Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark appeals for Iraq

From Mid-East Realities, 1 May 1996

Dear Ambassador:

Two months have passed since the Security Council last reviewed the murderous sanctions against Iraq and more than 20,000 human beings have died as a direct result of its failure to end the sanctions that time. More than 10,000 of those who died in March and April are infants and children. The entire population of Iraq has suffered. Millions will not overcome the effects of the sanctions in their lifetimes which have been shortened by years.

The history of this violent century does not reveal a more deadly, cruel, inhumane and degrading torture of the whole population of an entire nation inflicted by foreign power for so long a period of time. That the deed is done in the name of the United Nations Security Council demonstrates its cowardly surrender to the will of the United States and defeats hope that the United Nations will fulfill its promise of faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.

It is essential to our common future that these sanctions be ended now and such unbearable destruction of life never be imposed again on any people. Every day's delay in ending these sanctions costs hundreds of lives.

The Security Council has been numbed by the mounting horror of what has been done. The United States will blame the U. N. and extort further wrongs to conceal a shared guilt. Do not be lulled by supremely hypocritical references to the hardship imposed on Iraq, or even UNICEF'S annual report for 1995 stating, the balance sheet of several years of sanctions against Iraq reveals a minimum of political dividends as against a high human price paid primarily by women and children. The sanctions have been death with malice aforethought for over a million individuals and collective punishment for every human being in the country. The very idea of seeking political dividends by inflicting human suffering is the source of war and exploitation of other nations. When the civilian population is the direct object of such an assault it is a crime against humanity. In wartime it is a war crime.

Do not dare believe again that the U.S. intends to end the sanctions until its political and economic purposes are satisfied. The Security Council has been subjected every two months for the past several years to scurrilous and false attacks on Iraq by the U.S. to justify continuing the sanctions. Resolution 986, which the U. S. uses both to delay all relief and to control any relief authorized to assure a continuing, if slower, death and deterioration in Iraq, cannot justify continuing the sanctions another day.

Joseph Hazbun, head of the East Mediterranean and Central Asia Section of the World Health Organization's Division of Humanitarian Action has said it would take two years to stop the deterioration of health services if all economic sanctions against Iraq were ended now. WHO reports mortality in the under-five age groups has risen from 257 per 100,000 in 1990 to 1536 by the end of 1994, a six fold increase. It finds the incidence of kwashiokor and marasmus to have increased 25 and 32 times respectively in the same period. Other conditions related to malnutrition such as anemia and vitamin A deficiency have increased from 269 to 3613 per 100,000. Low birthweight infants have risen over the 5 1/2 years of sanctions from 4.5% to 21% for all live births.

The WHO report published in Geneva in late March stated the quality of health care in Iraq, due to the six-week 1991 war and the subsequent sanctions imposed on the country, has been literally put back by at least 50 years.

For humanity's sake and the world's respect for your country, speak out now. Condemn and end these sanctions.

Sincerely,

Ramsey Clark