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Protesting Sanctions Against Iraq Staged at US Mission to UN
Voices in the Wilderness, an ad hoc group campaigning to end the stringent UN sanctions against Iraq, staged a protest Tuesday at the US mission to the United Nations on the 10th anniversary of the Gulf War.
The protesters arrived around noon at the US mission which is across the street from the UN headquarters compound. They initially held a brief prayer service in front of the building of the US mission.
Some waved banners reading "UN sanctions kill Iraqi children" while other sang "Wake up! The Children are dying. The Children of Iraq." The demonstrators contended that the sanctions are to blame for the death of 5,700 Iraqi children a month.
The group shared a simple meal based on the daily food ration of ordinary Iraqi families under the UN sanctions. The meal consisted of lentils and rice. Unpurified water from the East River was brought to the meal to symbolize the contaminated water that many Iraqis have to drink because the country has not been allowed the means to restore its water purification systems destroyed during the Gulf War.
After sharing this simple meal, some three dozen demonstrators attempted to proceed to the US mission and briefly blocked the door of the US mission to the United Nations.
New York police took about 16 of them into custody, binding their wrists with plastic restraints. The police had to carry two of them into waiting vans and the remaining left without objection, walking peacefully to the waiting vans.
Iraq has been under UN sanctions since its invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Under UN regulations, Iraq is allowed to sell oil to buy necessities to ease the impact of the sanctions on ordinary Iraqi people.
Sanctions against Iraq cannot not be lifted until Iraq is clarified to be free of weapons of mass destruction. UN weapons inspectors have been away from Iraq since US-led military strikes in December 1998. Iraq has reiterated that lifting sanctions is the precondition for UN weapons inspectors to return.
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