UNAMI issues its 13th report on the situation of Human Rights in Iraq covering the first half of 2008

Baghdad, 2 December 2008 - The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) issued today its 13th report on the human rights situation in the country covering the period 1 January – 30 June 2008. During the reporting period, Iraq has witnessed substantial improvements in general security conditions, with a marked drop in violent, high-visibility, high-casualty attacks by militias or criminal gangs, but the human rights situation in the country still remains serious. 

“Human rights violations that are less visible need to be documented, reported and exposed publicly”, said Staffan de Mistura, the Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary-general for Iraq (SRSG). “With the support of the international community, we hope the government of Iraq will continue to address these violations and combat impunity”.

The targeted killings of journalists, educators, medical doctors, judges and lawyers has continued, as did criminal abductions for ransom during the first six months of 2008. As Iraqi security institutions slowly and progressively asserted their control of more territory, politicians, security officials, policemen and members of pro-government militias frequently came under attack by armed groups.

During the reporting period, minorities continued to be the victims of targeted violence, threats, assassination and the destruction of property and cultural sites.

The report highlights the situation of detainees across the country that remains of serious concern, including in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region. Many detainees have been deprived of their liberty for month or even years, often under harsh physical conditions, without access to defense counsel, or without being formally charged with a crime or produced before a judge. Continuing allegations of widespread torture and ill-treatment of inmates are of particular concern. Slow bureaucratic procedures, insufficient resources, degraded infrastructure and lack of effective accountability measures result in inordinate delays in processing detainees’ cases.

The plight of women across Iraq still requires urgent measures to combat gender-based violence, including so-called honor crimes.

UNAMI reminds all parties to ensure full respect for international humanitarian law when engaged in military operations, in particular the obligation to respect the principle of proportionality and the obligation to distinguish between civilians and combatants and between civilian objects on the one hand, and military objectives on the other.

UNAMI welcomes the ratification, during the reporting period of the International Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the recent adoption by the Council of Representatives of the law establishing the Independent High Commission for Human Rights, for which it has advocated for several years and which represents, if properly applied, a milestone in the protection and promotion of human rights in Iraq.

source: http://www.uniraq.org/newsroom/getarticle.asp?ArticleID=885

With countries such as Somalia and Iraq among those showing the highest levels of perceived corruption, Transparency International’s (TI) 2008 Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI), launched today, highlights the fatal link between poverty, failed institutions and graft. But other notable backsliders in the 2008 CPI indicate that the strength of oversight mechanisms is also at risk among the wealthiest.

“In the poorest countries, corruption levels can mean the difference between life and death, when money for hospitals or clean water is in play,” said Huguette Labelle, Chair of Transparency International. “The continuing high levels of corruption and poverty plaguing many of the world’s societies amount to an ongoing humanitarian disaster and cannot be tolerated. But even in more privileged countries, with enforcement disturbingly uneven, a tougher approach to tackling corruption is needed.

The Transparency International CPI measures the perceived levels of public-sector corruption in a given country and is a composite index, drawing on different expert and business surveys. The 2008 CPI scores 180 countries (the same number as the 2007 CPI) on a scale from zero (highly corrupt) to ten (highly clean).

Denmark, New Zealand and Sweden share the highest score at 9.3, followed immediately by Singapore at 9.2. Bringing up the rear is Somalia at 1.0, slightly trailing Iraq and Myanmar at 1.3 and Haiti at 1.4.

While score changes in the Index are not rapid, statistically significant changes are evident in certain countries from the high to the low end of the CPI. Looking at source surveys included in both the 2007 and 2008 Index, significant declines can be seen in the scores of Bulgaria, Burundi, Maldives, Norway and the United Kingdom.

Similarly, statistically significant improvements over the last year can be identified in Albania, Cyprus, Georgia, Mauritius, Nigeria, Oman, Qatar, South Korea, Tonga and Turkey.

source: http://www.transparency.org/news_room/latest_news/press_releases/2008/2008_09_23_cpi_2008_en

In the investigative report an American veteran who participated in "Desert Storm" accuses the Us Administration of having used a small nuclear penetration bomb with an energy of 5 kilotons between the Iraqi town of Basra and the border with Iran.

Consulting the "Seismological International Center on line data archive" we found that in the area indicated by the veteran, a seismic event with a power of 5 kilotons was registered the last day of the conflict.

This hint requires a lot of verifications and at RAINEWS24 we want to carry them out involving journalists from other countries, seismological centers that have registered the event, to whom we ask more data about seismic waves and last but not least international organizations that have the task to monitor nuclear activities.

  Also in our website:
- Notes on Jim Brown
- The text of our report in Italian and in English
- The video (in Italian and in English)
- Data on the health situation in Basra [The file contains some photoes, crude and realistic, produced by Dr. Jawad al Ali, oncologist of the Basra's hospital] (PowerPoint file - 1,33 MB)
- Data on seismic events in the area registered in February 1991 as reported on the ISC website.
- The 4.2 magnitude datum that we have found during Desert Storm operations
- Comparison table between kilotons and the Richter scale [file doc]
- Seismical data traced in NORSAR seismic monitoring network during March 1, 2 and 3 in 2002 in Afghanistan.
- The text of the 2 letters from the American Defense Department

source: http://www.rainews24.it/ran24/rainews24_2007/inchieste/08102008_bomba/default_ENG.asp

By Nidhal al-Laithi, Azzaman, September 29, 2008

The revocation has sparked mass demonstrations in areas where these minorities live, particularly in the northern Province of Nineveh of which Mosul is the capital. Not only non-Muslim minorities are affected. The Shebeks, who are Muslim Shiites, have lost this privilege as well as the Yazidis who still pursue their secretive and traditional faith.

The decision has been a blow to the minorities who make up at least 10 per cent of the Iraqi population.  Neglected and persecuted under former leader Saddam Hussein, they hoped the new U.S.-occupied Iraq would bring good news.

With paragraph 50 of the constitution revoked, these minorities will have no means left to air their voice and look forward for adequate representation in the country’s institutions.Christians, Yazidis, and Sabeans have almost lost the religious freedom they enjoyed under Saddam Hussein in most parts of the country. 

Today, these minorities make up a disproportionately high percentage of Iraqi refugees fleeing their country. It is almost impossible for the Yazidis for example to live outside their traditional areas. And even there they are target of attacks and pressure by both Arabs and Kurds.Certain cities like Mosul, which traditionally used to be centers of Christianity in the country, are being emptied of their Christian population.And the Sabeans have all but fled their traditional areas in southern Iraq.

This is a report from Islamtoday reporter in Iraq accusing the “Green Zone” government of hiding the Cholera cases static number from the media for political reasons.

Um Mustafa says:

They threatened me that if I tell anybody that my nine years old son is infected with cholera, they will expel him from the hospital and will not provide him with medical attention, I agreed and other mothers agreed also, they lied and my son died, I hope I told the whole world at that time.

The Iraqi government is trying to minimize this issue and deny the whole case, they even established a Media workshop to create false reports.

According to Dr. Omar Abdullah Director of the Children Central Hospital in Baghdad:

The number of cholera cases in northern Iraq alone amounted to nearly (4800) citizen, followed Amarah, Maysan, Kirkuk, and then Baghdad, which more than twenty cases of cholera registered.

Maliki’s government is trying to hush the matter in any way, any way to guarantee that it is not diverted to the news for political reasons, and to be used by the US opponents.

Orders issued from the Minister of Health to all hospitals not to report the cases or the rapid spread of the disease.

Iraqis are saying in their daily meetings these days: “If you don’t die by the American liberty gunfire, Iranian turbans, then you die by cholera, fever, smallpox, or even AIDS”! !

By JOHN F. BURNS

CAMBRIDGE, England — Nearly two years after an Iraqi court sentenced Saddam Hussein to death, new disclosures by Western lawyers who helped guide the court have given fresh ammunition to critics who contend that he was railroaded to the gallows by vengeful officials in Iraq’s new government.

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Men praying at the grave of Saddam Hussein in Awja, Iraq, during his funeral on Dec. 31, 2006, the day after he was hanged.

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These lawyers say the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, forced the resignation of one of five judges in the trial only days before the court sentenced Mr. Hussein. The purpose, the lawyers say, was to avert the possibility that judges who were wavering would spare Mr. Hussein the death penalty and sentence him to life imprisonment instead.

The disclosures, made amid a steep decline in violence in Iraq, seem likely to raise fresh questions about the degree to which the Bush administration has succeeded in promoting democratic principles, including the rule of law, among Iraq’s new leaders. Inevitably, they will also lend new momentum to die-hard Baathists who regard Mr. Hussein as a martyr.

Long before Mr. Hussein was hanged on Dec. 30, 2006, with supporters of Iraq’s new Shiite-led government taunting him as the noose was tightened around his neck, a pattern of intervention by powerful Iraqi officials had been established. The court’s first chief judge was dismissed under government pressure for giving Mr. Hussein too much leeway for his courtroom outbursts, and the associate judge named to succeed him was removed under government threats before he could take over.

But until now, only officials involved with the court’s inner workings knew that a third judge, Munthur Hadi, was forced from the judges’ panel less than a week before the court delivered its verdicts, on Nov. 5, 2006. He was replaced by another judge, Ali al-Kahaji, who had heard none of the evidence in the nine-month trial. The replacement was favored, the Western lawyers say, because of his links with Mr. Maliki’s Dawa religious party, which had lost thousands of its members to Mr. Hussein’s repression, and because of Mr. Kahaji’s readiness to approve Mr. Hussein’s hanging.

A spokesman for Mr. Maliki on Wednesday denied any involvement by the Iraqi government in the judicial proceedings. “This is a judicial issue, and it’s up to the judges,” said Yassin Majeed, a close adviser. “I refuse to comment about it because the government has nothing to do with it. And whoever accuses the judicial system should talk to them.

“The government did not interfere, and we refuse to comment about it. The Americans know this is not our business; it’s the judicial system’s business,” Mr. Majeed said.

Judge Hadi could not be reached for comment. Three other judges who served on the court refused to comment, as did Haider al-Abadi, a member of Parliament and a close political ally of Mr. Maliki.

William H. Wiley, one of the lawyers now speaking out, worked in the Regime Crimes Liaison Office, the American agency that set up, financed and counseled the Iraqi High Tribunal, the special court constituted to hear cases against senior Hussein-era officials. Mr. Wiley, 44, a Canadian who advised Iraqi defense lawyers at the trial, said the Maliki government, not the liaison office or officials in Washington monitoring the trial, was at fault for subverting due process in Mr. Hussein’s case.

“The prime minister’s office was perpetually banging on the door, until they finally got control of the whole process,” Mr. Wiley said in a telephone interview from Brussels, where he now heads a legal consulting firm.

Mr. Wiley first referred to the ouster of Judge Hadi, without naming him, in an interview for a television documentary, “The Trial of Saddam Hussein,” which will appear on the series “America at a Crossroads” on PBS stations on Oct. 12. The documentary’s producer, Elyse Steinberg, made a copy available to The New York Times.

This correspondent, who is interviewed in the documentary, covered Mr. Hussein’s trial in Iraq and was not aware that Judge Hadi had been forced to resign until the documentary was shown to The Times.

Mr. Wiley linked the Iraqi government’s manipulation of the Hussein trial to the war’s most discouraging moments. The last-minute replacement of a judge, the appeals process that was rushed to completion barely a month after the trial court’s verdict, and Mr. Maliki’s decision in the early hours of Dec. 30 to sign an order for Mr. Hussein’s execution despite insistent American objections that legal requirements for the hanging were still incomplete — all came when the American war effort was at its lowest ebb

source:http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/25/world/middleeast/25trial.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=25%20september,%20iraq&st=cse&oref=slogin

International Anti Occupation Network (IAON)
[Please endorse, publish and circulate this statement widely – List of endorsers and translations underneath]
 
Le Feyt Declaration - Peace in Iraq is an option

 The Social Medicine Portal

September 12th, 2008 by bronxdoc

Dr. Dahlia Wasfi has passed on to us several Iraqi reports about the dramatic health problems caused by the US invasion and occupation of their country.  The materials sent by Dr. Wasfi are important because they provide an Iraqi perspective.

Two concern the use of chemical weapons in Fallujah.  Fallujah, once known as the City of Mosques, was the subject of two major U.S. assaults in April 2004 and November 2004.  Fallujah had also been subject to bombings during the first Gulf War.  Italian RAI News has produced a documentary entitled Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre which shows scenes from the November 2004 attacks.

• Dr. Muhammed Tareq is an embryologist who is President of the Conservation Center of Environmental and Reserves in Fallujah (CCERF) and Director of Monitoring Net of Human Rights in Iraq (MHRI net). In March of 2008 he prepared a report for the High Commissioner for human Rights of United Nations entitled Prohibited weapons Crisis: The effects of pollution on the public health in Fallujah. He notes in his report that the medical records of Fallujah General Hospital were destroyed in the assaults, making it difficult to establish a comparison before and after 2004. This problem is compounded because the population in Fallujah has been greatly decreased. His document points to increased numbers of pediatric illnesses:

The main civilian victims of most illnesses were the children, and the rate of them represents 72% of total illness cases of 2006, most of them between the ages of 1 month and 12 years. While in 2007 was not very difference because many illnesses accounted the children with another ages.

Many new types and terrible amounts of illnesses started to appear since 2006 until now, such as Congenital Spinal cord abnormalities, Congenital Renal Abnormalities, Septicemia, Meningitis, Thalassemia, as well as a significant number of undiagnosed cases at different ages.

He also reports an increased incidence of cancer.

MPT [Muslim Peacekeeper Teams]  report refer Starting in 2004 when the political situation and devastation of the health care infrastructure were at their worst, there were 251 reported cases of cancer. By 2006, when the numbers more accurately reflected the real situation, that figure had risen to 688. Already in 2007, 801 cancer cases have been reported. Those figures portray an incidence rate of 28.21 by 2006, even after screening out cases that came into the Najaf Hospital from outside the governate, a number which contrasts with the normal rate of 8-12 cases of cancer per 100,000 people.

Dr. Wasfi also sent us a report from Dr. Souad N. Al‐Azzawi, an Associate Professor in Environmental Engineering, Iraq which focuses on the use of depleted uranium (DU) during the war.  She concludes:

“Continuous use of Depleted Uranium weapons since 1991 against the population and the environment of Iraq is an act of crime. The occupation’s total denial of the problem and refusing to allow international agencies to conduct any exploration programs to define the risk associated with this contamination, has resulted in more exposure to these radioactive pollutants, and more health damages.

Ignoring DU related health damages and the ongoing occupation of Iraq have proved to the world how desperate the American Administration is to control oil resources of the Middle East. Occupation of Iraq is a catastrophic criminal act that resulted in the death of over two million people and forced about five million of the population to leave their living areas inside and outside Iraq.

The occupying forces intentionally created a state of chaos during the invasion in 2003 to facilitate committing genocide against the Arab majority who refused the occupation of Iraq, ultimately changing Iraq’s demography and national identity in favor of the occupation’s new constitution and the minorities who helped them during the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The occupation forces and allies failed to comply with Article 2 of the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, and articles (42-56) of the Hague Regulations that addresses obligations imposed on occupying powers towards occupied people. The occupation forces and its assigned governments failed to ensure basic human needs like potable water, food, medical care, education, sanitation, and security. The excessive use of power, besieging whole cities, illegal imprisonment of civilians and even children, and occupation induced poverty have all turned Iraq into a death camp.

The international community is urged to help Iraqis gain back their independence and sovernity through getting the occupation forces out of Iraq and through refusing any shape of colonial, long term security treaties that would facilitate taking over the country and control the oil of Iraq through permanent foreign army bases.”

Commentary

This situation is not a new story.  There is an active campaign in the US to address the long-term health consequences (particularly in terms of congenital abnormalities) amongst Vietnamese exposed to dioxin during the Vietnam War. This campaign resulted from years of collaborative work between Vietnamese and international researchers.

It would seem fitting that US health personnel build relationships with our Iraqi colleagues to take their concerns seriously, to work collaboratively to document the health impact of the invasion/occupation, and to repair the damage caused by the war.

Posted  by Matt Anderson, source: http://www.socialmedicine.org/2008/09/12/war-and-health/reports-from-iraq-on-the-health-impact-of-the-war/

ANBAR, Aug. 27 (VOI) – A U.S. congressional delegation on Wednesday 27/08/2008 arrived in Falluja to meet with several officials over local issues, the head of the city's local council said.

The first place of this visit was Fallujah general hospital, where they asking to see the records of all illnesses cases during last years in attempt to check many reports spoken about pollution size and its effects on public health in this city.
"Today, a delegation of U.S. congressmen, including the commander of American occupation troops in the west, paid a surprise visit to Falluja and met with its police chief, mayor and a number of police officers," Sheikh Hameed Ahmed Hashim told Aswat al-Iraq- Voices of Iraq- (VOI).
The meeting tackled matters related to the city, the most significant of which are unemployment, local projects and means of erasing the traces of destruction that military operations inflicted on the city, according to Hashim.
Falluja, the largest city in Anbar province, lies 45 km west of the Iraqi capital; while Ramadi, the capital of the province, lies 110 km west of Baghdad.
Anbar is the largest province in Iraq geographically. Encompassing much of the country's western territory, it shares borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Anbar is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim Arab.
The name of the province translates "granaries," as this region was the primary entrepôt on the western borders of Lakhmid Kingdom.
The province was known as Dulaim until 1962 when it was changed to Ramadi. In 1976 it was renamed al-Anbar.