Canuckus Deploracus Loc: North of the wall

They won't forget...
Not for at least three generations...
I forget where all the celebrities and SJWs were... I was going through puberty...

https://reliefweb.int/report/iraq/sanctioned-genocide-was-price-disarming-iraq-worth-it

Sanctioned genocide: Was 'the price' of disarming Iraq worth it?

By Rob Kennedy, dpa
- "I've been using the word 'genocide' because this is a deliberate policy to destroy the people of Iraq. I'm afraid I have no other view.'' - former U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq Dennis Halliday in March 2002, discussing 12 years of economic sanctions.

Bangkok (dpa) - As political fallout rains down on London and Washington amid the absence of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq, another controversial justification must also be revisited: economic sanctions directly responsible for the deaths of at least 1.5 million Iraqis.

For nearly 13 years, the United Nations Security Council imposed an all-encompassing embargo on Iraqi imports and exports, intending to force dictator Saddam Hussein to destroy stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons, and to dismantle a burgeoning nuclear weapons programme. Several weapons inspectors on the ground in Iraq claimed WMD disarmament was virtually complete by the mid-1990s. The sanctions, however, were removed only last month when the United States declared victory after its latest invasion.

According to U.N. aid agencies, by the mid-1990s about 1.5 million Iraqis - including 565,000 children - had perished as a direct result of the embargo, which included "holds'' on vital goods such as chemicals and equipment to produce clean drinking water.

Former assistant secretary general of the United Nations, Dennis Halliday, quit in protest in 1998 after one year at the helm as the U.N. humanitarian coordinator in Iraq. He described the sanctions as "genocidal''.

"I've been using the word 'genocide' because this is a deliberate policy to destroy the people of Iraq. I'm afraid I have no other view,'' Halliday told journalist David Edwards in a March 2002 interview.

Halliday's successor in Iraq, Hans von Sponeck, also resigned citing the same reasons after a year-and-a-half. The two former U.N. staffers, with 64-years combined experience working at the world body, said what was inflicted on the Iraqi people during the 12-plus years of sanctions is tantamount to crimes against humanity.

Both said changes to the U.N.'s sanctions procedure must be made to ensure what occurred in Iraq from 1991 to 2003 never happens again.

The U.N. adopted economic sanctions in 1945 as a measure to keep trouble-making regimes in line. Iraq, however, was the only nation ever to have its imports and exports under complete control of the 15-member United Nations Security Council. The real decision-making power over Iraq's sanctions, however, was in the hands of veto-wielding permanent members - France, China, Russia, Britain, and the United States.

Professor Joy Gordon from Fairfield University in Connecticut, spent three years researching the economic sanctions and interviewing U.N. staff involved in Iraq. In a Harper's Magazine story in November 2002, Gordon concluded most resistance holding up vital goods into Iraq came from the United States and the United Kingdom.

U.S. officials routinely claimed "dual-use'' (having both civilian and military applications) items needed to be "held'' and contracts reviewed to ensure the Saddam Hussein regime could not use imports for weapons programmes. Gordon, Halliday, von Sponeck, among numerous others, accused the U.S. of deliberately withholding aid vital to the health and welfare of the Iraqi people.

Last year, for example, the U.S. blocked contracts for water tankers on the grounds that they might be used to haul chemical weapons. Yet the arms experts from the United Nations Special Commission (UNMOVIC) had no objection to the tankers, Gordon reported in the Harper's article. This was at a time when the major cause of child deaths in Iraq was a lack of access to potable water, and when the country was in the middle of a severe drought.

Award-winning journalist John Pilger - who produced the documentary film "Paying the Price - Killing the Children of Iraq'' -said up to July 2002, 5.4 billion dollars in vital humanitarian supplies for the people of Iraq were being obstructed by the United States, backed by Britain.

The U.N. humanitarian reports on the blockade's effects on Iraqi children tell a grisly tale. In December 1995, the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization reported 567,000 Iraqi children had died as a direct consequence of economic sanctions. In March 1996, a World Health Organization study released found the blockade had caused a six-fold increase in the mortality rate of Iraqi children under age five. UNICEF reported in October 1996 that 4,500 Iraqi children under five were dying every month as a result of sanctions-induced starvation and disease. Statistics such as these are not hard to find.

Then U.S. secretary of state Madeline Albright was adamant during her tenure about maintaining the tough sanctions despite the horrific reports coming out of Iraq. She was interviewed about the U.N. sanctions in a 1995 television interview with American TV magazine "60 Minutes''.

Asked by interviewer Lesley Stahl: "We have heard that a half-million children have died (in Iraq, as a result of the sanctions) ... I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And you know, is the price worth it?''

Albright replied: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is worth it.''

The real threat posed by Saddam Hussein, and the need to disarm him of alleged stockpiles of deadly arms, remains a contentious issue. The main justification for the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion was the threat of his WMD. After 82 days in Iraq, not a single banned weapon has surfaced.

"The only weapon that Iraq has is oil and its revenues,'' Halliday said in December 2002 interview with Cairo's Al-Ahram Weekly newspaper.

That sentiment is backed by former chief UNSCOM weapons inspector Scott Ritter who spent seven years in Iraq. He has insisted the Iraqi regime was "fundamentally disarmed'' between 1991-98, with 90-95 per cent of its WMD eliminated by December 1998.

He said the fact Saddam was a tyrant should not cloud over the outrage inflicted by the U.N. Security Council on the population of Iraq.

"He (Saddam) is a brutal dictator. He may torture to death 1,800 people a year. That's terrible and unacceptable. But we kill 6,000 a month. Let's put that on a scale,'' Ritter said in a June 1999 interview.

Evidence exists indicating U.S. planners recognized early on the devastation sanctions would deliver upon the Iraqi population.

A declassified document from the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in 1991 - titled "Iraq's Water Treatment Vulnerability'' -outlined with deadly precision the effect economic sanctions would have on Iraq's water supply.

"Iraq depends on importing specialized equipment and some chemicals to purify its water supply,'' the DIA report, dated January 22, 1991, said. "Failing to secure supplies will result in a shortage of pure drinking water for much of the population. This could lead to increased incidences, if not epidemics, of disease.

"Although Iraq is already experiencing a loss of water treatment capability, it probably will take at least six months (to June 1991) before the system is fully degraded.''

Thomas Nagy, a professor at George Washington University who discovered and brought the DIA document to the media's attention, said the U.S. government knew the sanctions would result in water-treatment failure and, consequently, would kill an incalculable number of Iraqis.

As outlined by the Geneva Conventions, he says, that is a war crime.

LogicallyRight Loc: Chicago

And the medias supported them.

Tiptop789 Loc: State of Denial

Least we forget a it is happening now, "The Chinese government has committed a series of ongoing human rights abuses against Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minorities in Xinjiang that is often characterized as genocide".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uyghur_genocide

Detainees listening to speeches in a camp in Lop County, Xinjiang, April 2017[1]

Canuckus Deploracus Loc: North of the wall

They were heroes...
Heroically murdering children...
To defend freedom...

🤮🤮🤮

Canuckus Deploracus Loc: North of the wall

Why are you using a stock photo of a prison???

Shouldn't you have some real evidence???

Milosia2 Loc: Cleveland Ohio

I came across an interesting thought today.
It was that the wars today are no longer
Armies against armies.
They are more and more Armies against Civilians. So the soldiers “fighting” in wars are safer than driving milk trucks.
Russia notwithstanding.
But more and more against civilians .
So , what do we call it ?
Is it war ?
Or is it outright Genocide ?
Land theft ?
Religious infringement?
Lithium Reserves ?

Blade_Runner Loc: DARK SIDE OF THE MOON

And ye shall hear of wars, and rumors of wars:
see that ye be not troubled; for all these things must come to pass,
but the end is not yet.

For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom;
and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes,
in divers places,

All these are the beginning of sorrows.
The Olivet Discourse, Matthew 24

Tiptop789 Loc: State of Denial

The Ughurs, heros of China.

In 2017, China began building massive detention centers described by government officials as reeducation camps. The men and women detained in these camps are brought in for seemingly innocuous behavior: praying, attending religious weddings, visiting a mosque. Totaling more than 380 at their peak, the centers have held between one and three million Uyghurs in total, making them the largest mass internment of an ethnic-religious minority since World War II.

Initially, the Chinese government insisted that the facilities were for vocational training. In 2019, officials claimed that all of the camps were being closed down. But satellite images taken in 2020 corroborated reports of their continued existence, contradicting China’s assertion that everyone detained at the camps had “graduated” after successful reeducation.

“For many people, we simply do not know where they are or how long they’ve been detained,” Kikoler says. “One thing we have not seen is any form of mass release. Even with the increased public scrutiny on what’s happening in Xinjiang, there have been no large-scale releases of individuals being detained, nor has there been a robust effort to inform families of the whereabouts of their loved ones.”


Leaked documents written in 2017 and published by the New York Times in 2019 show that the Chinese government used databases powered by artificial intelligence (A.I.) to conduct warrantless searches, track popular phone apps and monitor people through facial recognition technology. The records also indicate that police rounded up 15,683 “suspicious persons” in one seven-day period in June 2017. Elsewhere in the region, security forces detained around one in six adult residents of a single village. Children whose parents are arrested are not allowed to stay with relatives; instead, they are forcibly removed to state institutions and full-time boarding schools.

Survivors of the detention facilities say that prisoners are subjected to torture, rape and beatings. An unknown number of people are thought to have been killed in the camps, either as a result of abuse or medical neglect, but exact numbers are difficult to come by.

Uyghur activists living abroad have noted that family members still in Xinjiang are punished when the expats speak out about conditions in the region. In 2018, Uyghur American activist Rushan Abbas attended an event in Washington, D.C., vocally denouncing China’s behavior. Shortly thereafter, Chinese authorities detained both her sister and aunt.

Forced labor awaits many who survive the reeducation camps. According to a report by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), more than 80,000 Uyghurs were transferred from Xinjiang to factories across China between 2017 and 2019. At these factories, they were subjected to constant surveillance, a ban on religious activities and ideological training outside of work hours.

The Xinjiang provincial government pays local governments a price per head to organize labor assignments. More than 80 companies benefit from this forced labor, including Adidas, Amazon, Apple, Google, Microsoft, Calvin Klein and BMW. The Uyghurs being placed in factories or farms are essentially enslaved, Kikoler says. They have no freedom of movement or rights to visit family, and they face surveillance and further reeducation.

Is China committing genocide?

The United Nations’ definition of genocide is broken into five parts: killing members of a specific group, causing serious bodily or mental harm, imposing measures to prevent births, forcibly transferring children from one group to another, and creating conditions to destroy the group. These criteria distinguish genocide somewhat from “cultural genocide,” in which the language, religion and cultural practices of a group are outlawed.

According to Smith Finley, scholars have long debated whether China’s human rights abuses fit the definition of genocide. But that stance has started to change. “One year ago, not all scholars in Xinjiang studies agreed that the situation could or should be called a genocide,” she wrote in the Journal of Genocide Research in 2020. “In recent months, however, more have shifted closer to this position, and others beyond our discipline have joined in.”

A June 4, 2019, photo of a Chinese flag behind razor wire at a housing compound in Yangisar, in China's western Xinjiang region.
A June 4, 2019, photo of a Chinese flag behind razor wire at a housing compound in Yangisar, in China's western Xinjiang region Photo by Greg Baker / AFP via Getty Images
Clarke argues that cultural genocide is a more accurate description for China’s systematic campaign against the Uyghurs—but emphasizes that this designation shouldn’t be taken any less seriously. He points to the history of cultural genocide in Australia, North America and Latin America, where Indigenous peoples were forced into abusive boarding schools, banned from speaking their languages or practicing their religions, and treated as second-class citizens. The effects of those policies continue to impact Native communities today.

“The cultural genocide framework is much more clearly justified in terms of the evidence we have, and if you can make that case clearly, that’s something that states like Australia, Japan, the U.S. and Canada could use to gain more traction internationally,” Clarke says.

Kikoler understands why observers might prefer to describe the situation in Xinjiang as cultural genocide, but she points out that the term—unlike genocide—has no legal definition.


“When many people think of genocide, they think of mass killing, but it’s important to note that within the genocide convention, the restrictions on the ability to have children, the transferring of children away from families, those are all components,” Kikoler says.

How has the international community responded?
In January 2021, then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared that the Chinese government was committing genocide and crimes against humanity—a statement later reiterated by current Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. Between February and June 2021, the governments of Canada, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Belgium, the U.K. and the Netherlands all passed motions either declaring that China was committing genocide against the Uyghurs or that the serious risk of genocide existed.

Early last year, the European Union (E.U.), Canada, the U.S. and the U.K. organized joint sanctions against senior officials in Xinjiang, issuing travel bans and asset freezes. China responded by denying all the allegations and issuing its own round of sanctions against a number of individuals in the E.U., including Smith Finley.

Beyond sanctions and political moves like the diplomatic boycott of the Olympics, Kikoler argues that the international community needs to get creative in its response to China.

A young Uyghur activist holds a poster that reads "China where is my grandma?!" during a demonstration in Berlin on September 1, 2020.
A young Uyghur activist holds a poster that reads "China where is my grandma?!" during a demonstration in Berlin on September 1, 2020. Photo by Tobias Schwarz / AFP via Getty Images
“This is a vexing challenge,” she says. “What do you do when [China is] one of the world’s superpowers who can use the U.N. Security Council as a shield, when they can use the Belt and Road Initiative to pay off not just neighboring countries but countries in Europe?”


Kikoler suggests a concerted effort to stop importing resources from Xinjiang, such as the polysilicon used to make solar panels. She adds that individuals must recognize that they can take action, too.

“Even though we may never have met someone who is Uyghur, we may never have been to China, each of us owns a t-shirt that likely has cotton that comes from Xinjiang and was likely made by slave labor,” Kikoler says. “I don’t think we often talk about the level of proximity that we sometimes have to acts of potential genocide.”

What might happen next?
Clarke worries that China’s brutal treatment of the Uyghurs will continue indefinitely, as the policies in place are a “cornerstone” of President Xi Jinping’s administration. The Chinese Communist Party has started to use similar categorizations of “terrorism” and “separatism” for democracy activists in Hong Kong.

What’s more, the Chinese surveillance technology used to closely monitor Uyghurs in Xinjiang has been exported to other authoritarian governments around the world, including Ecuador and Venezuela. (That said, companies in the U.S. and other European nations have also shared this type of technology, including with China itself.)

Whether the U.S. and its allies will continue to impose sanctions on China for its treatment of the Uyghurs remains to be seen. But China’s condemnation of individuals who speak out against the treatment of Uyghurs—“lies and disinformation,” in the communist government’s words—indicates that the country’s leaders appear poised to continue denying or defending their behavior.

Lorraine Boissoneault | | READ MORE

Lorraine Boissoneault is a contributing writer to SmithsonianMag.com covering history and archaeology. She has previously written for The Atlantic, Salon, Nautilus and others. She is also the author of The Last Voyageurs: Retracing La Salle's Journey Across America. Website: http://www.lboissoneault.com/

You probably can't convey your true feelings about the treatment of the Uyghurs for fear of reprisal from the CCP (you might even become a guest at one of these re- education resorts).

debeda

War sucks. And punishing governments with sanctions that don't at all hurt the decision makers also sucks.

Canuckus Deploracus Loc: North of the wall

Criminals in a prison...

Tiptop789 Loc: State of Denial

All the Uyghurs can't be criminals. The way they're treated by the CCP is certainly criminal.

MidnightRider

It's still war. You are a civilian so I'll explain it for you. The Ukraine-war, but it was really over within 48 hours. Since Zelensky took power, 1400 of his people were killed by him just because I think that's 7 years. That is genocide. War is the absence of rules, no Marquis de Queensbury, more like Marquis de Sade. ANYTHING GOES. lol and Zelensky was saying Putin was doing something underhanded when he's a damn fascist globalist Rothschild Nazi. Those with a knee JERK reaction saying we should get involved, any reason why? Some Demos are hawks and some Republicans they forget what they've done to the military.

Canuckus Deploracus Loc: North of the wall

All Uighur aren't criminals...
But there are Uighur who are...
And they go to prison...

Tiptop789 Loc: State of Denial

For practicing their religion? Most Uyghurs (800k-1 million) in these reeducation camps haven't an by legal representation, haven't been charged with any crimes. "The detainees seem to have been targeted for a variety of reasons, according to media reports, including traveling to or contacting people from any of the twenty-six countries China considers sensitive, such as Turkey and Afghanistan; attending services at mosques; having more than three children; and sending texts containing Quranic verses". Those sound like some high crimes. But hey, the US is worse right?