Statement by Hana Al Bayaty, Ian Douglas, Abdul Ilah Albayaty, Iman Al Saadoon, Dirk Adriaensens, Ayse Berktay, Matthias Chang, Arundhati Roy, Michel Chossudovsky and Eduardo Galeano (7 March 2007)
THIS DEFEATED OCCUPATION
We must preempt it
On 10 March 2007 in Baghdad a stillborn regional conference will convene in which the Iraqi people will again be absent, their resistance not represented. Instead, a defeated US occupation will continue attempting to write the fate of the Iraqi people, conspiring with an undemocratic Security Council, as well as neighbouring and regional states, supposedly invited by a puppet government.
What kind of government collaborates with foreign powers against its own people?
What kind of government invites foreign forces to kill its own population?
What kind of government substitutes militias for regular national armed forces?
What kind of government bequests the nation’s oil wealth to foreign powers?
And what kind of government goes begging to its neighbours to let its own citizens flee by millions into their countries?
What is a government that rewards rapists?
What is a government that rewards death squads?
What is a government that lacks so much legitimacy that it has to “surge” for the fourth time its own capital?
What is a government that kidnaps and imprisons and tortures the people?
What is a government that invents new extremes of martial law?
What is a government whose finances cannot be accounted for?
What is a government that shamelessly degrades civil infrastructure?
What is a government that cannot even provide basic services, like clean water and electricity?
And what is a government that is never in the country?
Such a government is the proof that occupation is the highest form of dictatorship.
All peoples in the world aspire to democracy as it is supposed to be the expression of their will. The will of the Iraqi people could not be subjugated to force for the fourth consecutive year. The Iraqi Resistance is democratic by definition, because it is an upsurge of popular will, and is progressive by definition, because it defends the interests of the people.
The only solution in Iraq is the sovereignty of the Iraqi people.
Only the national popular Iraqi Resistance is capable and empowered, both as an objective reality and under international law, to determine a path towards peace and stability in Iraq and end this illegal occupation.
We must pre-empt any new US attempt to impose a lackey government on the Iraqi population by recognizing its resistance as the sole representative of the will of the Iraqi people.
Retrieve recognition from this foreign-imposed backward government and recognize the Iraqi Resistance!
Hana Al Bayaty
Ian Douglas
Abdul Ilah Albayaty
Iman Saadoon
Dirk Adriaensens
Ayse Berktay
Matthias Chang
Arundhati Roy
Michel Chossudovsky
Eduardo Galeano
