More on massacres

Those Bodies in Baghdad Are of Gay Men

IPS reports (March 16^th): Dozens of bodies bludgeoned to death pop up in Baghdad’s dusty streets like the remains of a wreckage on a beach. They are the corpses of homosexuals and followers of the ‘emo’ fashion who dare to break with the strict canons of the Shia orthodoxy in power.

"They crushed his head with a concrete block. His name was Saif Asmar and he was a close friend of mine; tomorrow it could be me".

Ruby (fake name) can hardly cope with his anger and fear as he holds a photo of his friend, barely recognisable after the brutal murder. Since the beginning of the year, death squads have been targeting gay men as well as those who dress in a distinctive Western-influenced style called ‘emo’.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=107093

Investigate ‘Emo’ Attacks

Amnesty International reports (March 16^th): The government of Iraq should immediately investigate and bring to justice those responsible for a targeted campaign of intimidation and violence against Iraqi youth seen as belonging to the non-conformist “emo” subculture, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission said today. The attacks have created an atmosphere of terror among those who see themselves as potential victims.

On March 8, 2012, the Interior Ministry, in an official statement, dismissed reports by local activists and media of a campaign against those seen as emo. The ministry said the reports were “fabricated” and “groundless,” and that it would take action against people who were trying “to highlight this issue and build it out of proportion.” An official ministry statement, on February 13, that characterized emo culture as “Satanist” cast doubt on the government’s willingness to protect vulnerable youth, the international rights groups said.

http://www.amnesty.org/en/for-media/press-releases/iraq-investigate-emo-attacks-2012-03-16

Gay people in Iraq killed

There have been a large number of press reports this week about a huge spike in the number of killings of gay people in Iraq. Here is one:


Up to 100 killed in Iraq gay and emo massacre

Gay Star News reports (March 12th):  Activists and Iraqi media are reporting that up to 100 people have been killed in massacres targeting Iraqis who use alternative dress codes or have differing sexualities.
Since 6 February there have been continuous reports of militia targeting youths which focus on attacks, kidnapping, torture and murder of ‘emo’ youth and individuals perceived as gay, lesbian or trans.
It appears that attacks have been taking place in Baghdad as well as in several in southern provinces.

http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/100-killed-iraq-gay-and-emo-massacre090312

Iraq MPs criticised over costly armoured cars

Middle Easy Online reports (February 28^th): The decision of MPs to spend $50 million on their own armoured cars on a day that dozens of people were killed in a wave of attacks has drawn sharp criticism from across Iraqi society.

In addition to the armoured cars, MPs already receive a budget allocation for 30 bodyguards, but officials claim that most only appoint a handful of guards and pocket the remainder of the allotted funds.

Iraqi MPs already receive monthly salaries of $8,500, generous pension benefits, plots of land and diplomatic passports.

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=50894

Beyond educide

Iraq’s former pride, its education system, has collapsed.  The international seminar in Ghent was a significant first step in determining whether the extrajudicial killings, abductions, forced displacement of Iraqi academics and other professionals, the destruction of the educational infrastructure, during the war and subsequent occupation, are indeed a case of pre-meditated elimination of Iraq’s intellectual elite and education system, and could constitute “Educide”.  This word has yet to enter the international dictionary of crimes; it is a composite of education and genocide which the author has combined to refer to genocide of the educated segments of Iraqi society.  It can only be hoped that both the International Court of Justice  and the International Criminal Court will pursue the question of possible educide in Iraq. - Hans Christof von Sponeck (former UN assistant of the Secretary General of the United Nations, member of the Advisory Committee of the BRussells Tribunal)

Sanctions, Occupation and the Struggle for Higher Education in Iraq

Recommendations of The International Seminar on the Situation of Iraqi Academics, 9/10/11 March 2011 Ghent University
(edited by Academia Press Ghent, ISBN 978 90 382 1885 4)
(published in English-Arabic – 200 pages)

BEYOND EDUCIDE is available in English-Arabic: order your copy here

Plundering the Past: Scholarly Treasures

Sinan Antoon writes (February 22^nd): One in six Iraqis live in poverty. This is in a nation with the second highest oil reserves in the world and a budget surplus of more than fifty billion US dollars in 2011. According to Transparency International, Iraq has one of the most corrupt governments in the world. Some of the wealth stays inside the country and is spread among the beneficiaries and clients of the new political elite. Much of it, however, is transferred outside and translated into real estate or other assets, or is often hard to trace. Not a year has passed without plunder in Iraq.

The villains are not only or always Iraqis and the stolen money is not US taxpayer money. At least eighteen billion US dollars from Iraq’s frozen assets in the United States and from the surplus of the United Nations (UN) Oil-for-Food Program was sent from the Federal Reserve Currency Repository in New Jersey to Iraq right after the war. It was slated for the so-called Iraq Development Fund (IDF) during L. Paul Bremer’s reign. All of that is now missing and there is not a single piece of paper to account for it or explain its whereabouts. Aside from the monstrous US embassy in Baghdad, the Iraq Reconstruction has nothing to show.

The executive summary of the Congressional Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan stated in its August 2011 report that “at least 31 US billion dollars, and possibly as much as 60 US billion dollars, have been lost to contract waste and fraud” in both countries.

http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/4439/plundering-the-past_scholarly-treasures

Latest stories

Military news

Pentagon wants $3 billion for the War in Iraq that we thought was over

Russia Today reports (February 14^th): The American public has been told that the Iraq War is a thing of the past. Even still, the US Department of Defense is asking the federal government for almost $3 billion for “activities” in a country that they shouldn’t be in.

The last US troops were supposedly withdrawn from Iraq just before 2012 began, but after years of a war that abruptly ended this past December, the Pentagon still wants billions to continue doing…something in Iraq. According to the latest budget request, the DoD think around $2.9 billion should cover the cost of “Post-Operation NEW DAWN (OND)/Iraq Activities.”

In a report published Monday by Wired.com, they acknowledge that the funding that the Pentagon wants now is almost as bizarre as the war itself. For nearly $3 billion, the DoD says that will be able to afford “Finalizing transition” from Iraq.

http://rt.com/usa/news/billion-war-iraq-us-215/print/

Abuse

Why Was No One Punished for America's "My Lai" in Iraq?

AlterNet reports (February 12^th): The plea bargain in the last Haditha massacre case handed down in January is a fitting end to the Iraq war. In the most notorious case of U.S. culpability in Iraqi civilian deaths, no one will pay a price. And that is emblematic of the entire war and its hundreds of thousands of dead and millions displaced.

Sergeant Frank Wuterich, the squad leader who encouraged and led his marines to kill 24 civilians in the Iraqi town of Haditha in November 2005, was the last of eight originally charged in the massacre. The others were let off on technicalities, or to help the prosecution. One officer, not involved in the killing but the coverup, was acquitted in a military trial.

The responsibility for these killings came down to Wuterich’s role, but he never actually went through a full trial. The military prosecutor opted for the slap-on-the-wrist of demotion to private for the 24 civilian deaths. Wuterich, who admitted to much more in a “60 Minutes” interview in 2007—including rolling grenades into a house filled with civilians without attempting to make an identification—copped only to “dereliction of duty.”

http://www.alternet.org/world/154087/why_was_no_one_punished_for_america%27s_%22my_lai%22_in_iraq

Daily life

Health groups discover radioactive materials in Fallujah

Al-Sumaria TV reports (February 16^th): The industrial street in Fallujah District is subject to a radioactive contamination resulting from military operations that were carried out in the past years, a source told Alsumaria stressing that health authorities fear the outbreak of cancer diseases as a result of this contamination.

This contamination is the result of military operations led in 2003 and 2004 by US forces, authorities in charge of the scan declared.

“We discovered 2 radioactive materials in the industrial street of Fallujah,” Fallujah governor Adnan Hussein advanced. “There have been birth defects and environmental pollution in the District,” Head of Health and Environment Committee in Anbar Province Taleb Hamadi stated stressing that this contamination is the result of military operations in Fallujah and Anbar. “We are all aware of parties behind these operations,” he added.

http://www.alsumaria.tv/news/51927/health-groups-discover-radioactive-materials-in-ir

Legacy of US Iraq’s Invasion : Near extinction of Christian population?

Navaid Hamid writes (February 14^th): With the withdrawal of the US led forces from Iraq, Operation Iraqi freedom turns into Operation Iraqi Christians decimation.

Around fourteen months back, in November 2010, I had written about the pressures on the Christian minority community in Iraq and my fear about their extinction from their motherland in one of my piece, “Operation Iraqi freedom and Christians in Iraq” which was carried by number of news portals. ( http://www.aina.org/news/20101102214511.htm / http://twocircles.net/2010nov02/operation_iraqi_freedom_and_christians_i... and others)

A month after the withdrawal of the Allied forces from Iraq and its becoming a sovereign state, one of the serving US Military Archbishop Timothy P. Broglio admitted in an interview to CNA in Rome, “Yes, you can say in a certain sense that the invasion of Iraq did provoke this tremendous diminution of the Christian population in that country. And what the future holds, that still remains to be seen,” Archbishop Timothy believes that the collapse of Iraq’s Christian population is among the legacies of America’s invasion in 2003 and he is absolutely correct.

Before the invasion of Iraq, Christian population was around 1.4 million of the total population which dwindled to around one hundred forty thousand at the time of the withdrawal of the Allied forces.

http://twocircles.net/2012feb14/legacy_us_iraq%E2%80%99s_invasion_near_extinction_christian_population.html

RAF helicopter death revelation leads to secret Iraq detention camp

The Guardian reports (February 7^th): On the evening of 11 April 2003, a pair of RAF CH47 Chinook helicopters swept over Iraq's western desert towards a remote rendezvous point beside Route 10, the highway that begins life on the outskirts of Baghdad before running for mile after mile towards the border with Jordan.

The helicopter crews had been told that a number of detainees were under armed guard at the side of the highway. They were to pick them up after dark and take them to a prison camp. What followed was far from routine: before the night was out, one man had died on board one of the helicopters, allegedly beaten to death by RAF personnel.

The incident was immediately shrouded in secrecy. When the Guardian heard about it and began to ask questions, the Ministry of Defence responded with an extraordinary degree of obstruction and obfuscation, evading questions not just for days but for weeks and months. The RAF's own police examined the death in an investigation codenamed Operation Raker, but this ended with some of the most salient facts remaining deeply buried. The alleged culprits faced no charges.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/07/iraq-death-secret-detention-camp