|
World Tribunal on Iraq in Istanbul |
|
|
|
|
David Miller - Unspun
|
|
In Istanbul the World Tribunal on Iraq brings together activists and experts for all over the world. The fact of the global anti-war movement is impossible to deny when faced with delegations from Japan, a photo exhibition by the South Korean movement, jurors from Argentina, Mexico and Brazil as well as Iraq. Most importantly there are more than twenty Iraqis here. Journalists, politicians, activists, human rights workers. Some, leaving Baghdad for the first time, exclaim in wonder at the Bosphorus having never seen the sea before.
The Tribunal is opened by Arundhati Roy, president of the 'jurors of conscience'. She nails the lie that the Tribunal is a 'kangaroo court' - a prosecution without a defence. Is it the case she asked that the views of George Bush and tony blair 'have somehow gone unrepresented'? Can we seriously hold this view in the 'era of multinational of corporate media and embedded journalism?', said Roy. On the contrary the WTI 'is the defence. It is an act of resistance in itself against one of the most cowardly wars ever fought in human history.' The WTI report will be 'a weapon' in the hands of journalists, writers, artists, taxi drivers car mechanics and activists all over the world. It should she said be an instrument used to 'try as war criminals' Tony blair, George Bush, John Howard and Silvio Berlusconi. Arundhati ended by emphasising that the WTI is for the millions of conscience who will not 'standby while Iraq is slaughtered, subjugated and humiliated'. As Richard Falk (Chair of the Panel of Advocates) reminded the assembly, a war of aggression 'is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil fo the whole'. He quoted Robert Jackson, the US judge at the Nuremberg tribunal saying that 'they are crimes whether the US does them or Germany does them, and we are not prepared to lay down a rule of criminal conduct against others which we would not be willing to have invoked against us'. And the charges must include as the former UN Assistant Secretary General, Denis Halliday put it in his evidence 'state terrorism'. The 'shock and awe' attack on Baghdad was he insisted an attempt to 'terrorism both physically and mentally ' the civilians of Baghdad. Read the evidence and see and hear the sessions at http://www.worldtribunal.org
|