Genocide In
Fallujah
By Brussells
Tribunal
27 March, 2005
Brussells Tribunal
The
city of Fallujah was subjected to a genocide war by the American forces.
The military machinery destroyed almost 70 per cent of the city, from
civilian houses to medical center and general services facilities especially
water, electricity. This war resulted in killing thousands of innocent
civilians and sending almost a half million refugee.
It is well known
that the American forces and their puppet government prevented any medical
or humanitarian relief agency to enter the city throughout its siege
to the city.
Since the beginning
of this year, the citizens are increasingly returning to the city, driven
by the very bad living conditions in the places where they took refuge
and the will to try the reconstruction of their houses and shops. Except
for the few who found their houses still standing, the majority lived
on the ruins whether by using tents or other means. In this bad living
condition, the American occupation forces continue to commit grave violations
to the basics principles of human rights and international law.
In order to give
the international community a clear image of what is happening, we present
this short report:
1 - Following the
two reports that our center issued in mid January 2005 and the other
facts that came to the knowledge of the UN, the human rights office
of UNAMI and the Iraq office of WHO have in two occasion- officially
requested to enter the city of Fallujah in order to examine the situation
there but the American occupation authority did not respond to these
requests until now on the pretext of the dangerous security situation.
Here we must ask, if the security situation is still dangerous, then
how are families and children allowed to return to the city? Are the
lives of the UN officials more precious than those of the Fallujah citizens?
Or is it that there are crimes that the international bodies are not
allowed to examine.
2 - The citizens
of Fallujah are suffering of many sorts of humiliations when entering
or leaving the city. In their daily life, they go through many sorts
of harassments and threats by the American occupation forces which consider
them as terrorists simply because they refuse the occupation. Not to
mention the continuous random killing in all part of the city that does
not exclude children or elder people, men or women. In a dangerous step
of racism and freedoms limiting, the American occupation authority issued
special ID cards for the citizens of Fallujah, preventing visitors from
other cities to enter it. This step isolates the city Fallujah from
its surroundings and the rest of the country and so turning it into
a huge prison.
3 - Until the issuing
of this report the effort to find the corpses of the victims of November
2004 comprehensive attack on the city still going on. The specialized
burier teams have found about 700 corpses and we definitely think that
the number of martyrs is greater than that. The American occupation
forces itself announced that they have killed about 1300 individuals
but no one knows where those bodies were buried. This assures that there
are mass graves in the city, the American continual refusing to allow
the UN representatives to enter the city, confirm this assessment. Furthermore,
the medical authorities and the citizens could not find the burial ground
of 450 bodies of the citizens of Fallujah that the American occupation
forces have photographed and buried in a place that is still unknown.
4 - There are hundreds
of missing personnel from Fallujah, but afraid of arrest and intimidation
by the American forces, the families still hesitate to register the
names of their missing with the official committee for registering the
missing. That is why the registered number is less than the actual one.
5- The detainees from the Fallujah citizens are suffering of inhuman
and bad treatment in both Abu Graib and Basra prisons. There is no reason
behind keeping those detainees in the prisons. Unfortunately, there
is no legal or official Iraqi authority that handles the issue of those
detainees, it left to two mosque in the city.
6- As a measure
of collective punishment, the American occupation forces and the National
guards continue to use some schools inside the city as compounds, depriving
students from pursuing their education without offering substitutes.
7 - There are deliberate
delay by the interim government and the American occupation authority
in reconstructing the city of Fallujah even in restoring the basic services.
What are being announced about the reconstruction are mere lies uncovered
by the fact that the people who are working in Fallujah are only those
governmental employees in the city, indeed their number does not match
the size of destruction that the city suffered. The American themselves
admitted that more than 90000 houses have been demolished. We wonder
about the difference between the destruction that Fallujah has suffered
and the destruction of the areas which devastated by Tsunami. Both are
devastated areas but the difference is that Fallujah is not announced
officially as a devastated place in order to cover the crimes perpetrated
on its soil.
7 - Despite that
there is an Iraqi official committee for reconstruction, the occupation
forces give out contracts without knowledge or coordination with that
committee. For example one contract to build a school cost One million
US dollar for each school, while the official committee estimates the
cost between 200 000 and 300 000 US dollars. No local or official committee
is supervising these money transactions.
8 It was
not allowed until now for any body to examine the environmental pollution
that affected Fallujah due to the usage of prohibited and dangerous
weapons, except for analyzing the recently established processed water.
Some cases are appearing now of feats deformation for some of the newborns
that is taking place in the city. As an example the case of the child
Mina Jabbar Mahmood Aljumaili that was recently born and is 3 months
now in addition to another child in the same neighborhood that was born
in a short period after in Al'andulus neighborhood.
9 - The civilians
who stayed in the city during the American offensive have gone through
numerous tragic stories and inhuman treatment by the occupation forces
and the Iraq so-called National Guards. The deliberate killing of the
civilians was the daily practice of the American forces. Many children
had to watch their parents being shot to death in front of them, or
men who had to watch their children and their wives being killed. Almost
every family who stayed in Fallujah has to bury a victim in their garden.
As example, Hamid Abdulrazzak Sultan, a citizen from Fallujah, witnessed
the killing of his pregnant wife along with his 4 sons during an American
attack on 9 Nov 2004. Four members of Fawzi Hussein Salman al-Aisawi
family where deliberately killed in their house by the American forces
in front of their daughter on the morning of 9 November 2005.
10 Until
now, the citizens and the sick people are not allowed to cross the bridge
which connects the city to the main hospital a matter that causes a
great suffering. The city has no mean of communication to be used to
report the urgent health cases during the curfew hours which force the
sick to stay at home until dawn to be able to go to hospital. Many cases
happened of appendicitis, labour, death due to clots which need immediate
health care. Not to mention to war phobia in thousands of women and
children which warns of a permanent psychological disaster that will
be difficult to cure since it is becoming a chronic case.
11 - Not allowing
issuing death certificates that explain the real causes of death and
their numbers that occur due the crimes of the occupation forces because
there are no clear instructions until now. The crime of bombing cities
with so much brutality and destruction is the biggest evidence of disrespect
for the lives of the unarmed civilians that were in the first year of
occupation more that 100 000 citizens.
12- The puppet government
is deliberately ignoring the crimes and the grave violation of the human
rights happening every day in Iraq by the American forces and continued
to talk about an old allegation of violations that allegedly happened
years ago. These allegations were tackled by the commission in details,
whether by reports of special rapporteur or by the several decisions
it had adopted and accordingly some measures which were implemented
aggressively against Iraq in unprecedented way.
What more tragedies
that international bodies are waiting for in order to raise their voices
demanding to stop the massacres and mass killings of the civilians.
Is what happened to Fallujah and its citizens is just an accident while
the entire world is on alert if a western citizen is killed in Iraq
forgetting that all that is because of the hated occupation.
We call upon all
countries and organizations both governmental and non governmental which
taking part in the meetings of the 61st session of the UN Human Rights
Commission to raise their voices and denounce those violations and exercise
pressures to dispatch an investigation team to visit the city of Fallujah
to examine the facts and the tragic situation that its citizens are
going through. We demand the commission to nominate a special rapporteur
to the human rights situation in Iraq during the occupation. We hope
that this report will be distributed as among the documents of the session.
Studies Center of
Human Rights and Democracy.
26 - 3 - 2005 , Baghdad - Iraq
SCHRD: Iraq, Baghdad,
Mansour , Roaad Ice-cream Road . Fallujah office: Therthar St., nearest
Hadra Mosque . Mobile :07901492189 and 07901615665
E-mail : [email protected]