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Tuesday, May 11, 1999
For many delegates, Baghdad trip 'absolutely the right thing to do'
By LARRY JOHNSON
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER REPORTER
The 22 members in the delegation of medical workers and others interested in the effects of economic sanctions against Iraq returned from a trip to Baghdad last month with their misgivings about sanctions reinforced.
In defying the sanctions by traveling to Iraq, and for bringing in medicine, equipment and textbooks without U.S. and United Nations approval, each delegation member risks up to 12 years in prison and penalties up to $1 million plus an administrative fine up to $250,000.
Local members of the delegation are already planning another trip to Iraq in October. They also are trying to bring ailing children from Baghdad to Seattle for treatment.
Here are members of the delegation who made the trip, endorsed by Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility (WPSR) and sponsored by International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War:
Gerri Haynes is confronted by Um-Hafiz Saleemah at the Dijlah School, an all-girls school. Saleemah wanted to know how Americans could sit comfortably in their homes and allow the bombing of Iraq to continue.
Dan DeLong/P-I |
- Gerri Haynes, trip organizer, a nurse from Woodinville and executive board member of WPSR. "I see this as an awakening more than an act of civil disobedience. We can go back to the United States and say to people that the economic sanctions on Iraq are having a horrible effect.
"My hope is to bring doctors together to transcend politics -- for physicians to witness his human tragedy -- and to speak out against the medical catastrophe which has been created by the sanctions on the people of Iraq."
- Bob Haynes, husband of Gerri Haynes, a cardiologist and member of the clinical faculty of the University of Washington. "I feel more comfortable now (after visiting Iraq) that I can speak more knowledgeably and forcefully about not only the conditions of the sanctions in general, but about the specific problems of the sanctions in preventing our medical colleagues in Iraq from doing their jobs."
- Evan Kanter, a psychiatrist from Seattle and vice president of WPSR. "The message is to end sanctions, that's what we need to do. We need to explain to people that the sanctions are a weapon of mass destruction."
- Wolfgang Kluge, a retired clinical cardiologist from Seattle. "I have always been very unhappy with the Gulf War and with all the things we've done to the Iraqis since then. Walking through the hospitals and just walking down the street, there is no doubt that the sanctions have affected the country very severely. The American public needs to be informed that these sanctions mainly have an effect on the children, on the sick, on the poor, and that just cannot be the intention, and therefore it absolutely has to stop."
- Deryk Houston, an artist from Victoria, B.C. "Noam Chomsky said 'Silence is complicity' and this is my way of not being silent. And now I can sleep at night, knowing I wasn't silent."
- Jillian Skeet, coordinator of End the Arms Race, the largest peace organization in Western Canada and a founding member of the Campaign to End Sanctions Against the People of Iraq, from Vancouver, B.C. "The sanctions are an invisible occupation force. I took a message to the Iraqi people, that my group will work to help them."
Delegation member Ramzy Baroud breaks down after seeing the tiny body of Nemya, a 2-year-old girl who had died from meningitis just minutes earlier.
Dan DeLong/P-I |
- Ramzy Baroud, a Palestinian writer from Seattle. "I went to Iraq because I wanted to support those who are defenseless. I wanted to declare my appreciation for the civilization and their history and for their ability to stand up to this monster that is called sanctions. Seeing a dying child is completely different from listing that child as a statistic. The sanctions are not affecting the political leadership at all. The poor, the children, the innocent are paying the price of the sanctions."
- Sue Wareham, a family practice doctor and the national president of the Medical Association for Prevention of War and regional vice president of the International Physicians against the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, from Melbourne, Australia. "Coming from a country with good health care facilities, which Iraq had 10 years ago, I was appalled at the state of the hospitals in Baghdad. In addition, the denial of clean water and adequate food to the people of Iraq violates all medical, ethical and humanitarian principles. If people in Australia could see the result of the sanctions policy which our government supports, they would be ashamed and outraged that this suffering is wrought in our name and without our consent."
- Kawsar Talaat, a pediatric resident from Milwaukee. "I needed to see it (the suffering) with my own eyes. And I think once you've seen it, you become a much more effective advocate. Governments aren't supposed to target civilian populations, and I think that's what we're doing in Iraq."
- Benjamin Luna, a student of naturopathic medicine from Portland, Ore. "An embargo that continues to prevent people from getting adequate food and medicine is outrageous and needs to end immediately."
- Jim Pence, a retired social worker from Melbourne, Australia. "I am appalled at the damage the sanctions inflict on the people of Iraq, and as a former chair of the Justice and Peace unit of the Anglican Diocese of New Westminster, I want to report what is happening in Iraq to the local churches."
- Allan Connolly, a psychiatric physician from Vancouver, B.C. "Prior to the sanctions, psychiatric patients were cared for according to the highest standards in the Arab world. Now, because of sanctions, psychiatric patients must be treated with medication only episodically available. No professionally trained nursing personnel are available. Facilities are woefully inadequate."
- David Morgan, national president of Veterans against Nuclear Arms from Vancouver, B.C. "I grew up in Britain during World War II, so the bombing of cities in modern war is a reality for me."
- Linda Morgan, a peace activist from Vancouver, B.C. "As a member of Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and the president of the British Columbia branch, I have been doing every thing in my power to get Canadian people to speak out against the war and sanctions on Iraq."
- Magdalena Szuszkiewicz, a third-year medical student at the University of Maryland from Baltimore. "I wanted to go on this mission, because it is absolutely the right thing to do. If I did not dare to stand up against injustice now, I would never have enough courage to do anything meaningful."
- Laurence Aboukhater, a member of the Australian Arabic Council from Melbourne, Australia. "I believe we are severing a society by depriving the children, children who will grow up with a justifiable hatred of the West.''
- Bre Reiber, an executive assistant with Physicians for Social Responsibility of New York City, originally from Puyallup, but now from New Jersey. "We're all a part of creation. I want to spread the story of the horrible effects of the sanctions."
- Irene Macinnes, a retired social worker from Vancouver, B.C. "I feel very sad about the suffering of the Iraqi people. The sanctions are not solving any problems."
- Anwar Wadi, a psychiatrist from Gaza. Wadi was turned back at the Iraq border because he had an Israeli stamp on his passport. This is a common practice for Iraq, just as it is a common practice for Israel to reject people with passports stamped in certain Arabic countries.
- Busso Lemme, a retired landscape architect and businessman from Seattle.
- Leonard Moore, a doctor of family medicine from Ottawa, Canada.
- Zoughbi Zoughbi, director of the Bethlehem Center for Reconciliation in Bethlehem.
P-I foreign desk editor Larry Johnson can be reached at 206-448-8035 or ljohns@seattle-pi.com
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