* Iraq: Massive Fraud and Corruption in Higher Education (Dirk Adriaensens, 14 September 2009) Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki told a group of educators in Washington on 25 July that his country plans to send over 50.000 students abroad over the next 5 years. The students will be studying in the U.S. and London, supposedly to rebuild the country’s once strong education system. A noble initiative at first sight, until you look further behind the official smokescreen. There are no references in Maliki’s speeches to the threats, discharges, forced migration, mass kidnappings and assassinations of Iraqi academics. Nor is the destruction of educational institutions, archaeological sites, the looting of Iraqi musea, the erasure of Iraqi, Arab and world heritage being mentioned. Further, the Iraqi government has committed to fully fund $1 billion a year to this program and will pay for tuition and fees, as well as room and board, meaning that Iraq is now sponsoring the US and UK universities. Read more.

 

* " The Story of My Shoe - My Flower to Bush, the Occupier"  Munthadar Al-Zaidi's speech on his recent release (15 Sept 2009) ...We used to be a nation in which the Arab would share with the Turkman and the Kurd and the Assyrian and the Sabean and the Yazid his daily bread. And the Shiite would pray with the Sunni in one line. And the Muslim would celebrate with the Christian the birthday of Christ, may peace be upon him, despite the fact that we shared hunger under sanctions for more than 10 years, for more than a decade. Our patience and our solidarity did not make us forget the oppression. Until we were invaded by the illusion of liberation that some had. The occupation divided one brother from another, one neighbor from another, and the son from his uncle. It turned our homes into never-ending funeral tents. And our graveyards spread into parks and roadsides. It is a plague. It is the occupation that is killing us, that is violating the houses of worship and the sanctity of our homes and that is throwing thousands daily into makeshift prisons. I am not a hero, and I admit that. But I have a point of view and I have a stance. It humiliated me to see my country humiliated. And to see my Baghdad burned...

 

* KEEPING THE SCORES OF A BRUTAL OCCUPATION * The BRussells Tribunal partial list of 437 Iraqi academics murdered under US occupation (updated 24 Feb 2010) -   *Background articles [See this List as PDF file] Our campaign to save Iraq's academics - Sign the petition online * The BRussells Tribunal partial list of 314 Iraqi and 30 non-Iraqi media professionals who died under US occupation (updated 07 Feb 2010) -  *Background articles [See this List as PDF File]

 

RENEWED CALL FOR IMMEDIATE ACTION   IAON STATEMENT, 28 July 2009 STOP THE EXECUTIONS OF THE IRAQI WOMEN!  At least nine Iraqi women risk being executed at any moment. Three other women have been executed since the beginning of June.  The women are: Samar Sa´ad Abdullah, Shuruq Hassun, Sabrine Nasser, Samira Abdullah, Um Hussain (mor Hussein, her name unknown), Hanan (her real name unknown), Dhikra Fakhry, Wassan Talib and Lamya Adnan.   * More info about our 2007 campaign against the assassination of Iraqi women: "Hanging the womb of Iraq" * Read also the "Urgent appeal on the pending execution of nine Iraqi women"

 

“Responsibility to Protect” (R2P): Imperialism in a new dress On July 23rd 2009, a debate concerning the Responsibility to Protect (R2P) took place in front of the General Assembly of the United Nations.  The « Responsibility to Protect » is a notion agreed to by world leaders in 2005, that holds States responsible for shielding their own populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and related crimes against humanity, requiring the international community to step in if this obligation is not met. This last point is suspected to be related to the « right of humanitarian intervention » and is the source of many debates. The discussion was initiated by General Assembly President Miguel D’Escoto (from Nicaragua) and gathered Noam Chomsky, Gareth Evans, a supporter of R2P, former Foreign Minister of Australia and, until recently, president of the International Crisis Group, Ngugi wa Thiong'o,  a prominent African writer and defender of human rights, and Jean Bricmont, member of the executive committee of the BRussells Tribunal. Here is the text of Jean Bricmont's speech.

 

* ESSENTIAL STUDIES published by the BRussells Tribunal * Torture in Iraqi Prisons - Appeal for Investigation - Dar Babel Publishers - 19 January 2009. [PDF] * Crimes of the Century: Occupation & Contaminating Iraq with Depleted Uranium - Dr. Souad N. Al-Azzawi -15 June 2008. * Deterioration of Iraqi Women's Rights and Living Conditions Under Occupation [PDF] - A survey by Dr. Souad N. Al-Azzawi - 19 Dec 2007 - Mujer iraquí y ocupación - Traducido del inglés para IraqSolidaridad por Consuelo Delgado [HTML] * The effects of the American use of prohibited weapons on the health condition in Fallujah [PDF] - MHRI 10 Dec 2007 * US Genocide In Iraq [PDF] - Dr. Ian Douglas, Hana and Abdul Ilah Al Bayaty -  July 2007 | Arabic [PDF]:  الولايات المتحدة في العراق جريمة إبادة جماعية *  Iraq’s Lost Generation: Impact and Implications [PDF] Dr Ismail Jalili's Report to the House of Lords Commission on Iraq - 17 June 2007 * Research on Death Squads in  Iraq [PDF] Report of  Monitoring of Human Rights in Iraq Network (MHRI)  - Dec 2006 * Depleted Uranium Radioactive Contamination In Iraq [PDF]- Dr. Souad N. Al-Azzawi -  Aug 2006 - [HTML] * Iraqi Hospitals Ailing Under Occupation [PDF]- Dahr Jamail  - June 2005 - More essential PDF Dossiers. Click here -

 

Press release: 'Le Feyt Declaration' on Iraq draws widespread support from world figures   * Peace in Iraq is an option Le Feyt Declaration  -  Statement of the International Anti-Occupation Network (15 Sept 2008) The US occupation of Iraq is illegal and cannot be made legal. All that has derived from the occupation is illegal and illegitimate and cannot gain legitimacy. These facts are incontrovertible. What are their consequences?  Peace, stability and democracy in Iraq are impossible under occupation. Foreign occupation is opposed by nature to the interests of the occupied people, as proven by the six million Iraqis displaced both inside and outside Iraq, the planned assassination of Iraqi academics and professionals and the destruction of their culture, and the more than one million killed. READ the declaration. International figures who join us in our commitment to a true end to the occupation and to a lasting, sustainable peace in Iraq.   Please express your solidarity with this campaign, click here to ENDORSE online.

 

* Denis Halliday, Hans von Sponeck: Two former UN humanitarian coordinators for IRAQ appeal for the release of former deputy prime minister of Iraq Tariq Aziz (02 January 2007)    [Spanish version] *  Urgent alert by The BRussells Tribunal Committee: Imminent Threat to Iraqi Lawyer Badee Izzat Aref (7 April 2007) * Popcorn and champagne: The Trial of Tariq Aziz  (Gabriele Zamparini 06 May 2008) * Tariq Aziz jailed in 'very bad' conditions: son (17 Sept 2008) * Renewed call for the release of  former deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz (Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck, 2008) * “My father’s condition is worsening by the day” - An urgent call to help Tariq Aziz (Hans von Sponeck, 09 May 2009)

 

* Messages to the People - Berichten aan de bevolking - Avis à la population   95  Statements commemorating five years of war in Iraq (10 March 2008) - [PDF: click here]   Abdul Ilah Al-Bayaty, Tariq Ali, Harold Pinter, Eduardo Galeano, Dahr Jamail, Henning Mankell, Michael Parenti, Felicity Arbuthnot, Hans von Sponeck, Haifa Zangana, Nawal El Saadawi, CEOSI a.o.

 

* IRAQI OIL FOR IRAQI REFUGEES - Sign the petition now! More than 4.5 million Iraqis — a fifth of the population — have been displaced inside and outside their country due to the sectarian policies of the occupation and the governments it has installed since the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003. The international community, the occupation powers, and the government in Iraq are legally required to support and protect Iraqi refugees. Iraqi refugees are Iraqi citizens who have a full right to live in dignity, a right to benefit equally from national resources, and a right to return to their homes. The UN Security Council, as the highest body of the UN, has the power and legal duty to ensure that the needs of Iraqi refugees are met by passing a resolution to require that the Iraqi state allocate proportionate revenue to responsible agencies and hosting countries. * Read also: Oil for Iraqi citizens  (Hana Al Bayaty, 10 January 2008)  Olie voor de Iraakse burgers

 

* READ MORE ABOUT   Our campaign to save Iraq's academics. Sign the petition online   Partial list of 437 Iraqi academics murdered under US occupation   |   The Endangered Iraqi journalists: Partial list of 314 Iraqi and 30 non-Iraqi media professionals died under US occupation   |  The Children of Iraq   |  Iraq: the largest humanitarian crisis on the planet   |  Christians in Iraq face liquidation   |  Iraqi refugees  |    The situation of Iraqi Healthworkers   |  Torture and Prison Abuse in Iraq   |  Iraqi Women Under Occupation   |  The looting of Iraq's Cultural Heritage   |  Comments on the Lancet Survey and other mortality studies   |   Big Oil's Occupation of Iraq   |  The Salvador Option and Death Squads   |  Israeli Involvement in the Occupation of Iraq   |  Military Bases   |  Voices of Resistance   |  Remembering Falluja   |  The use of WMD by the US army   |  The Events in Samarra   |  The Iraqi Constitution   |  The Illegal trial and verdict of Saddam Hussein   |  Lieutenant Watada's War Against the War   |  Statements and articles of the BRussells Tribunal on Lebanon   |  'New Middle East' Borders   |  Opinion Polls   |   The BRussells Tribunal PDF Dossiers   |   MAPS   |   Breaking reports & Articles   |  De zaak Bahar Kimyongur   |  And even more background information...   |  Support the Palestinian Youth & Children Relief Centre in Shatila refugee camp   |

 

The war is costing $720 million a day or $500,000 a minute. Defund the war in Iraq. Refund human needs in Iraq and the rest of the world. Watch this 2 min. video.

 

* IRAQI KILLING FIELDS :  the largest humanitarian crisis on the planet - ©opyright U$A™   * Partial list of 437 Iraqi academics murdered under US occupation (updated 24 Feb 2010) - [See this List as PDF file] * Partial list of 314 Iraqi and 30 non-Iraqi media professionals who died under US occupation (updated 07 Feb 2010) - Background articles [See this List as PDF File]   * 2,000 Iraqi physicians have been murdered under US occupation (11 April 2006) * Hundreds of legal workers have left the country. At least 210 lawyers and judges killed since the US-led invasion in 2003, in addition to dozens injured in attacks against them. (30 April 2007)   * Based on studies done by local NGOs, at least 15,000 Iraqis have disappeared in the past four years of US occupation (18 April 2007)   * Iraq’s child mortality rate has increased by a staggering 150 percent since 1990. Some 122,000 Iraqi children died in 2005 before reaching their fifth birthday. More than half of these deaths were among newborn babies in the first month of life  (08 May 2007)   * only 50 percent of primary school-age children are attending class, down from 80 percent in 2005. Approximately 1,500 children are known to be held in detention facilities. (Radhika Coomaraswamy, U.N. special representative of the secretary-general for children and armed conflict, 25 April 2008)   * Up to 75 percent of Iraq's doctors, pharmacists and nurses have left their jobs since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003. More than half of those have emigrated (Medact 16 Jan 2008) * There are five million Iraqi orphans as reported by official government statistics, urging the government, parliament, and NGOs to be in constant contact with Iraq's parentless children. (18 Dec 2007) * Narmeen Othman, Iraq’s acting minister for women’s affairs, put the number of Iraqi widows as high as 2 million in a country of 27 million people. (31 Jan 2008)   * 50,000 Iraqi refugees forced into prostitution (24 June 2007)   * Years of war, current insecurity take toll on environment (07 June 2007) - Insecurity and lack of funds prevent cleansing of polluted sites (19 April 2007)   * 8.000.000 Iraqis require immediate emergency aid, with nearly half of the population living in absolute poverty. * 4.000.000 people are lacking food and in dire need of different types of humanitarian assistance. * Only 60% of the 4.000.000 people who depend on food assistance have access to rations from the public distribution system, down from 96% in 2004. * The number of Iraqis without access to adequate water supplies has risen from 50% to 70% since 2003. * 80% of people in Iraq do not have safe access to effective sanitation. * Child malnutrition rates have risen from 19% before the US-led invasion in 2003 to 28% currently. (Oxfam report 29 July 2007)   * The war is costing $720 million a day or $500,000 a minute. The money spent on one day of the Iraq war could buy homes for almost 6,500 families or health care for 423,529 children, or could outfit 1.27 million homes with renewable electricity. (AFSC 21 Sep 2007)   * More than 3.000.000 Iraqi refugees and 2.778.305 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in Iraq. In Jordan: 700.000-750.000 - In Syria: 1.500.000-2.000.000 - In Egypt: 150.000 - In Iran: 100.000 persons - In Lebanon: 40.000 - In the Gulf States: 200.000 - In Turkey: 10.000 - In the rest of the world: no estimates available. (IRCO 01 July 2007) * Look at Iraq today: democracy and human rights American style (06 June 2007) * Iraqi Red Crescent Organization: Report On IDP’s In Iraq - Update 31 May 2007  [PDF] 26 pages - June 2007 * Statistics on Refugees (Updated September 2007) * Comments on the Lancet Survey and other mortality studies (Updated 02 June 2008) * The effects of the American use of prohibited weapons on the health condition in Fallujah (10 Dec 2007) * Christians in Iraq face liquidation (Sept - Oct 2008)

 

* ONLY RESISTANCE IS LEGAL (Hana and Abdul Ilah Albayaty, Ian Douglas - BRussells Tribunal Committee, 05 Oct 2006)    [Français] - [Arabic] - [Spanish]

 

* Statement of the BRussells Tribunal: US illegality in Iraq: Where is the limit? (12 March 2006)

 

* BRussells Tribunal & CEOSI CAMPAIGN: "Save Iraq's Academics" * 10.000 signatories of petition to save Iraq's academics. Sign online now * Partial list of murdered Iraqi Academics *  Principal endorsers of this campaign: Noam Chomsky, Tony Benn, Dario Fo, John Coetzee, Harold Pinter, Eduardo Galeano, Howard Zinn, Michael Parenti, Denis Halliday, Hans von Sponeck, Bianca Jagger, Naomi Klein, Susan George, John Pilger, Tonio Negri and many others..... * Madrid International Seminar - Final Resolution (April 2006) * The Jalili Report  [PDF] (02 May 2006) - The Jalili Report [HTML] (Sarah Meyer) * Articles and background information - Resources * Iraqi academics in the killing zone, Dirk Adriaensens (02 Feb 2006) * Iraq’s education system on the verge of collapse (Dirk Adriaensens, 18 April 2007) * Questionnaires for families of assassinated or threatened Iraqi academics * Call for assistance in documenting and registering assassinated Iraqi academics (08 Dec 2006) - [Arabic] * Assassinated Iraqi academics: Frequently Asked Questions * Action Needed Over Detention of Iraqi Education Ministry Officials. Unknown numbers murdered, dozen still illegally held (BRussells Tribunal 22 Nov 2006) MORE: *  14 November 2006: Declaration Regarding The Widespread Violence In Iraq And The Killing Of University Professors, approved at the General Assembly of the Conference of Spanish University Rectors (CRUE)  * Dr. Issam al-Rawi, head of the University Professor's Union, assassinated (30 Oct 2006)

 

* Study Claims Iraq's 'Excess' Death Toll Has Reached 655,000 Mortality after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: a cross-sectional cluster sample survey by Iraqi physicians and overseen by epidemiologists at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health, published in The Lancet (11 Oct 2006)  [PDF] Read the Comments on the Lancet Study and other Mortality Surveys * Medics beg for help as Iraqis die needlessly (The Independent, 20 Oct 2006) *  The Collapse of Iraq's Health Care Services (Counterpunch, 16 Oct 2006) * Four years into the occupation: No health for Iraq (Dr. Bert De Belder, 20 March 2007)

"They have plundered the world, stripping naked the land in their hunger… they are driven by greed, if their enemy be rich; by ambition, if poor… They ravage, they slaughter, they seize by false pretenses, and all of this they hail as the construction of empire. And when in their wake nothing remains but a desert, they call that peace." Cornelius Tacitus, De Vita Gnæi Julii Agricolæ cap. xxx (98 CE) in the Loeb Library ed., vol. 35, p. 80 (S.H. transl.)

 

CAMPAIGN:  Stop violations of the right to health care in Iraq!     * Solidarity call with the plight of Iraqi health workers  [ English - NL - FR - ESP ]  * Sign the Statement * |  * List of Signatories *

 

* Jean-Paul Sartre: On Genocide (1967) * Breaking reports and articles about Iraq * Selected writings of members of the BRussells Tribunal

 

World Tribunal on Iraq  23-27 June 2005 - Istanbul:  culminating session - Declaration of the Jury of Conscience - [English] - [Français] * Closing Speech by Arundhati Roy - June 27 2005 * 5 part video of the Istanbul culminating session       World Tribunal on Iraq: Making the Case Against War (Paperback)

 

February 20, 2005 President Bush, the world holds you accountable ! Photo & press gallery of the BRussells Tribunal action --------------------------- May 17, 2005 BUSH and BLAIR are called to Justice around the World. WTI representatives deliver Law Summon to Bush.

The BRussells Tribunal was a hearing committee composed of academics, intellectuals and artists in the tradition of the Russell Tribunal, set up in 1967 to investigate war crimes committed during the Vietnam War. The hearing was scheduled for 14-17th April 2004 at The Beursschouwburg and Les Halles in Brussels. It was presided by Professor François Houtart, who participated in the Bertrand Russell War Crimes Tribunal on US Crimes in Vietnam in 1967, who is one of the founding fathers of the World Social Forum in Porto Allegre, and who currently is a senior adviser to the President of the United Nations General Assembly Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann. The Tribunal was directed against the war in Iraq and the Imperial war policies of the Bush II administration. Its main focus was the ‘Project for the New American Century’, the think tank behind this war, in particular three of the co-signatories of the mission statement: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, as they are the physical link between the discourse and the brutal practice of the New Imperial World Order as designed by PNAC. Read more...

"Our armies do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors or enemies, but as liberators. Your wealth has been stripped of you by unjust men ... The government of Iraq , and the future of your country, will soon belong to you. ... We will end a brutal regime ... so that Iraqis can live in security.”
General F. S. Maude, commander of the British forces, to the people of Mesopotamia , 1917

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The BRussells Tribunal: Conclusions of the commission (Brussels, 17 April 2004)

[ Dutch | Français | English | Arabic | Spanish | Italian | Portuguese | Russian ]

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* The formal presentation of the conclusions of the BRussels Tribunal was followed by an energetic debate between the public and the members of the commission. Read edited extracts from responses by Samir Amin and Dennis Halliday to questions raised from the floor

 

* Reflections on the BRussells Tribunal, by Tony Simpson, Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation

Overview BRussells Tribunal on Indymedia - Read Also: The Ones Who Say NO