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16-Jul-2004

Hooded and unclothed protest in front of the Norwich Labour Club

by: Rupert Read

Noriwch: On the 21st of May 2004, after having presented a petition to protest the crimes committed by coalition forces in Fallujah to the Norwich M.P., Charles, the Norwich-based Peace Council took the debate one step further when one of their representatives stood outside the Norwich Labour Club as an Iraqi prisoner would have in the Abu Gharaib jail. The group remarked that unless the British government disassociated itself from the American administration, then it would be complicit in those crimes.

The Norwich and district Peace Council is an umbrella organisation for all non-violent peace groups in the Norwich area. Expressing hope after the positive reception by Mr. Clarke, the Norwich Green Party representative on the Peace Council, Rupert Read said, “The terrible crimes of ‘coalition’ forces in the Abu Gharaib prison and in the city of Fallujah must be thoroughly and independently investigated. War crimes must not go unpunished; otherwise, the ‘coalition’, which has killed and maimed and imprisoned tens of thousands in our names – in the name of every Briton – will be no better than Saddam’s regime. International law must be upheld.”

There has been some movement into investigating and prosecuting crimes of abuse and torture as the American government have started judicially inquiring into the abuses in their prisons in Iraq; but it needs to be extended to the actions of the U.S marines who have allegedly killed hundreds of civilians in Fallujah.

In the words of the lone protester acting as a ‘hooded prisoner,’ who was holding a banner that said “These are crimes – Bush’s and Blair’s crimes” “I was only standing there, having been hooded-up, for a few minutes, but it seemed like an age. It felt awful and horribly claustrophobic. I felt like I started to understand a tiny fragment of the torture that so many Iraqis have been put through by British and American soldiers and mercenaries. I tried speaking to the other people nearby, but my words just echoed around inside the hood. I felt cut off and wondered what it would be like to have to feel that day for hours, or days.”

The Labour M.P., Charles Clarke, has promised Norwich Peace Council a written response on the question of an international inquiry into events at Fallujah to which Anne Dismorr, the Quaker representative on the Peace Council, said, “We look forward to Mr. Clarke’s reply. We hope it might hasten the day when British and American troops, who have become part of the problem rather than of the solution in Iraq, come back home. They should be replaced as soon as humanly possible by a neutral international force of peacekeepers.”

Source: Peace Council, Norwich