A
Letter to the British People.
From
Iman
AL-Saadun
I
am 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, Condoleezza
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 behaviour 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 other 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 the 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!
