Emergency Statement, Hana Al Bayaty

Iraqi International Initiative on refugees http://3iii.org/

Emergency statement : No attack on Mosul

Dear endorsers,

Pasted underneath is a statement, published by the BRussells Tribunal that we have written and circulated in front of the repeated threats made by both the US occupation and its installed government of their planned imminent attack against the 3rd largest Iraqi town of Mosul. Such an attack – if carried out – will surely cause massive human displacement.

The northern part of Iraq stretching from Syria to the region of Kirkuk has been under repeated attack for the past 5 years. Crossing through this area are either existing or future planned routes to export Iraqi oil.

The occupation and its allies are trying to change the demographic make up of the entire region and within cities, by carrying campaigns of ethnic cleansing, in order to achieve control over both this region's resources and these strategic routes, and make the planned division of Iraq possible. It forced Iraqi people to flee either through massive indiscriminate military campaigns, the use of sectarian militias affiliated to the government, or of unidentified groups working as death squads or carrying terrorist attacks on civilian populations.

These repeated assaults have already caused the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. Iraqi Christians around Mosul have been forced to flee in their majority, the Iraqi Turkmen in the town of Tal Afar were besieged for weeks in 2004, while the latest attack in Sinjar targeted the Iraqi Yazidis. Many assassinations and attacks in Kirkuk and its region were carried to force the Turkmen and Arab civilians to leave their homes.

This pre-announced attack on Mosul targets the Iraqi Arab Sunni community. It is already causing the displacement of many who started to flee to Syria.

We again want to insist, that the proposal you have endorsed, asking the UNSC to pass a resolution requiring the Iraqi state allocates proportional part of Iraqi oil revenues to displaced Iraqi citizens, is the only solution to defend the rights of the displaced, and to render obsolete the tactic of ethnic cleansing used by the occupation and its installed government to achieve control over Iraqi oil resources, which is causing the displacement of millions.

We hope we can, together, continue to promote this proposal.

Please protest against the attack of Mosul, feel free to endorse, circulate and publish this statement through your own networks as widely as possible.

salam,

Hana Al Bayaty - coordinator

The Iraqi International Initiative on refugees

arabic version of the statement:
http://www.brusselstribunal.org/Mosul050208.htm#Arabic

english version of the statement:
http://www.brusselstribunal.org/Mosul050208.htm