Archive for the 'Human shield action to Iraq' Category

Letter to Prime Minister Helen Clark

Published
by
Christiaan
on 6 March, 2003
in Aotearoa New Zealand, Human shield action to Iraq, Imperialism and Iraq
. 0 Comments

Helen ClarkRt. Hon. Helen Clark
Prime Minister of Aotearoa New Zealand
pm@parliament.govt.nz

Wednesday, 6th March 2003

Christiaan Briggs
Truth Justice Peace
Human Shield Volunteer
Baghdad, Iraq

Dear Prime Minister,

Hundreds of Human Shield volunteers from over 30 countries are converging in Baghdad. This week we started deploying to strategic sites that are key to avoiding mass civilian casualties in the event of a US lead bombing campaign.

I am writing to inform you and the New Zealand Government that I have voluntarily stationed myself at the Daura Electricity Plant in central Baghdad.

Under the Geneva Conventions it is a war crime to harm or destroy facilities that provide essential services to the civilian population. The US, in the 1991 Gulf War, targeted the site I have stationed myself at. If it is hit once again it will be the spreading of disease and lack of water that will so shamefully hit the children and poor yet again. It will also be my white Western body parts flying around with brown Arab ones.

I have not approached this situation naïvely. I’m aware of the risks in regard to the Iraqi government, just as I am aware of risks in regard to a US lead bombing campaign. But these are risks I am prepared to take because I’m not prepared to stand by while others are killed in my name when I have the ability to do something about it. The only crime these generous, friendly and gentle people have committed is to be born atop a large oil reserve and refuse to relinquish it to the elite of North American Capitalism.

I’m sure you know as well as I do that this potential full-scale war has nothing to do with humanitarian concerns or weapons of mass destruction and everything to do with oil and US hegemony. However I do acknowledge that you are in a difficult position because the US administration does not respect democracy and will happily strong-arm the New Zealand Government by any means necessary.

In any case I believe that we are at a crossroads and the decisions we make now will decide in which direction the world is taken.

As a citizen of Aotearoa New Zealand and a person who is here in Baghdad meeting these wonderful people I plead with the New Zealand Government that it does not support domination of or aggression towards the Iraqi people in any way, UN sanctioned or not.

Please find attached two pictures of Iraqi children who live where I have stationed myself. They are likely to die in the event of a bombing campaign.

I would like to take this chance to remind you that in 1996, Madeleine Albright, then the US secretary of state, was asked on national television what she felt about the fact that 500 000 Iraqi children had died as a result of US supported economic sanctions. She replied that it was ‘a very hard choice,’ but that, all things considered, ‘we think the price is worth it.’

How about, “I will never apologise for the United States of America–I don’t care what the facts are,” from President George Bush in 1988 (On the shooting down of an Iranian commercial airliner on July 3, 1988 by the US Navy warship Vincennes. All 290 civilian people in the aircraft were killed. The plane was on a routine flight in a commercial corridor in Iranian airspace.)

I’m sure you would not hesitate to agree that these are not the words of sane people. Somehow the world has allowed these deluded people to hold positions of massive power. These people need professional help and our pity, not power.

It seems to me the immediate challenge for the world is to find a face-saving way for the US to back out of this war. I like to think I know you pretty well Prime Minister, and if I’m right you have the ability to inspire and to be a part of the solution. Take the chance now to inspire, please.

Yours in Truth Justice and Peace,
Christiaan Briggs
Aotearoa New Zealand Citizen in Iraq

This is the response I received:

From: Ministerial.Office.of.the.Prime.Minister (at) ministers.govt.nz
Subject: Re: Letter to Prime Minister from Christiaan Briggs in Baghdad
Date: 10 March 2003 8:53:30 pm GMT
To: cbriggs (at) clear.net.nz, ActionedEmails (at) ministers.govt.nz

Dear Christiaan Briggs

Thank you for your e-mail message informing me of your presence in Baghdad as one of a number of ‘human shields’ from around the world. I fully appreciate your concern for the welfare of ordinary Iraqi people. Similar concern has been part of what lies behind New Zealand’s stance on Iraq. Our views on possible military action against Iraq were set out in the New Zealand statement in the recent UN Security Council open debate. A copy is attached to this message. The New Zealand position has not changed in the slightest since then.

Nevertheless I should repeat what I said recently in parliament: in view of the very considerable risks involved my advice to anyone contemplating being a human shield in the event of hostilities is not to do it. I have asked that the contact details which you provided be registered with the Consular Division of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Yours sincerely

Helen Clark
Prime Minister

UNITED NATIONS SECURITY COUNCIL
OPEN DEBATE

“THE SITUATION BETWEEN IRAQ AND KUWAIT”

STATEMENT BY THE NEW ZEALAND PERMANENT REPRESENTATIVE
MR DON MACKAY

TUESDAY 18 FEBRUARY 2003

AS DELIVERED

Mr President

New Zealand welcomes this open debate. The Council is dealing with issues which are of vital importance to us all.

Countries which are not members of the Council last had the opportunity to address these issues in the debate four months ago, on 16 October.

Since then, pursuant to Resolution 1441, UNMOVIC & IAEA inspectors have returned to Iraq. The Security Council heard their reports on 27 January and again on 14 February.

The first report suggested that while Iraq was co-operating on process, it had not co-operated sufficiently on substance.

The heads of UNMOVIC and IAEA returned to Baghdad to impress on it that only full compliance with the UN’s requirements that it disarm and be seen to disarm would prevent the serious consequences warned of in Resolution 1441.

Last Friday’s report suggests that Iraq has moved at least in part to accommodate some of the inspectors’ requests. But it has still to answer serious questions about material related to weapons of mass destruction which remained unanswered in 1998 when UNSCOM inspectors left.

The New Zealand Government calls on Iraq to move rapidly to provide the information and co-operation requested of it to avert the catastrophe which war would bring to its people.

The New Zealand Government recognises that the Security Council must be able to authorise force as a last resort to uphold its resolution. It does not however believe that such a decision would be justified at this time. The inspectors’ reports strongly imply that their work is useful in pursuing the UN’s objectives as laid out in a series of resolutions. As long as that is so, they should continue.

The New Zealand Government has a very strong preference for a diplomatic solution to this crisis. We place considerable weight on the inspection and disarmament process. We believe it should run its course. We do not support military action against Iraq without a mandate from the Security Council, and we do not believe the Council would be justified in giving that mandate at this time.

Our position is based on our strong support for multilateralism, the international rule of law, and our respect for the authority of the Security Council. We will uphold the Council’s decisions, but urge it at this time to ensure that all available diplomatic means are used to pursue the disarmament of Iraq as set out in the Council’s resolutions.

Why I’m off to Iraq

Published
by
Christiaan
on 1 January, 2003
in Human shield action to Iraq, Imperialism and Iraq
. 1 Comment

I read a book recently that changed my life. The door opened just wide enough for me to get a foot in and go on to learn the most important lesson of my life. This is a little story of the lead-up to that lesson and the point beyond: becoming part of the Truth Justice Peace Human Shield Action Iraq.

I’ve been in London for about nine months, here on my big O.E. (a favourite Kiwi truism, the Overseas Experience). The thing is I haven’t really been doing much. I’ve scratched the surface of London. Popped over to Wales and Bath. Been clubbing. Done a lot of reading. Took part in my first mass anti-war march. I’ve been looking forward to my sister/flatmate having a baby. I even stood for NZ parliament while here. But no globe-trotting antipodean style.

Much of the reason for this is simply that I haven’t had the money, due, in most part, to not getting work in my chosen field, architecture. But there’s another more pervasive reason. I’ve been hanging out in London this whole time wondering just what the hell I’m doing here. When I dreamed of the big O.E. as a teenager I dreamed of a time-honoured Kiwi tradition; a chance to travel the world and see places, meet people, get to know yourself and come back an adult with a few spare Sterling.

But this is not what I found on my arrival in London. What I found was yet another cultural tradition consumed by consumerism. Yet another human tradition turned into a anti-human profit-making venture. Travellers didn’t own this tradition anymore. Business people did. I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do… where to travel first, what travel package to pick, which tour package to take! But you know what, maybe the big O.E. is alive and well after all. Maybe I just couldn’t see it through the haze that is the world travel industry.

One night a truly good and old friend of mine told me in passing, “I love ya Briggsy.” I’m not sure if this was the first time but because of the book I was reading it really hit home. A couple of nights later I went out with a bunch of friends and ended up back at his place chatting about this book, Free to be Human, by David Edwards; a book about freedom, and above all about the idea that there is often no greater obstacle to freedom than the assumption it has already been fully attained. A book about why true happiness can be so elusive.

I explained to my old friend just how much it meant when he told me he loved me. I surmised how insane it is to think that just, getting that next job; making that next pay-packet; finding your “true-love”; getting that next model computer; how insane it is to think these ever-expanding desires can possibly lead to happiness. How can they, they’re never satisfied? I was starting to realise that to be truly happy you have to look deep inside yourself for your own true desires. Not desires imposed on you by others, by schooling, by consumerism, but your own truly human desires. This isn’t pyschobabble. We all have desires. Whose do you have?

I made a throw-away comment that if I could be anywhere at the moment I’d like to be in Iraq. Little did I know that what I had learnt over the past few months wasn’t just going to pan out as rhetoric. It had fundamentally changed who I was… or more precisely it had woken me up to who I was and what my own desires were. A couple of days later something “presented” itself. I happened across an article written by a truly inspirational person, former U.S. Marine and Gulf War veteran, Kenneth Nichols O’Keefe. I was three paragraphs into this article when I realised I was going to Iraq.

I am joining the Iraq Human Shield campaign because I believe in a very simple concept: “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” But here in lies the twist. The change I wish to see is not simply that of countless Iraqi lives spared, but that of possibly inspiring just a small group of people I know; my family, friends, and community (Napier, New Zealand), illustrating to them an unbelievably important and simple lesson I learnt recently: Wanna be happy? Just centre your life around making others happy.