Rights group slams Iraqi law on free speech grounds

New UNHCR report

Full report here: http://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/reports/iraq0712webwcover.pdf

Journalistic freedom further threatened

Iraqi authorities order closure of 44 news organisations

AP reports (June 24^th): An Iraqi press freedom group has condemned authorities for ordering the closure of 44 news organisations, including a US-funded radio station.

No media outlet is reported to have been forced to close so far but critics say the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is sending a warning to the media.

The dispute calls into question the future of Iraq's fledgling democracy, nine years after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein and six months after the last of the US troops who overthrew him withdrew.

Ziyad al-Aajely, the head of the Journalistic Freedoms Observatory, called the move to shut down media offices "a setback to the freedom of journalism in Iraq."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/24/iraq-closure-news-organisations

More on Baba Mousa

Scots doctor accused of covering up Iraqi abuse

Herald Scotland reports (June 6^th): A Scots-trained doctor could be struck off by his professional body next week over allegations he covered up the abuse of Iraqi civilians by British soldiers.

The General Medical Council (GMC) will convene its Fitness to Practise Panel in Manchester to consider the role played by Dr Derek Keilloh in the death of Baba Mousa and the treatment of other Iraqi detainees in Basra over two days in 2003.

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/scots-doctor-accused-of-covering-up-iraqi-abuse.17793461

Baha Mousa death: army doctor 'ignored cries of tortured men'

The Guardian reports (June 13^th): A British army doctor present at the death of hotel worker Baha Mousa was a criminal who ignored the cries of men who were being tortured, a tribunal has heard.

Dr Derek Keilloh is appearing before the medical practitioners tribunal service in Manchester, the judicial arm of the General Medical Council, accused of a cover-up over the death of Mousa, who was beaten to death by British soldiers in September 2003.

The tribunal heard from Ahmed al-Matairi, who said he was taken to see Keilloh after he had undergone days of beatings by soldiers who would kick him in the kidneys, legs and in the location of a hernia. He was in a "bad state" and "between life and death" when he was finally taken to the medical centre.

Naked from the waist down, he was handcuffed when Keilloh examined him, he said. He claimed the doctor warned soldiers not to hit him any more or he could die. "He just had a look at my hernia, leg, kidney and said to them don't hit me. He is a criminal. He should not be a doctor."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/jun/13/baha-mousa-doctor-faces-tribunal

The corporate capture of Iraq

    



A review of Making the world safe for capitalism: How Iraq threatened the US economic empire and had to be destroyed, by Christopher Doran, published by Pluto, price £17.99 pbk.

Why did the US invade Iraq? Christopher Doran’s new study argues that the policy has been a success, if the true motivations behind the Occupation are considered.

First, the US sought to demonstrate that there is no alternative to the debt-ridden, IMF-dominated, neoliberal model of “development” favoured by the US. The best educated country in the Middle East, with free health care and the highest level of female participation in public life, would not be permitted to exemplify an alternative model.

Beyond this, the US wanted to create the first real free market state in the region. The protection of the oil ministry by occupying forces soon after the invasion, while Iraq’s cultural heritage was looted was not a “mistake”. Nor was the sectarian constitution or the institutionalisation of terror - all part of a Shock Doctrine that facilitated the introduction of a deregulated, privatised economy. The result is social devastation, but an Iraq open for business.

Secondly, oil - not just as a material resource, but because of the leverage it confers. Iraq alone has oilfields that rival Saudi Arabia’s and can challenge that country’s accommodation to the US - affordable oil and the recycling of petrodollars into the US economy, to the tune of $1 trillion between 1973 and 2000.

“There are only two credible reasons for invading Iraq,” wrote a former top British civil servant in 2004. “Control over oil and preservation of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.” “If anything put the final nail in Saddam Hussein’s coffin,” agreed banker Richard Benson, “it was his move to start selling oil in euros.”

If other countries followed this lead, then the dollar would cease to be the world’s oil-trading currency and dollar investments that get recycled into the US economy would reduce drastically. It is these investments that allow the US to be $15 trillion in debt - without them the US empire would simply crumble. Continuing to price oil in dollars, which the Saudis have agreed to, allows the US Treasury to run up unpayable debts, print money and buy oil, something no other country could do.

These concerns about Iraq were expressed within the Bush Administration well before 9/11. Immediately after, the Administration made a series of false allegations, widely repeated, about Iraq’s non-existent al Qaeda links and weapons of mass destruction. The 2003 invasion allowed the US to impose its economic doctrines on a defeated people and sell off the country’s industries to foreign corporations at prices set by the occupiers. The money raised went into a Development Fund that helped pay for the Occupation. Tariffs were scrapped, throwing the Iraqi economy open to subsidised imports that wrecked domestic production.

None of these measures were seen - let alone discussed - by Iraqis before being decreed. And awarding contracts almost exclusively to US companies increased Iraq’s dependence on the Occupation itself.

Unsurprisingly, fraud and corruption were extensive. Popular protests were fiercely repressed, nowhere more so than in Fallujah, a city almost totally destroyed by Coalition forces in 2004. The effects of chemical weapons used in the onslaught are still being felt in the city’s alarming rates of cancers and birth defects.

But in one important respect, the Occupation suffered a setback. The successful mobilisation of Iraqi civil society, led by its independent trade unions, defeated the US’s proposed oil law that would have expropriated Iraq’s vital natural resource.

It doesn’t stop with Iraq. The creation of a Middle East Free Trade Area is opening up other economies in the region to US penetration. But it has also led to skyrocketing food prices, a key factor in triggering the “Arab spring” - most impressively in Bahrain. In February 2011, 200,000 people out of a population of 1.2 million protested. With US collusion, Saudi troops entered the country to mete out repression.

The book contains rare coverage of the impact of the US Occupation on Iraqi agriculture - in short, the abolition of price supports, the opening up of the sector to US agri-business conglomerates and the introduction of GM crops. The results have been catastrophic: Iraq’s wheat yield in 2010 was 1.86 million tonnes - a stunning drop from the 2.6m Iraqi farmers produced under sanctions in 2002. But it was not so disastrous for the US: agriculture-related products dominate US exports to Iraq, averaging $1.5 billion a year.

So was the conquest of Iraq a success? Yes, concludes Doran, but only according to the twisted logic of neoliberalism, where “the role of government is no longer to ensure its citizens have food, shelter, water and health care; these are now things to be commodified from which new corporate profit can be extracted.”

So now we know

Oil Output Soars as Iraq Retools

NY Times reports (June 2^nd): Despite sectarian bombings and political gridlock, Iraq’s crude oil production is soaring, providing a singular bright spot for the nation’s future and relief for global oil markets as the West tightens sanctions on Iranian exports.

Energy analysts say that the Iraqi boom — coupled with increased production in Saudi Arabia and the near total recovery of Libya’s oil industry — should cushion oil markets from price spikes and give the international community additional leverage over Iran when new sanctions take effect in July.

“Iraq helps enormously,” said David L. Goldwyn, the former State Department coordinator for international energy affairs in the Obama administration.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/world/middleeast/crude-oil-output-is-soaring-in-iraq-easing-markets.html?_r=1&ref=middleeast

Challenging immunity

Lower courts to hear Iraqi civilians' claims of beatings, forced nudity, broken bones, and rape

Center for Constitutional Rights reports (May 15^th): Today, a federal appellate court dismissed the appeals of two private military contractors who had argued they were immune from litigation when they engage in torture. The corporate defendants, CACI and L-3, have argued that they should receive the same protections as the United States government and that, therefore, any of their wartime activities - including torture - are similarly beyond review of the courts.

The corporate defendants in the consolidated cases, who were hired to provide interpretation and interrogation services, are alleged to have subjected the plaintiffs to electric shocks, rape and other forms of sexual assault, forced nudity, broken bones, and deprivation of oxygen, food and water. The two cases were brought on behalf of 76 Iraqis who were subjected to brutal, sadistic acts in detention centers Iraq by employees of the corporate defendants.

http://warisacrime.org/content/lower-courts-hear-iraqi-civilians-claims-beatings-forced-nudity-broken-bones-and-rape-hands-

From the BRussells Tribunal

Tribunal hears witness testimonies of horrific torture

BRussells Tribunal reports (May 8th): The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal heard the testimony of the prosecution’s third witness Jameelah Abbas Hameedi, who used to be the Head Chief of the Cooperation Unions in Kirkuk. The 57-year-old Iraqi told of her torture in the Baghdad Airport and Abu Ghraib prisons in 2004.

She told the 5-member tribunal panel via a translator that on 13 January 2004, the American military broke into her home by force in Kirkuk and rounded up her whole. She told the tribunal she was dragged by her hair outside of the house into the winter rain in her nightclothes and her hands were tied very tightly at the back with a wire. They destroyed all her belongings in the house and alleged that the car battery charger they had found is used to explode bombs.

She further told the tribunal she was taken to the Kirkuk military airport via a military vehicle and in the process was hooded, kicked like an animal, pushed out of the Hummer onto the road, dragged on the paved road and later left standing at a wall. Jameelah further related that she was placed in a tiny wooden cell with no windows with her daughter and her female guest. They were not fed for two days and not allowed to use the toilet. She said that she was eventually taken to an individual 2 metres by 2 metres cell with no amenities. She was told that if she did not confess her other son would be put in prison and her daughter raped.

She revealed to the tribunal that she was taken to a black room, her clothes removed and asked to sit on her knees and hands and icy water poured on her. She related that she was then beaten with a plastic tube inserted with wood and when she dropped on the floor she was kicked until she was bleeding on her shoulders, back, arms and legs.

http://criminalisewar.org/?p=1018

The Children of Iraq

Bie Kentane reports to the BRussells Tribunal May 9^th): For two decades, Iraqi children, along with the rest of the population, have been subjected to grave human rights violations, caused by decades of war, foreign occupation and international sanctions.

Iraq has turned into one of the worst places for children in the Middle East and North Africa with around 3.5 million living in poverty, 1.5 million under the age of five undernourished and 100 infants dying every day.

This report will focus on the violations by the occupying forces and the Iraqi government of theConvention (IV) relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, Geneva, 12 August 1949[2], and the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=30760