Gideon Polya, “World Tribunal on Iraq charges UK and US with war crimes”, MWC News, 28 July 2005.
World Tribunal on Iraq charges UK and US with war crimes
A "Jury of Conscience" from 10 countries constituted a World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI) that met in Istanbul from 24-26 June 2005 and culminated a series of inquiries held in numerous major cities throughout the world. The jury included the famous Indian writer Arundhati Roy and a variety of other distinguished people from around the world and from callings including science, law, writing and humanitarian activism.
In short, the WTI Jury, after hearing expert testimony from scores of people from around the world, concluded that the UK, the US and their Coalition partners had participated in an illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq and in doing so had violated international covenants on war and the treatment of prisoners of war and civilians set out in the UN Charter, international law, the post-WW2 Nuremberg Principles and the Geneva Conventions.
The report of the WTI Jury is summarized below following the main subdivisions of their report [1].
I. Overview of WTI Findings
The US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq involved the following: illegal invasion without UN sanction; a pre-invasion falsehood campaign; an inhumane and deadly sanctions campaign from mid-1990 onwards; ignoring of massive global opposition; failure of established politico-legal constraints; economic, social and environmental devastation of Iraq; exacerbation of Iraqi internal divisions; a huge death toll (100,000 civilian deaths) and 60,000 Iraqis in custody; illegal privatization and appropriation of major slabs of the Iraqi economy; occupier-imposed laws; and massive, continuing and legitimate Iraqi opposition to US occupation.
II. WTI Charges
The WTI Jury established numerous charges against specific Coalition-associated governments, corporations and individuals as follows:
A. Against the UK and US governments for: plotting and executing illegal invasion; targetting civilian areas; horrendous use of indiscriminate force; use of DU munitions in contravention of health standards; warfare immensely damaging to civilians; serious degradation of the status of Iraqi women; killing of protestors; individual and collective punishments without due process or regard for civilians (most notably the destruction of Fallujah); degradation and torture of Iraqi soldiers and civilians; illegal re-writing of Iraqi laws; environmental devastation; destruction of unique cultural heritage; media censorship and violent targetting of journalists and intellectuals; official re-defining of torture and use of "rendition" to permit egregious torture in third countries; ignoring global public conscience; and installation of de facto policies for further illegal wars.
B. Against the UN Security Council for: failure to protect Iraqis; imposition of deadly sanctions from mid-1990 onwards; allowing immense UK-US bombing since 1991; giving free rein to the US; failure to stop war crimes; and failure to make the US-led Coalition accountable.
C. Against Coalition governments for collaboration in the illegal invasion, occupation and war crimes.
D. Against governments of other countries for logistical support and other complicity.
E. Against private corporations for profitable contractual involvements.
F. Against major media corporations for: disseminating falsehoods (e.g. the non-existent WMDs); non-reportage of atrocities; non-reportage of humanitarian dissent; collaboration with Coalition bigotry, racism and xenophobia; normalizing war as an acceptable option; permitting fraudulent use of resources for illegal war; and promoting dangerous corporate-military security perspectives.
III. WTI Recommendations{mosgoogle right}
The WTI Jury supported the legitimacy of Iraqi resistance to occupation and made a series of recommendations, namely: Coalition withdrawal; reparations to Iraq; retraction of imposed laws; closure of offshore US prisons and proper treatment of prisoners under international law; exhaustive investigation of those guilty of war crimes (including many named people); accountability processes to assess involvement of journalists and corporations; international non-violent actions against numerous, named complicit corporations; conscientious objection by young people and soldiers to participation in illegal war; an international campaign for dismantling US military bases abroad; and that people worldwide resist government support for the occupation of Iraq.
Media non-reportage of the WTI Jury findings
The WTI Jury findings are consonant with the views of decent people throughout the world but the corporate mainstream media have substantially ignored these important findings [2]. The WTI report was repeatedly concerned with the malignant role played in the Iraq debacle by dishonest and complicit mainstream media. Nevertheless a Google search for "World Tribunal on Iraq" yielded 54,200 URLs, indicating coverage by alternative media. Clearly decent people should eschew mainstream media that have lied, war-mongered and supported egregious Coalition war crimes in Iraq.
Quantitating Coalition war crimes in Iraq - WTI Jury report conservative
The WTI Jury report is actually quite conservative and this is reflected in their summary of the casualties of the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq. The following UN-derived statistics support the tenor of the WTI report.
Using UN demographic data [3] it is possible to calculate the under-5 infant mortality for Iraq from 1950-2005. The total 5 year under-5 infant mortality in millions/average population in millions for the indicated "pentades" (in parentheses) are as follows: 0.313/5.802 (1950-1955), 0.289/6.798 (1955-1960), 0.299/7.961 (1960-1965), 0.291/9.351 (1965-1970), 0.291/11.042 (1970-1975), 0.258/13.033 (1975-1980), 0.221/15.191 (1980-1985), 0.196/17.402 (1985-1990), 0.321/20.074 (1990-1995), 0.555/23.354 (1995-2000), 0.596/26.941 (2000-2005).
The under-5 infant mortality steadily declined in the post-1950 era but after Western intervention with sanctions in mid-1990 (and thence war, continued sanctions, invasion and occupation) there was a dramatic and sustained increase in infant mortality. A similar disaster is evident from estimates of avoidable mortality (excess mortality), the difference between the ACTUAL mortality and deaths EXPECTED in a peaceful country with the same demographics. Thus the avoidable mortality and under-5 infant mortality for Iraq have been 5.2 million and 3.6 million, respectively (1950-2005), 1.7 million and 1.2 million, respectively (1991-2005), and 0.4 million and 0.3 million, respectively (post-invasion) [4].
According to the latest United Nations Childrens' Fund (UNICEF) report (2005) [5], in 2003 the under-5 infant mortality was 110,000 in Iraq as compared to 1,000 in the invading and occupying US Coalition country, Australia (noting that in 2003 these countries had populations of about 25 and 20 million, respectively). This horrendous mortality arises because annual per capita medical expenditure in Occupied Iraq is only about 0.5% of that in metropolitan USA, giving rise to the description of "passive genocide" [6].
The average annual death rate of Western civilians from jihadist violence has been 0.00003 per 100 (for the last 20 years) and 0.0001 per 100 (over the last 5 years). As outlined in the WTI report, the 9/11 atrocity (3,000 victims) was dishonestly used as the excuse for a pre-planned invasion of Iraq [1] and for an envisaged "endless" "War on Terror". In contrast, the annual death rate of under-5 year old infants is an appalling 2.6 per 100 in US-occupied Iraq due to gross Coalition violation of the Geneva Conventions for protection of civilians - terror indeed for the parents. The average annual death rate of Australian POWs under the Japanese in World War 2 was 10.4 per 100 [7] and atrocities such as this were the basis of application of the post-war Nuremberg Principles to the prosecution of Japanese war criminals such as Prime Minister Tojo and General Yamashita (who were both subsequently found guilty and hanged). The WTI report is quite correct in charging the UK and US governments with war crimes and recommending formal investigation for prosecution.
The challenge for humanity
Unfortunately, as pointed out by the WTI report [1], corporate mainstream media lying permitted the invasion and occupation of Iraq - and continued, egregious media dishonesty means that the horrendous human consequences in Iraq as outlined above are simply not reported. Arundhati Roy, the outstanding spokesperson for the Jury of Conscience, very succinctly described the fundamental phenomenon exploited by the evil and confounding the good: “the ultimate privilege of the elite is not just their deluxe lifestyles, but deluxe lifestyles with a clear conscience” [8].
The challenge for decent World citizens is to defeat the criminal lying of corporate mainstream media. The WTI report recommends that a "process of accountability is initiated to hold those morally and personally responsible for their participation in this illegal war, such as journalists who deliberately lied, corporate media outlets that promoted racial, ethnic and religious hatred, and CEOs of multinational corporations that profited from this war" [1]. Decent people in the Western democracies should have zero tolerance for the scarily comprehensive, current political and media dishonesty.
What has happened to Iraq is symptomatic of entrenched lying by commission and omission in the world's oldest democracies. Indeed the Achille's heel of democracy - oligarchic and corporate control of information flow, votes and public policy - has been powerfully exposed by media non-reportage of the horrendous consequences of the continuing occupation and media acceptance of the profundly dishonest "War on Terror". Solutions to the huge problems facing the world will require public commitment to truth, reason, effective free speech and rational, scientific analysis. Alternative, non-corporate media and corporate-independent political movements for public responsibility and global good are the way ahead. The Jury of Conscience of the World Tribunal on Iraq has helped to light the way.
References
[1] Arundhati Roy et al., "Declaration of the Jury of Conscience", 27 June 2005 (see: http://www.mwcnews.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=840&Itemid=2)
[2] "The mysterious case of the vanishing world tribunal on Iraq" in MWC News (see: http://www.mwcnews.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=775&Itemid=71)
[3] UN Department of Economic & Social Affairs, Population Division, "World Population Prospects: The 2004 Revision Population Database" (see: http://esa.un.org/unpp/index.asp?panel=1 )
[4] Gideon Polya Global Avoidable Mortality blog (see: http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com/)
[5] UNICEF report, 2005 (see: http://www.unicef.org/index2.html)
[6] Gideon Polya, on passive genocide in Iraq (see: http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20editorials/2005%20Opinion%20Editorials/March /13%20o/Passive%20genocide%20by%20Coalition%20in%20Iraq%20By%20Gideon%20Polya.htm and http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-polya110305.htm)
[7] ABC Radio National, "Prisoners under Nippon", 2003 (see: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/summer/summer2002/pow.htm)
[8] Arundhati Roy, “The Chequebook and the Cruise Missile” (Harper Perennial, London, 2004).