To: undercurrents@bbs.thing.net
Date: Thu, 14 Jul 2005 10:24:23 +1000
Subject: [undercurrents] Fwd: Letter to the British People from a daughter of Iraq
A Letter to the British People from a daughter of Iraq
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Iman al-Saadun
I'm sending this letter to the British people and in particular to the
residents of London. For a period of hours, you have lived through
moments of desperate anxiety and horror. In those hours you lost a
member of your family or a friend, and we wish to tell you in total
honesty that we too grieve when human lives pass away. I cannot tell
you how much we hurt when we see desperation and pain on the face of
another person. For we have lived through this situation - and continue
to live through it every day - since your country and the United States
formed an alliance and laid plans to attack Iraq.
The Prime Minister of your country, Tony Blair, said that those who
carried out the explosions did so in the name of Islam. The Secretary
of State of the United States, Condaleezza Rice, described the
bombings as an act of barbarism. The United Nations Security Council
met and unanimously condemned the event.
I would like to ask you, the free British people, to allow me to
inquire: in whose name was our country blockaded for 12 years? In
whose name were our cities bombed using internationally prohibited
weapons? In whose name did the British army kill Iraqis and torture
them? Was that in your name? Or in the name of religion? Or humanity?
Or freedom? Or democracy?
What do you call the killing of more than two million children?
What do you call the pollution of the soil and the water with
depleted uranium and other lethal substances?
What do you call what happened in the prisons in Iraq - in Abu Ghraib,
Camp Bucca and the many other prison camps? What do you call the
torture of men, women, and children? What do you call tying bombs to
the bodies of prisoners and blowing them apart? What do you call the
refinement of methods of torture for use on Iraqi prisoners - such as
pulling off limbs, gouging out eyes, putting out cigarettes on their
skin, and using cigarette lighters to set fire to the hair on their
heads? Does the word "barbaric" adequately describe the behavior of
your troops in Iraq?
May we ask why the Security Council did not condemn the massacre in
al-Amiriyah and what happened in al-Fallujah, Tal'afar, Sadr City,
and an-Najaf? Why does the world watch as our people are killed and
tortured and not condemn the crimes being committed against us?
Are you human beings and we something less? Do you think that only
you can feel pain and we can't?
In fact it is we who are most aware of how intense is the pain of the
mother who has lost her child, or the father who has lost his family.
We know very well how painful it is to lose those you love.
You don't know our martyrs, but we know them. You don't remember them,
but we remember them. You don't cry over them, but we cry over them.
Have you heard the name of the little girl Hannan Salih Matrud?
Or of the boy Ahmad Jabir Karim? Or Sa'id Shabram?
Yes, our dead have names too. They have faces and stories and memories.
There was a time when they were among us, laughing and playing.
They had dreams, just as you have. They had a tomorrow awaiting them.
But today they sleep among us with no tomorrow on which to wake.
We don't hate the British people or the peoples of the world. This war
was imposed upon us, but we are now fighting it in defense of ourselves.
Because we want to live in our homeland - the free land of Iraq - and
to live as we want to live, not as your government or the American
government wish.
Let the families of those killed know that responsibility for the
Thursday morning London bombings lies with Tony Blair and his policies.
Stop your war against our people!
Stop the daily killing that your troops commit!
End your occupation of our homeland!
Iman al-Saadun
