{news} Fwd: USGP-INT Targeting Peace Workers

[Richard Duffee]

Hi,
The events this message from the International Committee recount are
so telling I feel I must forward them.
Richard Duffee

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: a.gronowicz at att.net <a.gronowicz at att.net>
Date: Jul 9, 2007 7:50 PM
Subject: USGP-INT Targeting Peace Workers
To: usgp-int at gp-us.org





Murder of Iraq Freedom Congress leader is a blow to
labor and peace activists around the world

Now the U.S. military is assassinating Iraqi peace
workers

By Kathlyn Stone

http://www.ifcongress.com/English/index.htm Iraq
Freedom Congress July 8, 2007

At 3 a.m. on the 4th of July, U.S. military forces and
Iraqi national guards opened fire with a barrage of
bullets and grenades on the Baghdad home of Abdel-
Hussein Saddam. The severely wounded Abdel-Hussein was
taken away and his 18-year-old daughter was left alone,
injured and bleeding on the floor.

Abdel-Hussein's beaten body turned up at the Yarmouk
Hospital morgue on July 6. The murder of Abdel-Hussein
was the most devastating of four attacks by the U.S.
military on the Iraq Freedo m Congress in the past 10
months. The IFC is an organization comprised primarily
of trade unionists, community leaders, and women's and
children's rights workers who are determined to look
after their own. IFC's goals are to salvage the lives
of as many Iraqis as possible, and to end the
occupation and sectarian fighting. Its slogan: "No
Shiite! No Sunni! Ours is Human Identity.'

The IFC has 22 offices or 'wards' in Iraq cities and
neighborhoods. It establishes where and when it is
invited by local community leaders. Since 2005 the IFC
has been working toward a progressive democratic non-
sectarian government in Iraq. It is as critical of the
violent political Islamic forces as of the violent U.S.
occupiers.

Abdel-Hussein, 50, was born in Basra, and was a
resident of Baghdad's Alattiba neighborhood at the time
of his death. He was the head of the IFC's Safety
Force, an organization of men who volunteer to protect
and defend both Sunni and Shiite citizens from
sectarian gangs. He spent two years of his life in jail
in the 1990s for opposing the Saddam Hussein regime.
'Throughout the period of his leadership of the Safety
Force, there had been no killing based on identity in
the area where he lived and in other areas with the
presence of the Safety Force,' the IFC said in a
written statement.

An IFC spokesman says the 'cowardly' attack is part of
Bush's surge which is aimed at suppressing Iraqi
political opponents. It could be, too, that IFC's
growing influence as a protector and unifier within
Iraq's pulverized society is seen as a threat to U.S.
government objectives. A peaceful sovereign Iraq will
not turn over its rich oil reserves to foreign
invaders.

The day before Abdel-Hussein's abduction, the IFC-
sponsored SANA TV gave its inaugural broadcast over a
satellite network. The program ran a story about the
recent mass demonstra tion against the proposed oil law
being pushed by the Bush administration. The program
included an overview of the IFC's Safety Force and
interviewed some of the five IFC members who had been
arrested by U.S. and Iragi national guards June 7.
Those arrested, Mohamed Karim, Ali Hussein, Mohamed
Mahmoud, Hussam Salim and Abdul Amir Saleh, were
interrogated at the U.S. base in Baghdad's Rustumiyyah
neighborhood and then transferred to the local police
station before being released 11 days later.

An IFC spokesman said the Iraqi police intentionally
misled US forces, stating that the IFC was part of the
sectarian Al-Mahdi Army that was planning to expand
into the Al-Askary neighborhood, and therefore a
terrorist organization.  In fact, the IFC Safety Force
had already confronted the scouts of Al-Mahdi and
prevented them from establishing a foothold.

The IFC won the detainees' release by waging a
political campaign both l ocally and globally, as well
as a judicial battle. It filed a lawsuit against the
U.S. agents for raiding the office without judicial
authorization or an arrest warrant.

SANA is funded by IFC allies around the world, but
primarily by Japanese supporters. Besides its 22
chapters in Iraq, there are five chapters in Japan and
south Asia, five in Europe and Scandinavia, and two in
North America (one in Canada and one in the United
States). IFC has ongoing collaboration with the 0
million member US Labor Against the War, and the IFC-US
chapter carried the IFC banner during the January 27
protest in Washington D.C. SANA intends on using its
solidarity network 'to amplify the voice of freedom,
peace and the equal rights of all people in Iraq and
the Middle East,' said Nadia Mahmood Al-Sanna, a SANA
producer.

The IFC Safety Force recently graduated its third group
of volunteers who are trained in mediation and self
defense. B esides protecting citizens from marauding
sectarian gangs, the Safety Force provides escorts to
people who are in danger, and has a proactive outreach
program calling for an end to sectarianism. The IFC
tries to influence citizens against falling for the
trap of retaliation. The so-called 'insurgents' have
also organized recreational play days for children,
economic survival conferences for women, teams of
doctors who go to the homes of people too ill or too
afraid to travel to the hospital, raised money for food
and medicine, and attended funerals to shield mourners
from further violence. A primary goal of each project
is to bring together Shiites and Sunnis in a spirit of
cooperation and non-violence.

IFC Executive Committee Member Amjad Al-Jawhary (Abdel-
Hussein also served on the committee), said the U.S.
administration is targeting efforts such as IFC that
'aim to restore security, safety, freedom, and
prosperity. They [US] well know that such forces will
jeopardize the presence of the occupation and threatens
to undermine its determination and prestige.'  The IFC
is trying to provide some semblance of public safety
without government resources or sanction during a
humanitarian crisis. Neither the trillion-dollar U.S.
military led by the dazed and confused Bush
administration, nor the dysfunctional police and army
under Bush's puppet leader Al-Maliki have provided any
measurable safety for Iraqis. If anything, civilian
killings are growing by the day.

Abdel-Hussein was a courageous man, someone an American
would look up to, like John Wayne - only real. What
will be the result of this all too common
incomprehensible killing? It brings to mind an
observation Cindy Sheehan shared when speaking in
Minneapolis this year. 'It's common sense that when you
kill an innocent person, it's going to piss off their
relatives. I don't know why Geor ge Bush hasn't learned
that from me.'

I'm very pissed off, too. And deeply saddened for what
we have become.

[]

Abdelhussein Saddam, 1957-2007

'The assassination of Abdel Saddam Hussein by US forces
mafia will not discourage the determination of the Iraq
Freedom Congress and will be a new impetus to continue
the struggle to rid the Iraqi society from all types of
terrorists. They murdered Abdelhussein, but his spirit,
ambitious aspirations, and bravery for building Iraq
that is secular, humanitarian, and free from occupation
and sectarian gangs, will be firmly in the hearts of
freedom lovers.'

-- From a statement by the Iraq Freedom Congress on the
death of Abdel-Hussein Saddam, leader of the IFC Safety
Force, July 8, 2007

For more information:

Iraq Freedom Congress: www.ifcongress.com

IFC-USA: www.freewebs.com/ifc-usa

US Labor Against the War: www.uslaboragainstwar.org


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