Global unions and Iraq

Harry Barnes welcomes the new 6.3 million strong international union being developed by Amicus and says that they could develop links with our comrades in the Iraqi labour movement.

Hitchens reports from Iraq

Travelling in Iraq, Christopher Hitchens concludes that there is no reason in principle why Iraq could not be one of the most prosperous countries on earth. For the moment, feuding sects use their control over ministries to enrich their own supporters, but even the most blinkered tribalist can glimpse the idea that a shared country would be more beneficial to each than a shattered one.

Something all Labour MPs could do this Christmas

North East MPs Dave Anderson and Sharon Hodgson have joined forces to support workers rights in Iraq with a well-supported Commons motion urging people to send their old mobile phones and chargers to the TUC which will send them to Iraqi unions.

The MPs said: "the new Iraqi trade union movement unites workers regardless of their religion and is seeking to help build democracy and peace in Iraq. Their growth in the last three years is one of the main hopeful developments in Iraq and they desperately need all the help they can get. Many people have unused phones and these can be put to good use. So please think of Iraqi trade union members over Christmas and send them your old phone with its charger. It won't take much to do it but can help make a big difference to people just like us who want the normal things in life – peace, jobs and democracy.

Please send used mobile phones (with chargers) to TUC Aid, Congress House, Great Russell Street, London WC1B 3LS."

Notes to editors:

1. TUC leaflet is at http://www.tuc.org.uk/extras/iraqleaflet.pdf

2 Text of EDM 415: That this House is concerned that Iraqi Ministers,
through Decree 8750 of August 2005, have frozen the monies of unions,
including those affiliated to the Iraqi Workers' Federation, leaving
organisations which represent up to a million Iraqis and which are the
bedrock of a non-sectarian civil society unable to organise and play a
positive role both in the workplace and in wider society; fears that
some may create sectarian client unions; urges the British Government
to continue to make representations to the Iraqi government to lift
Decree 8750 and the continuing ban, first introduced in 1987 by Saddam
Hussein, on public sector trade union organisation; welcomes the
continuing efforts of Labour Friends of Iraq to encourage moral and
material solidarity with the new Iraqi labour movement; and backs the
Trades Union Congress (TUC) in its efforts to encourage British unions
and others to pledge monthly sums to fund Iraqi unions' basic running
costs such as printing the Workers' Unity newspaper and to encourage
people to send used mobile telephones and chargers to the TUC so that
they may be used by Iraqi union organisers.

Blair backs reformers and moderates in Middle East

In a wide-ranging speech in Dubai, the Prime Minister Tony Blair said: Too often discussions on the Middle East and Muslim opinion are conducted as if there are only two views – the extreme Islamist view and that of the West. In fact as the last seven days have shown, the vast bulk of opinion in the wider region is moderate and seeks peace. That goes for the people of the region as well as many governments. Our task is to mobilise that desire and harness it to ensure that all people here can have opportunities for safety, security, democracy, freedom and economic prosperity. Otherwise we allow the forces of extremism to win in the absence of a clear and constantly articulated alternative vision.

Full text of speech by the Prime Minister, Rt Hon Tony Blair in Dubai, United Arab Emirates: 19 December 2006

The histories of Britain and the UAE have been intertwined for the last 200 years. Over that time, no country has had a deeper involvement here. A unique relationship, of which we in the UK are intensely proud.

A partnership which has left us with a deep well of shared experience, respect and friendship. We each know how the other thinks, reacts, builds, dreams. We trust each other. I understand that London is often referred to here as the 8th Emirate. 427,000 visits from the UAE to the UK last year. News almost every day of a new Emirati acquisition in the UK.

While here, the UK is privileged to have over 120,000 residents and over 1m British tourists. Over 100,000 of you here in Dubai alone. And over a million British visitors this year. Dubai now the favourite long-haul destination for British travellers after New York. And the widespread use of the English language a priceless asset.

Add to that a flourishing business relationship. UAE is the UK's 9th largest export market. We export more here than to China. Over the last 5 years, the UK's trade figures have risen by 6; and they doubled again last year. Investment relationship equally important. Strongly welcome Emirati investment into the UK eg Dubai Ports World takeover of P&O. British companies for their part heavily involved in Dubai's big projects eg HSBC, Standard Chartered, Lloyds TSB and Barclays have all committed to the Dubai International Finance Centre.

We therefore decided a few months ago to make the UAE one of the British Government's top ten priority business partners over the next 5 years. Standing here and looking around me, I am reinforced in thinking how right that decision is already proving.

We need to build for the future across all fields: political, security and defence, commercial, educational, cultural, health - on which I am delighted to hear of the important and ground-breaking work by Imperial College London at their Diabetes Institute which opened in Abu Dhabi this summer. At the cutting edge of technology, which is exactly where our two countries should be together.
So I have agreed in my talks with Their Highnesses the President, the Prime Minister and the Crown Prince that we shall be establishing

- regular talks at senior official level on the regional security challenges facing our two countries;

- regular exchange between our senior business leaders on how best both to maximise our commercial enterprise and to work together on the common challenges that face us in making best use of our human capital, above all through education and training; and through the most up-to-date methods of healthcare;

- greater educational and training exchange. Yesterday I was present at the signature of an agreement between the London School of Economics and the Emirates Foundation on the establishment of the Shaikh Zayed Chair in (Regional Studies) at the LSE's new (Middle East Centre), alongside a programme of educational exchange and training in both countries.
But the UAE is also an interesting and telling place in which to conclude my visit to this region.

Too often discussions on the Middle East and Muslim opinion are conducted as if there are only two views – the extreme Islamist view and that of the West. In fact as the last seven days have shown, the vast bulk of opinion in the wider region is moderate and seeks peace. That goes for the people of the region as well as many governments. Our task is to mobilise that desire and harness it to ensure that all people here can have opportunities for safety, security, democracy, freedom and economic prosperity. Otherwise we allow the forces of extremism to win in the absence of a clear and constantly articulated alternative vision.
At first flush, it may seem odd to see a journey that has so many different and distinctive stopping points as one journey with a common theme and sense of destination. What joins together in a single narrative the usual December Brussels Council of the EU and this extraordinary modern adventure called Dubai?

In Brussels, Europe agreed, after some wrangling, to continue with Turkey's accession to the EU. Of course the criteria for membership should be met, as for any applicant nation. But whereas with previous accessions, of smaller countries more closely identified with traditional notions of Europe, the objective criteria were occasionally stretched by subjective politics to allow membership; in Turkey's case the danger is the opposite: that even if the criteria are met, politics intervenes to deny membership. Be under no illusion: were that to happen, the Muslim world would conclude that the religious affiliation of Turkey was the reason, a conclusion with massive strategic implications for all of us.

Turkey itself has seen economic and political transformation occurring under Prime Minister Erdogan's leadership but given strength by the prospect of EU accession. Here is a Muslim nation showing how keen it is to take its place in the modern world, eschewing extremism, embracing democracy, actively seeking the international community's support in resolving the long-standing and bitter dispute over a divided Cyprus.

Like so many Arab nations, Egypt is striving to modernise but worried that in the process of opening up, malign and extreme elements abuse the good intentions of the modernisers.

In Iraq, literally and daily a life and death struggle is taking place between a government elected by the people, a multi-national force supporting them in that cause, and internal sectarian extremists, backed by external forces who want either a secular dictatorship or a sectarian theocracy to govern the country. Down in Basra, I met members of the British Armed Forces doing heroic service for their own nation and the wider global community. They had one message: the ordinary people of Basra wanted peace but there were extreme elements, backed from the outside, determined to thwart their will.

So, on Monday, to the most intractable dispute in the Middle East: Israel and Palestine. What do we find there? An Israeli Government that has now agreed to support the creation of a Palestinian state: a Palestinian President who wants to negotiate its creation alongside an open recognition of Israel. But because the Fateh Party appeared unable to make progress towards the two state solution and seemed out of touch, the people elected Hamas. They are now stranded between an elected President who wants to do the right thing but is blocked; and an elected Government which refuses to countenance the right of Israel to exist as a state and, where again, there are extremist elements utterly bent on denying any possibility of peace through the use of terror.

Yet we speak today in this modern miracle that is the UAE: a Muslim country that in a few decades has made itself into an oasis of economic enterprise, tourism and openness to the world. It is what Basra or Gaza could be, were their people not so savagely let down by the politics of their countries.

The journey is already pretty crowded. But we could have added Afghanistan, where Afghan people and coalition forces try to drive back Taliban extremists who recently executed a teacher in front of his class for teaching girls in his school. Or Sudan or Somalia. We could describe the voyage of modernisation currently undertaken by President Musharraf in Pakistan. In fact, were there time, we could discuss this issue in one form or another by reference to most major countries and regions in the world. In Britain, but also across the rest of Europe, a debate is happening about how we remain tolerant, treat equally all people whatever their race or religion, but protect that tolerance against extreme elements who seek to divide us on religious or ethnic grounds.

The lesson of all this I see as startlingly real, clear and menacing. There is a monumental struggle going on worldwide between those who believe in democracy and modernisation and the forces of reaction and extremism. It is the challenge of the early 21st century. Yet a great part of our own opinion either think there is no common theme to it; or if it thinks there is, is inclined to believe it's "our" – that is America and its allies – fault that it is so.

In any other situation in which terrorists, with almost incredible wickedness butcher completely innocent people, provoke sectarian conflict, spread chaos and despair, we would say: we should stand up and fight back. In Iraq, in Afghanistan, but seeping across the board, voices, instead, say: we shouldn't be involved; better leave well alone; it's none of our business.

Here are elements of the Government of Iran, openly supporting terrorism in Iraq to stop a fledgling democratic process; trying to turn out a democratic Government in Lebanon; flaunting the international community's desire for peace in Palestine – at the same time as denying the Holocaust and trying to acquire nuclear weapon capability: and yet a large part of world opinion is frankly almost indifferent. It would be bizarre if it weren't deadly serious.

We have to wake up. These forces of extremism – based on a warped and wrong-headed misinterpretation of Islam – aren't fighting a conventional war. But they are fighting one. Against us; "us" being not just the West, still less simply America and its allies but "us" as all those who believe in tolerance, respect for others and liberty. We must mobilise our alliance of moderation in this region and outside of it to defeat the extremists. Nothing matters more. Nothing should stand in the way of it. Nothing should be more galvanising of our will.

That is why Europe must not turn its back on Turkey. We need Turkey to succeed. We need its influence, not least in this region, for the good. The fact it is a Muslim nation is an advantage not a risk.

We need to support moderate Israeli and Palestinian people in their search for peace. There are three immediate priorities: an Office of the President in Palestine that is given the means to improve its capacity and effectiveness to act in the interests of the Palestinian people; an early meeting between Prime Minister Olmert and President Abbas to make early progress on outstanding preliminary issues; and as soon as is possible, a re-launch of the political process leading to a two state solution. These priorities are deliverable. But they have to be delivered.

We must ensure that everything conceivable is done to help the Afghan and Iraqi Governments achieve stability. "Cutting and running" – to use that familiar phrase – would not just be a breach of faith. It would be disastrous for our own wider interests.

We must support and empower moderate and modernising governments and people everywhere in this region. We must recognise the strategic challenge the Government of Iran poses; not its people, not possibly all of its ruling elements, but those presently in charge of its policy. They seek to pin us back in Lebanon, in Iraq, in Palestine. Our response should be to expose what they're doing; build the alliances to prevent it; and pin them back across the whole of this region.

To do all of this, we need the open and clear backing of the countries in this region who know better than me what is happening and why.

In order words, at every stage, and in every aspect of this struggle, we should be acting decisively in favour of those who share our values. We should stop buying into this wretched culture of blaming ourselves, of pandering to a wholly imagined grievance on the part of those we're fighting. We should take on the nonsense that says that when terrorists who claim to be Muslim kill innocent and true Muslims in Iraq or Afghanistan it's somehow the fault of American and British soldiers being present there. We should proclaim what is so obviously correct: that what holds back the Palestinian people are not those of us striving to make a reality of a viable Palestinian state next door to Israel; but those who pretend to champion that cause but deny the very two state solution that is Palestine's only hope of salvation.

The suffering of so many people in this region is indeed tragic. Yet here in the UAE, we see the enormous potential for prosperity and progress. If "our" policy has a fault, it is that we are too shy of acting bolding to bring about change, to give succour to those trying to live for the better.

Out of this region with its complex, fascinating history has come this challenge. Within this region, will come the solution. But everywhere the impact of its future – for good or ill – will be felt. It is not too late. But it is urgent.

Democracy Only Alternative

Christopher Hitchens says that Iraq has only three alternatives before it. The first is dictatorship by one faction or sect over all the others: a solution that has been exhausted by horrific failure. The second is partition, which would certainly involve direct intervention by all its neighbors to secure privileges for their own proxies and would therefore run the permanent risk of civil war. And the third is federalism, where each group would admit that it was not strong enough to dictate terms to the others and would agree to settle differences by democratic means. Quixotic though the third solution may seem, it is the only alternative to the most gruesome mayhem—more gruesome than anything we have seen so far. It is to the credit of the United States that it has at least continued to hold up this outcome as a possibility—a possibility that would not be thinkable if the field were left to the rival influences of Tehran and Riyadh.

Recommendations Could Destroy Democracy

Masrour Barzani argues that those who fought for liberty and freedom have been forgotten by The Iraq Study Group. He says that To call upon Iraqs neighbors, which have chosen Iraq as a place to fight the United States, is a grave mistake. Seeking their participation would inevitably backfire. They would not only contribute to the instability within the country but would implement agendas in direct contradiction to America's occupation goals.

The author is the director of the Intelligence and Security Agency of the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq and a high-ranking member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party.

Insurgents Declare War on Statues, Shop Dummies and Soap

Following a campaign against symbols of Paganism, extremists in Mosul have destroyed a statue of women carrying jars.

Genocide against workers

Today’s terrible news that scores of labourers queuing for work in Baghdad have been massacred and hundreds injured in Baghdad is further and ample proof of the TUC General Secretary Brendan Barbers recent comment that the so-called resistance and the religious fanatics are currently engaged in what some trade unionists there have described as genocide against workers. They are fairly clearly trying to stop trade unions from becoming a beacon for a secular, democratic, anti-sectarian and egalitarian civil society.

Gary Kent

The Great Irony of the Iraqi Economy

Despite violent turmoil and corruption, Iraqs booming economy has left the government with the enviable task of finding capital projects to allocate oil revenues to. Iraq The Model reports on a plan to give 30% of the surplus back to the non-criminal, non-millionaire and non-migrant population. (Dave Spector)

Talabani Calls Iraq Report Dangerous

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani says that Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group report offered dangerous recommendations that would undermine his countrys sovereignty and were an insult to the people of Iraq.

LFIQ Joint President raises Iraqi union freedom with Jack Straw in the Commons

Mr. David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab): I, too, want to raise the issue of Iraq, but to take another line. I hope that my right hon. Friend agrees with me that one of the few positives in Iraq has been the development of an independent trade union movement—but is he aware that the Iraqi Government’s decrees are stifling that development? Will he ask the Foreign Secretary to make a statement explaining exactly how we will support the Iraqi trade union movement? I am particularly concerned that they need the strength to stand alone, whatever happens in the future.

Mr. Straw: I have seen my hon. Friend’s early-day motion 415 in that respect and I will certainly tell my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary of his concerns. Iraq started well post-war in defending labour rights, but I know that there has been some backward movement since then.

Video of Abdullah Muhsin outlining growth of Iraqi labour movement

The Iraqi international representative briefly outlines the emergence of free unions on this You Tube video.

US union plea for solidarity

The American Solidarity Center has produced a leaflet on
Worker Rights Abuses in Iraq

Iraqi union representative addresses US unions

Abdullah Muhsin spoke to an AFL-CIO (US TUC) launch of the book on Hadi Saleh, the Iraqi trade union leader brutally murdered by insurgents in Iraq, at a gathering this week in Washington. He said: Iraqis have never had the freedom to organize before. We are trying to shift the attitude. We have had nothing but destruction, death, misery and policy disasters [for so many years]. We are helping to build a society. We are not motivated by religion, ideology, class. We are not men and women. We look at ourselves as citizens and workers. We want a better society for workers and better wages.

New Commons Motion on Labour Rights in Iraq

LFIQ Joint President Dave Anderson has tabled a fresh Commons motion in support of solidarity

His motion has so far been supported by Angela Eagle, Ian Lucas, Anne Moffat, David Hamilton, Alan Meale, Bob Russell, Dr Evan Harris, Andrew George, Denis Murphy, Stephen Hepburn, Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods, Jim McGovern and SDLP leader Mark Durkan.

This is the motion

That this House is concerned that Iraqi Ministers, through Decree 8750 of August 2005, have frozen the monies of unions, including those affiliated to the Iraqi Workers' Federation, leaving organisations which represent up to a million Iraqis and which are the bedrock of a non-sectarian civil society unable to organise and play a positive role both in the workplace and in wider society; fears that some may create sectarian client unions; urges the British Government to continue to make representations to the Iraqi government to lift Decree 8750 and the continuing ban, first introduced in 1987 by Saddam Hussein, on public sector trade union organisation; welcomes the continuing efforts of Labour Friends of Iraq to encourage moral and material solidarity with the new Iraqi labour movement; and backs the Trades Union Congress (TUC) in its efforts to encourage British unions and others to pledge monthly sums to fund Iraqi unions' basic running costs such as printing the Workers' Unity newspaper and to encourage people to send used mobile telephones and chargers to the TUC so that they may be used by Iraqi union organisers.

Kofi Annan Comments Do Not Reflect Reality

The Iraqi Ambassador to Canada Howar Ziad, who is also a senior advisor to the Iraqi President, has expressed his disgust with comments by the United Nations Secretary General. Howar writes: Instead of spearheading the Saddam Nostalgia Club, we expect the UN secretary general to be constructive and to contribute positive ideas to the democratic process in Iraq," he said in a statement, and added that they expect Mr. Annan to help the people of Iraq confront terrorism that is undermining Iraqis' interests.

Iraq Study Group

The full report can be found here and we will comment in detail after our own study.

It begins by saying: There is no guarantee for success in Iraq. The situation in Baghdad and several provinces is dire. Saddam Hussein has been removed from power and the Iraqi people have a democratically elected government that is broadly representative of Iraq’s population, yet the government is not adequately advancing national reconciliation, providing basic security, or delivering essential services. The level of violence is high and growing. There is great suffering, and the daily lives of many Iraqis show little or no improvement. Pessimism is pervasive.

What this web site has tried to do in the last few years is to recognise the pessimistic side of the equation whilst highlighting the optimistic side – not least the growth of civil society institutions and especially the new Iraqi labour movement. We will continue to do so.

Gary Kent

Iraqi Athletes Return To International Fold

Following a two decade absence Iraq has 81 participants in theAsian Games.

Mass grave discovered

Two forensic experts, Michael Trimble and Greg Kehoe inspecting a mass grave in Nitra, Iraq, that contained 156 bodies.

Ann Clwyd lecture at Wellesley College, Boston

In a powerful lecture, Ann Clwyd, the Prime Ministerial Envoy to Iraq on Human Rights and Joint President of LFIQ outlines how she came to be involved for 30 years in solidarity work with the victims of Saddam Hussein, the pioneering work of the Campaign Against Repression and for Democratic Rights in Iraq, the work of INDICT and why solidarity with Iraqi democrats is still vital.

There is much material here which should not be forgotten but this is a particularly gruesome illustration of the barbarity of the Baathist regime: Ann writes “A Kurdish friend of mine showed me an index card for a man working for the Iraqi security services, file number, 43304. It identified his activity as, ‘violation of women’s honour’. In other words, he was an official rapist, employed by the regime to crush prisoners, their families and communities.”

Gary Kent

Speech by the Rt. Hon Ann Clwyd MP on the occasion of the
Carolyn A. Wilson Lecture 2006

"Bring back Saddam" ...? Human Rights in Iraq and Beyond'
Wellesley College
15 November 2006

INTRODUCTION

It is a great honour to be here today.

I know that Wellesley has a great tradition of producing strong woman leaders – from astronauts to journalists to ambassadors. Who knows, perhaps the first female President may be a Wellesley alumni!

On a visit to the US in the early 1980s, I gave lectures all round the country talking about the work of the European Union, in my role as an elected Member of the Socialist Group of the European Parliament.

The one piece of advice I was given was – whatever you do, don’t mention the word Socialist. Otherwise they’ll think you’re a red under the bed! Of course I did say I was a socialist! But everyone was very polite, as they have been on every visit to the US.

The United States is one of the greatest democracies in the world; a country with a long and proud tradition of intervening to bring about democratic change and pursuing human rights.

Jimmy Carter observed:

“though America did not invent human rights . . . in a very real sense, human rights invented America.”

Some may argue whether an American interpretation of human rights has always been in the world’s best interests.

But the rights we claim for ourselves, places a duty on us to demand them, for those who do not yet enjoy them.

The fact we are often witnesses in our homes, to some of the worst atrocities, in graphic detail, on our televisions, means we have even less excuse to ignore it.

The American people helped to ensure that when Europe was descending into fascism in the 1930s and 1940s, that their assistance halted that process.

When no one intervened in Germany, in the 1930s, and we allowed the German state to slide into Hitler’s grip, it ultimately cost millions of lives. After the war, when we were able to look back, we realised the horrific consequences of standing back, and staying silent.

As the Pastor Martin Niemoller, a prominent anti-Nazi theologian, said:

“In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time, no one was left to speak for me”.

In Iraq, there were few left to speak out, and that’s how I first became involved. This was with the help of countless others, who had either been expelled or who had fled Iraq to avoid being silenced.

Throughout the last thirty years, I’ve tried to raise awareness, and help bring an end to widespread and systematic human rights violations in Iraq, including the crime of genocide, from the time the Ba’ath Party came to power.

Iraq under Saddam was horrific.

In 1992, I was at the UN when the UN Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iraq, Max Van der Stoel, told the audience that:

“The violations of human rights which have occurred, are so grave and of such a massive nature, that since the Second World War, few parallels can be found.”

I want to show how my involvement with Iraq helped make a difference - first of all working at grassroots; as I did in the 1980s with the Campaign Against Repression and for Democratic Rights in Iraq, known as CARDRI.

Reports of terror and repression in Iraq, in late 1978, led many British parliamentarians and others, to sponsor the formation of CARDRI. Our aim was to expose the brutality of the regime, and develop solidarity with those in Iraq, struggling for human and democratic rights.

Later, in the 1990s, I helped found the organisation called INDICT.

INDICT was actually funded by the United States, under the Iraq Liberation Act (1998). Its purpose was "to establish a program to support a transition to democracy in Iraq". It was supported by Americans of all political parties.

INDICT aimed to use the legal powers of individual European states, to try and bring indictments against leading members of the Iraqi regime. It apparently could not be done in the US because of the statute of limitations.

It is hard to imagine now, when Iraq has filled our television screens, and acres of newsprint, every day, for over three years, that back in the 1970s, there was very little awareness of the repressive nature of the regime in Iraq.

At that time, I was working as a journalist in Wales, and became friendly with a young Iraqi couple – Jamal and Selma. Jamal had fled Iraq from Basra, after being imprisoned and tortured as a student activist.

But the violent and frightening nature of the regime, was really brought home to me when Selma and Jamal’s 6 year old son, was the victim of a kidnapping attempt by Saddam’s regime, when he was playing in a quiet residential street in Cardiff.

In 1984 I became chair of CARDRI – the Campaign Against Repression and for Democratic Rights in Iraq. It was a grassroots organisation of students, trade unionists and others that used the power of its voluntary membership to highlight the plight of the people of Iraq.

I want to put CARDRI in a wider context. It was established very much in the tradition of the torch, lit in the eighteenth century, by your countrymen and women. This began with the proclamation of natural rights.

These rights were defined in the Declaration of Independence as “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. They can be seen as a pre-cursor of what we understand today as human rights.

This torch was taken forward by President Woodrow Wilson, with his search for a new world order after the end of the First World War. He emphasised collective security, democracy, and self-determination, rather than the traditional great power politics.

Woodrow Wilson’s vision was undermined when the Senate rejected membership of the League of Nations. As you know, the US then retreated into isolationism during the inter-war years.

During, and after the Second World War, the United States valiantly took up the torch again, leading to the creation of a new era of human rights. Your country was a driving force behind the United Nations Charter and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights has thirty principles, but it might be useful to remind ourselves of six core values:

The right to life without fear of violence, sponsored or tolerated by the state.

The right to liberty, and freedom from arrest, without due process of law.

The right to freedom, from torture or cruel or inhumane treatment.

The right to freedom, of thought and self expression.

The right to practice, the religion of one’s own choice.

The right to take part, in the government of his or her country through democratic procedures.

As Eleanor Roosevelt put it at that time:

“Basically we could not have peace, or an atmosphere in which peace could grow, unless we recognized the rights of individual human beings... and agreed that [that] was the basic thing that had to be accepted throughout the world.

The world should be grateful for America’s contribution. As Prime Minister Tony Blair, said earlier this week: ‘We need America. That is a fact’.

Since World War II, inter-governmental bodies and non-governmental bodies, such as Amnesty and Human Rights Watch, have proliferated.

Many of these monitor the observance of human rights law in specific countries. They produce reports, which are then used to lobby for change.

So, governments should have to do more than simply sign and ratify international and regional human rights conventions, which set standards.

They have to make those rights a reality and they should be called to account if they fail.

It is often very, very hard to accept that governments, para-military organisations, and rebel movements, made up of human beings just like us, can descend to the levels of depravity which took place in Cambodia, Uganda, East Timor and Rwanda, Iraq and now Sudan.

I myself can remember doubting the accounts of the horrors of torture and abuse told by exiles from Iraq.

Once I had become aware of the terrible continuing violations in Iraq, I felt compelled to let others know, and to let the Iraqi Government know, that their actions were not going unnoticed.

I shall never forget standing on the mountains of Iran and Iraq in 1991 and seeing the helpless Kurds, struggle in the sleet and snow, terrorised by Saddam’s helicopter gunships.

Later, in 2003 after the fall of the regime, I was able to visit the non-Kurdish areas of Iraq for the first time.

On one visit, I stood at the edge of the mass graves in al-Hilla, near Baghdad, and saw them being excavated. It was like standing on a moonscape. The forensic scientists estimated that 10,000 to 15,000 bodies were buried there. Elderly Shia women, dressed in black, were going around the graves with plastic bags looking for remains, trying to identify their loved ones by a scrap of clothing, or some personal item.

As far as we know, CARDRI was the only pressure group in the world that continually highlighted the excesses of Saddam Hussein's regime.

Many of our members were Iraqi exiles, fleeing the regime. Some of them returned to Iraq in 2003. I always meet ex-CARDRI members, when I visit Baghdad – including the Foreign Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister, to name only two.

CARDRI had members all over the world. The organisation produced regular newsletters, published books, lobbied parliamentarians, and picketed the Iraqi Embassy in London – you name it, we did it.

News of our activities filtered back to Saddam’s ‘Republic of Fear’. I was reminded of this when I met representatives of the Iraqi free trade unions in Baghdad, two years ago.

I held up a CARDRI newsletter from the 1980s with an article on Saddam’s brutal repression of unions. They said to me, “We used to hand that out, translated into Arabic, on the streets of Baghdad”.

We in CARDRI did not know it at the time, but our actions brought some comfort and solidarity, to the beleaguered human rights activists in Iraq.

They knew they had not been forgotten by the rest of the world, that their suffering was not being ignored.

The Kurdish town of Halabja, then also became more widely known as an example of Saddam’s brutality. The bombing of Halabja eventually became notorious for the deaths of children and adults, suffocated and poisoned by a series of gas attacks.

In addition, 40 other Kurdish villages were attacked with chemical weapons, and 2,000 villages razed to the ground. House, after house, flattened. Family, after family, forced to flee.

The Kurds claim that 182,000 people were killed during the two years of the Anfal campaign.

When Ali Hassan al-Majid, widely known as ‘Chemical Ali’, the military commander with sole responsibility for the area, was confronted with this figure, he is recorded as saying:

“What is this exaggerated figure of 182,000? It couldn’t have been more than 100,000.”

At the time though, I am afraid that our visits to lobby the then Iraqi Ambassador in London did not change anything. We were a constant irritant. One which they could have done without.

Our attempts to lobby other Governments, in Britain, the US and Europe, also fell on deaf ears. They did not want to know and when they knew, they did not seem to care. Trade and diplomatic niceties continued.

The US Ambassador to Iraq in the 1980s, April Glaspie, even praised Saddam’s “remarkably moderate and mollifying mode of presentation” when discussing with Saddam the ‘alleged’ gassing of the Kurds in the North.

Meanwhile, the international community, including Britain and the US, continued to supply Saddam with arms, with funding, and with international, and domestic, credibility.

The problem, up until the end of the 1980s, was that the world was seen almost exclusively through the prism of the Cold War.

Superpowers, and other states, were often unwilling to take action to stop even the worst crimes against humanity – including genocide – being committed.

Either because they wanted to keep their friends at all costs, or because they didn’t want to run the risk of escalation.
Indeed, in Iraq, the members of Saddam’s regime eventually seemed to believe they could get away with anything. This was demonstrated by Chemical Ali’s (Ali Hassan Al-Majid) total lack of concern, about world reaction to his use of chemical weapons against the Kurds. He is recorded as saying:
“I will kill them all [the Kurds] with chemical weapons! Who is going to say anything? The international community? Fuck them!”
So, setting legal standards, monitoring, and advocacy, remain powerful tools.

They are necessary but not sufficient.

However, the fall of the communist bloc countries heralded a new dawn.

International criminal justice, as we now know it, had its antecedents in the Nuremberg trials, after the Second World War. Leaders of the Nazi regime were brought before an international court, to account for the atrocities which they had helped to mastermind and carry out.

Ironically perhaps today, in the light of the US’s opposition to the International Criminal Court, it was Truman who insisted on legal justice for the Nazis on trial, stating that:

“undiscriminating executions, or punishments without definite findings of guilt, fairly arrived at, would not sit easily on the American conscience”.

With the end of the Cold War, international criminal justice again became a real possibility.

If the international community could ensure international criminals who had committed atrocities would be punished, other dictators in the making would be deterred.

So, INDICT was born.

INDICT campaigned for the prosecution of the leading members of Saddam’s regime.

The task of INDICT was helped by the creation of the safe havens for Iraqi Kurds. Now there was a part of Iraq where evidence could be collected – much of which has been stored in American universities – and witnesses interviewed.

One INDICT witness statement showed the level of depravity of the regime. He told us:

"There was a machine designed for shredding plastic. Men were dropped into it and we were again made to watch. Sometimes they went in head first and died quickly.

Sometimes they went in feet first and died screaming. It was horrible. I saw 30 people die like this. Their remains would be placed in plastic bags and we were told they would be used as fish food...on one occasion, I saw Qusay [KOO-SAY] [one of Saddam’s sons] personally supervise these murders."

There were many other such gruesome accounts.

As the Ba’athist security services fled Iraqi Kurdistan, they left behind tons of documents that provided meticulous detail of the brutality meted out to opponents of the regime.

A Kurdish friend of mine showed me an index card for a man working for the Iraqi security services, file number, 43304. It identified his activity as, ‘violation of women’s honour’. In other words, he was an official rapist, employed by the regime to crush prisoners, their families and communities.

I myself opened the first genocide museum in Iraq, in February 2003, in an old secret police headquarters in Iraq Kurdistan .

I remember . . . . It was dark, it was snowing. People had come from all over the area. Their relatives – men, women and children - had died, in that huge torture chamber. Inside the museum were many photographs: images of skulls and bodies, shreds of clothing, a shining earring, and other personal items. One old woman came up to me with a piece of plastic and pushed it into my hand. I unwrapped it and saw three photographs. They were of her husband and two sons who had died there. I just felt the tears run down my face.

Prisoners had written things on the cell walls. Sometimes the writing was in blood. Sometimes it was just marks, crossing off the days of the week.

Inside one cell was a statue of a Peshmerga, the name for Kurdish freedom fighters. The face was turned up towards a small grid at the top of the cell. Those who knew him said he was always searching for the light. But he died in that place. It became his tomb.

Such first-hand stories made the work of INDICT vital.

However, investigations were not only restricted to those still inside Iraq. Wherever witnesses were available, anywhere in the world, statements were collected.

At the end of the 7 year process, evidence of the highest standard had been collected, in 15 countries, for use in the courts.

We at INDICT were later told by an eminent international lawyer, that, short of getting Saddam to sign a confession in his own blood, we had all the evidence we needed to bring prosecutions. It was possible to indict him for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

However, there was a gap between the evolving body of international law, and political will.

Some thought that indicting leading members of Saddam’s regime was pie in the sky.

Efforts that I made to bring an indictment in the UK, against the then Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister, Tariq Aziz, were ridiculed in the newspapers.

The Sun, the biggest selling daily newspaper in the UK, published a cartoon of a British policeman beckoning to Saddam Hussein – ‘Hey, come with me’.

I still believe that the indictment of leading regime figures could have curtailed their activities. Saddam’s senior officials, such as Barzan al-Tikriti and Tariq Aziz, continued to travel abroad.

Indictments would have humiliated the regime. They would have weakened Saddam’s authority and credibility throughout much of the Middle East

It is also not widely understood, that as late as 2003, Iraqis continued to be terrorised by Saddam’s regime.

Ineffective sanctions and more international pressure in the 1990s had NOT ended the atrocities.

Take the Arabisation programmes around Kirkuk. Kirkuk has always been a disputed city and Saddam ethnically cleansed its population to secure oil revenues for his regime. The last years of Saddam’s regime saw a concerted effort to alter the ethnic make up of the city decisively. A UN report estimated that 100,000 people were displaced as a result of this policy.

In the winter of 1994-5, CARDRI News also reported that Max Van Der Stoel, the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Iraq, had recently condemned the ‘amputation decrees’.

Such amputees would include young soldiers, who would have their ears cut off, accused of desertion. These men would be denied medical treatment in the aftermath of their horrific ‘operation’. I recently met some of these men, who are maimed for life, in Baghdad.

But despite the continuing abuses, we never got the indictments.

Even though I repeatedly raised the matter of indictments in the House of Commons.

Even though I went to four European countries for talks with their justice departments to try and persuade them to act.

I remain very saddened by this, because I do believe if we had acted, war might have been avoided.

I never wanted another war in Iraq.

But given the failure of the other policies, it was with reluctance that I decided to support military intervention.

By the beginning of 2003, even my Kurdish friends had told me there was no alternative. I was in Iraqi Kurdistan in February 2003, before the war; the population was preparing, in a panic, for a chemical attack – they were even buying diapers to use as rudimentary gas masks.

So, war was the last resort.

The 1990s witnessed a resurgence of military intervention by the international community, in countries where there were widespread international crimes being committed. For example, in Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia, and Sierra Leone. Since the end of the Cold War, US-led international coalitions have intervened about once very two years.

There has been criticism, justified criticism, in my view, of some of the operations which have taken place. There has also very valid criticism of the operations which have not taken place.

I think, however, that we have to recognise that humanitarian intervention will not always be a realistic option.

But when it is possible to intervene militarily, I believe that we have to think about how we can generate the will and the ability, within the international community, to do so.

Of course, ideally, the UN Security Council should approve the legal basis upon which such intervention is undertaken.

What happens, however, when it is not forthcoming?
Like in Iraq, Rwanda and now Darfur.

At least 400,000 people have been killed in Darfur; more than 2 million innocent civilians have been forced to flee their homes and now live in camps; and more than 3.5 million men, women, and children are completely reliant on international aid for survival .

As long ago as 2004, the UN described Darfur as “the worst humanitarian crisis in the world” .

Why don’t we act?
Why can’t we do more?

Is it because it is Africa – a continent that we are simply inured to seeing as chaotic and violent? Is it because they are Africans, that we shrug our shoulders and close the newspaper or turn over the television channel?

Away from the horrors of Darfur, why do we tolerate the repression of the Burmese junta?

This is a dictatorship, charged by the United Nations, with a “crime against humanity” for its systematic abuses of human rights. It is a regime, condemned internationally, for refusing to transfer power to the legally elected Government of the country - the party led by Nobel Peace Laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi . A country where 13 parliamentarians are in prison . Why are we still doing business with that regime?

And what can be done about Iran? Many of us here today – myself included - would oppose military strikes, for whatever reason.

But, nevertheless, we have to consider what will happen if arms control and negotiation – as Tony Blair is advocating – do not work.

What if Tehran were to acquire a nuclear bomb, perhaps leading to nuclear proliferation throughout the region. Surely we should be devising an alternative strategy for dealing with Iran?

Are we thinking about these alternatives?

I know that many of us are wrestling with these issues - because we must find new ways of dealing with states that are prepared to sponsor terror.

We continue to find permanent UN Security Council members, with veto powers, who are prepared to stand in the way of their ethical responsibilities.

That is what is happening in the United States with Israel. Both sides in this conflict suffer – but the Palestinian people suffer disproportionately.

In Rwanda, 800,000 people died in 3 weeks. Croatia’s army forced out virtually all Serbs from the Krajina [KRYINA] region in less than a week in 1995. Serbian forces ethnically cleansed most of the 850,000 Albanian victims in Kosovo, in two weeks in 1999.

To deal with these horrors, we need forces that are rapidly deployable. We can’t go cap in hand to countries to ask for peace-keeping forces each and every time. It takes months and more die. Look at recent events in Lebanon.

What is needed is a rapid reaction force which can be deployed in days.

And the mandate that these forces are bound by, must allow them to protect the civilian population. That is vital.

Peace-keeping mandates are virtually useless in protecting civilian populations in civil conflicts. The UN forces on the ground in Rwanda and Srebrenica [SHREB ENITZA] were worse than useless: they gave certain civilians a false sense of protection and may have even emboldened the aggressors.

Countries need to change the remit of their national armed forces. It is not just about defeating enemy forces, but about protecting, and interacting with, a civilian population.

That brings me, finally, to an examination of the long-term consequences of international military intervention – and an explanation for my provocative title for tonight’s speech.

Societies in the grip of tyranny, persecution and/or genocide are very brutalised and de-stabilised.

The rule of law has to re-established – from the outset.

I became Special Envoy in May 2003, after thirty years of dealing with the horrors of Iraq.

I still believe that Iraq will succeed, but I am appalled by the current terrorist and sectarian violence. It is a tragedy that Iraq should reap this Saddamist legacy of division and terror.

On a TV programme in the UK last month, a well-known former editor of a tabloid newspaper told me the answer to today’s troubles in Iraq was to “bring back Saddam Hussein”. The sort of headline which made his paper sell.

I even saw an article, last week, in the esteemed New York Times, asking if Iraq needed a new ‘strong man’.

And, some would argue it would have been simpler for the US and the UK, and other members of the international community, to continue with the policy of containment.

However that policy was a complete disaster. Sanctions were making Saddam’s regime richer, while undermining and impoverishing Iraqi society.

Read the Volker Report, which investigated the corruption and manipulation of the UN Oil-for-Food Programme, if you don’t believe me.

I myself saw the massive trucks, bumper to bumper, laden with oil, rumble over the border from Iraq into Turkey and returning, filled with goods.

It was the revenues from that oil, and the oil also illegally sold through the Gulf in the south, which kept the regime alive.

I myself made representations to a Democratic administration, under President Clinton, in Washington, over the need to stop the unlawful sales of oil. I also visited the UN and gave the same message.

I raised the issue repeatedly in the British Parliament and even instigated a select committee investigation into the sanctions regime.

Our protests were ignored.

Sanctions failed because of a lack of will. The price we paid for the failure over the enforcement of sanctions was that we went to war.

I believe that if sanctions had been made to work, then the regime would have crumbled – indictments and sanctions together could have ended Saddam’s terrible rule.

There would have been no military intervention.

Of course, to many people, Iraq didn’t matter.

It wasn’t their problem.

But I agree with John F. Kennedy, who quoting Dante said:

“that the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crisis maintain their neutrality.”

Our whole objective has been a democratic state in Iraq, where the rights of individuals are respected, where the rule of law prevails.

We are not there yet.

In Iraq there is still brutality; but there is also a small flame of hope.

Take the terrible allegations of present day abuse in Iraqi-run prisons.

Last week, the Interior Ministry, formally accused around 55 Iraqi officials, of committing human rights crimes in connection with the torture and abuse of prisoners .

Eradicating the vicious legacy of Saddam will take time, but such actions, by the Iraqi Government, show that change is possible, and indeed, underway.

I also want to offer some other perspectives, as someone who visits Iraq regularly and has a great love for the people and country.

For me, the Iraqi Higher Tribunal, that is trying Saddam Hussein and other leading members of the regime, is a victory for the people of Iraq – despite the probable use of the death penalty, which I utterly oppose.

I visited the courtroom myself, in May of this year. The atmosphere was calm and dignified, and experts believe that this is the fairest trial process underway in the Middle East.

There are other achievements.

I take a close interest in Iraqi Trade Unions. They are suffering from difficulties in establishing their infrastructure, but they are still working as secular, rights-based organisations in Iraq.

Women’s groups are also active, working together in networks, using the internet to try and make sure that their voice is heard.

On election day in January 2005, in Basra, one of the polling stations was shelled as it was opening. A group of women, queuing to vote, responded with howls of defiance, to show that they would not be deterred from voting.

Over 25% of seats in Iraq’s parliament, called the Council of Representatives, are represented by women – compared with an average of 7.7% in the Arab region .

Obviously, there is a great deal of work to be done, to make women’s participation, in every aspect of life in Iraq, more than a statistic. The same can be said for many of Iraq’s neighbours in the region.

I wonder if the women in this college, one of the most famous women’s universities in the world, would be prepared to take action to support the fight of the women in Iraq?

This, like everything else in Iraq, will take time – but it needs people like you to play a part.

The work of those committed to human rights has to continue.

Not just in Iraq, but in East Timor, Bosnia, the Congo, and other fledgling states, because of the degradation of the society under previous regimes.

It is up to us – all of us – to support them and to stay the course.

As Martin Luther King Jr. observed:

“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

CONCLUSION

So, where do we go from here?

We have acted in the Balkans, in Sierra Leone, in East Timor, in the Congo . . . . and in Iraq.

Many of you are probably wondering, however, whether, knowing what I do today, with Iraq blighted by sectarian division and continued bloodshed, I would have still supported military action in Iraq.

Was life under Saddam, better than it is now in Iraq now, and better than it will be in future?

The post-liberation phase did not exactly turn out as we hoped. There were many mistakes made. I regret particularly that the promotion of human rights was not more central to our strategy.

But too much criticism is levied at those of us who supported the action in Iraq.

Because by acting, we were to a large extent, enforcing up to 20 UN Security Council Resolutions, that had been broken over many, many years.

The world had to show that such abuse will not be tolerated.

I cannot emphasise too strongly the depravity of this regime.

And let us not forget the mistakes of those who refused to get involved. Those who were blinded by short-term economic and political interests. Those who were in Saddam’s pocket.

So yes, I remain thankful for Saddam’s downfall.

And Iraq won’t always be the way it is now. It will get better.

Nation-building is always a long-term exercise, a continuing and evolving process. Look at Kosovo, Afghanistan and East Timor – or further back in history, the reconstruction of Germany and Japan after the Second World War.

So I believe that the recovery from the legacy of Saddam will take time, but it will happen.

For much of my political life, I have gone against the grain.

Deciding whether, when, and how to act, entails making some hard and sometimes very uncomfortable choices.

Sometimes to end violence, force has to be used.

Sometimes to protect the sanctity of human life, lives are lost.

And, if the mistakes made in Iraq, lead to the international community ignoring the need for humanitarian intervention in the future, great suffering will result. The world will become a more dangerous place for all of us.

We cannot duck these issues.

As Winston Churchill said:

“You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.”

I appeal to you to remember these words throughout your lives. Don’t be frightened to take a stand.

Believe me, it is the true measure of our humanity.

ENDS

TUC urges solidarity with Iraqi unions

The TUC has produced an excellent leaflet urging solidarity with Iraqi trade unions and asking unions and individuals to pledge a monthly sum to fund regular expenditure such as printing Workers’ Unity (£200 a month will print an extra 1,000 copies). Set up a standing order to TUC Aid (Ref IRQ01), 08-60-01, 50679164, Unity Trust, Birmingham. Please act on this.