Iraqi expatriates, mostly Chaldeans, Iraqi Christians…

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Int’l Community Failing Iraqi Refugees
Mohammed A. Salih
The international community, especially the United States, has depicted a “false picture of the security situation” in Iraq in order to encourage refugees to return to a country where the situation is still “too dire”, said Amnesty International, a prestigious London-based rights group, in a statement Friday. Accusing Western and neighbouring countries of evading their responsibility toward Iraqi refugees, Sarnata Reynolds, director of the USA refugee programme of Amnesty International, said: “The United States has a unique responsibility to all people displaced by the Iraq conflict.”…

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IRAQ: The Love Stories Are Gone
Ali al-Fadhily*
The deaths are not the only tragedies to have fallen upon Iraq’s love stories. “We were engaged to be married after the end of the war,” Hussam Abdulla, a 28-year-old engineer from Baghdad told IPS. “We thought the war would not last more than a month, and so we planned our marriage for May 2003. But everything went wrong. I was detained for two years, and my fiancée’s family had to flee to Egypt because her father was a senior army officer whose life was threatened first by occupation forces and later by death squads.” Abdulla’s engagement never led to marriage. And it was the lucky ones who fled the country early. Others stayed on to face death, detention, or a living hell at home. Army officers, doctors, journalists and artists came particularly to be targeted by death squads…Stories of broken engagements and marriages are everywhere in Baghdad…This is the kind of love story Iraqis tell nowadays. “The country of the Arabian Nights and of wonderful poetry is no longer good for love,” Maki al-Nazzal, political analyst and poet, told IPS. “All Iraqi poetry under occupation is now about death and separation.”…

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Karzai threatens cross-border pursuit into Pakistan
Reuters
Afghan President Hamid Karzai threatened on Sunday to send troops into neighbouring Pakistan to kill Taliban militants if they continued cross-border attacks into Afghanistan. The self-proclaimed Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud and other Taliban officials in recent weeks have vowed to send fighters into Afghanistan for the war against Afghan and foreign forces…

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Hitler Youth in the West Bank
Khalid Amayreh
Last week, the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem released video clips showing masked Jewish settlers ganging up on and severely beating elderly Palestinian peasants near the town of Yatta, southwest of Hebron. At least three Palestinians were wounded in the unprovoked assault, including a man and his wife, both in their early sixties. The latest act of settler terror was not an isolated incident, as official Israeli spokespersons would often claim. It represents a disturbing and persistent phenomenon as young and usually heavily armed settlers continue to attack Palestinian farmers, peasants and shepherds and vandalize their property in an effort to drive them away from their lands and villages…

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Sadrists Won’t Contest Provincial Elections
Cernig
…Some will see these new developments as proof that Sadr is a spent force – “pulling out of the elections to avoid embarrassing losses and keeping most of the Mahdi Army from fighting so that it will not face defeat by U.S. and Iraqi troops” – although it seems more likely that Sadr is making these moves so that his movement doesn’t become a spent force. If it doesn’t contest elections or get involved in violence then it won’t face attrition by US and Iraqi central government military pressure and will be well placed later to assume more power in post-occupation Iraq…

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Iraqi Forces Mass Outside Southern City of Amara
ANDREW E. KRAMER and ALISSA J. RUBIN, NYTimes
The Iraqi Army continued to mass troops outside the southern city of Amara on Sunday and Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, offered a three-day amnesty and weapons buyback program to militants willing to surrender. Similar offers in the past few months have presaged other military operations, in Basra, the Sadr City slum of Baghdad and in Mosul in northern Iraq. This time, Mr. Maliki is preparing for an operation against the capital of a rural marsh region in southern Iraq, on the Iranian border, where Iraqi officials say a poisonous blend of militia lawlessness and weapons smuggling from Iran has created a chaotic situation…

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Iraqi refugee crisis grows as West turns its back
Kim Sengupta, Indipendent
The plight of Iraqi refugees is now worse than ever, with millions struggling to survive in desperate conditions and with little hope of finding sanctuary. While the crisis continues, the world community, especially Western countries, have not only failed to help but are also erecting fresh obstacles to prevent the dispossessed men, women and children from settling on their shores, says a new report by Amnesty International…The Iraqi diaspora is now one of the largest in modern times, with more than two million people fleeing abroad. But the ferocious strife and the breakdown in law and order have led to another wave of about 2.7 million fleeing their homes but unable to escape the country…

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Sadr’s followers to support candidates outside movement in upcoming provincial elections
Xinhua
The followers of anti-U.S. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr will not field candidates under their own political movement but will support any qualified and independent candidate, a Sadr aide said on Sunday. Sheik Salah al-Obeidi, Sadr’s spokesman in the holy Shiite city of Najaf said “the Sadr political movement is not boycotting the (provincial) elections but we call on our followers to vote for independent candidates even if they are from other party lists.”…

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CONDI’S ARROGANCE OF POWER AND SELF IMPORTANCE
Desertpeace
Condi comes and goes…. but the occupation remains. Condi comes and goes…. but the genocide continues….Does she think she is fooling anyone, the US taxpayer in particular who is footing the bill for her lavish trips abroad? Her term is almost over…. is she working under the assumption that McCain has already been elected by the State of Florida to continue in the footsteps of the Dubya Administration?---

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June 15, 2008: 19 Iraqis Killed, 29 Wounded
Margaret Griffis, Antiwar.com
At least 19 Iraqis were killed and 29 more were wounded in the latest violence. Several more people were wounded during a bombing in Baghdad; however, no Coalition casualties were reported. Meanwhile, Iran continues to shell border regions in Iraq as part of their campaign against PJAK rebels. In Baghdad, an Iraqi army officer, his wife and his mother were killed during a home invasion in Adel; the officer’s son was injured…

Read the full article / Leggi l’articolo completo: www.uruknet.de/?p=44913