Statement by Hana Al Bayaty, Ian Douglas, Abdul Ilah Albayaty, Iman Saadoon, Dirk Adriaensens and Ayse Berktay (2 March 2007)

CALL FOR WORLDWIDE

INTENSIFYING MOBILIZATION

Second update on efforts to stop the summary

execution of three Iraqi women

Twenty-four hours ago we issued an urgent alert, stating that the defence of human rights in Iraq, as a result of US occupation and its sectarian puppet forces, is practically impossible. But the awareness by thousands of this fact explains the overwhelming mobilization we are witnessing in defence of three Iraqi women facing the gallows.

Individuals, intellectuals, women’s organizations, lawyers’ associations, human rights groups, trade unions and political movements effectively networked and took initiative worldwide. The popular pressure that has been built from everywhere, via numerous routes, impelled, among others:

• Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, on Friday 2 March, to place a direct call to Nouri El-Maliki, expressing Turkey’s alarm at the proposed execution of Wassan Talib, Zainab Fadhil and 
Liqa Omar Muhammad

• Ann Clwyd MP, special envoy to war criminal Tony Blair on human rights in Iraq, to write to Iraqi authorities outlining her opposition to the death penalty in all cases and calling for investigations into the circumstances of the trials of the three Iraqi women
• Abdullah Gul, foreign minister of Turkey, to announce that he would raise the issue of executions in Iraq in his 3 March meetings with foreign ministers of the Arab League
• Luisa Morgantini, vice-president of the European Parliament, to remind the Iraqi government that no state has the right to kill and that Wassan, Zainab and Liqa are prisoners of war with protected status under the Geneva Conventions
• Martin Shultz, president of the Socialist Group in the European Parliament, to remind Jalal Talabani that the European Union opposes the death penalty

Today we received information via the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention that the three Iraqi women will not be executed until an appeals court has ruled on their cases. This assurance came from Iraqi authorities. It is not enough. We demand to know the charges on which these three Iraqi women stand convicted. We demand to know the date of their appeal hearings. We demand that a public statement is made. We demand that they be afforded all due protections under international human rights and humanitarian law. If charged with resisting foreign occupation and aggression, we declare this charge illegal.

While Wassan, Zainab and Liqa are no longer anonymous, 20 million other Iraqis face imminent threats in towns and cities where occupation-sponsored death squads continue to operate with impunity and where rape and torture by US and Iraqi puppet forces is endemic. Over one million have been arbitrarily deprived of the right to life and tens of thousands more arbitrarily detained. Backward and sectarian forces have been installed in power and the achievements of the Iraqi people over the past 100 years have been reduced to ashes.

The end of oppression, of summary executions and assassinations, of arbitrary detentions, rape and torture, of mass murder, civil strife and genocide, and the destruction of civilization, culture and history, comes with the end of the occupation.

The occupation of Iraq is no less than the concrete implementation of the ideology driving the so-called war on terror; permanent war, the denial of civil liberties and the exclusion of international law from international relations that prevents the peaceful coexistence and reciprocal advancement of peoples and cultures. The depth of solidarity and defence of human dignity, justice and most basic human rights expressed in the case of these three Iraqi women is proof that humanity refuses this regression.

From Berlin to Baghdad, we salute all those that through public demonstrations, personal moral conviction, or resistance in their given situation, have linked the lives of three Iraqi women — indeed, all Iraqi women — to the dignity and resilience of the nation of Iraq under the hammer of a defeated occupation.

As 20 March 2007 — the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq — approaches, we hope all stay mobilized to secure the wellbeing of Wassan, Zeinab and Liqa. We demand the liberation of all political prisoners in Iraq.

We also call for worldwide, intensifying mobilization to stop this illegal blood-soaked occupation, struggle to uphold international law by retrieving recognition from the criminal sectarian puppet Iraqi government, recognizing the Iraqi Resistance as the sole representative of the will of the Iraqi people, and demanding the unconditional and immediate withdrawal of all occupation forces.

The only solution in Iraq is the sovereignty of the Iraqi people.

We stand with millions in defence of justice. We stand with millions in defence of Iraq. Our hearts are Iraqi.

Hana Al Bayaty

Ian Douglas

Abdul Ilah Albayaty

Iman Saadoon

Dirk Adriaensens

Ayse Berktay

To endorse and add your name to the petition, send a message to [email protected]

The Signatories are Members of the BRussells Tribunal Committee