Lift the sanctions on Iraq!
BY LEIGH HUGHES
When asked in 1996 about the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children from United States-enforced sanctions against the country, US secretary of state Madeleine Albright declared "the price is worth it". Marking the 10th anniversary of the start of the sanctions, anti-sanctions protesters around the country on August 3 disagreed.
Since 1998, more than 24,000 US and British air attacks have hit mainly civilian targets in Iraq; the World Health Organisation estimates that 2 million people have died as a result of devastated social infrastructure and the sanctions.
Yet, as veteran activist Ben Smith said as he stood in front of the US embassy's three-metre high fence in Canberra, "The sanctions don't affect Saddam Hussein — they affect the children, who are dying while Saddam lives in luxury".
The anti-war and human rights campaigners demanded an end to the near-total economic sanctions and the heavy bombings, describing the sanctions, which kill 7000 children each month, as "insane". The protest was called by the Democratic Socialist Party and Resistance.
In Sydney, 100 protesters rallied outside the US consulate in Martin Place in the city centre to demand the lifting of the sanctions on Iraq. The rally included many Iraqis, who had seen first hand the devastation wreaked by the sanctions, the US and Hussein, as well as a large number of construction workers, who had joined the rally fresh from an action of their own for workers' entitlements.
Construction union secretary Andrew Ferguson, the Democratic Socialist Party's Paul Benedek and Dennis Doherty from the Communist Party of Australia addressed the rally, as did representatives of the Iraqi community and members of the manufacturing workers' union.
In Lismore, activists performed street theatre involving an oil barrel leaking blood as part of their protest against the sanctions. Demonstrators gave passers-by information kits that explained the cynical big power politics behind the Western aggression against Iraq and its devastating effects on the lives of ordinary Iraqis.