Last Straw

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

Wed­nes­day, 6^th 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 U.S. 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 U.S., 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 U.S. hege­mony. How­ever I do acknow­ledge that you are in a dif­fi­cult pos­i­tion because the U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. 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.