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We're Staying On Translation from Spanish Donald Murphy. (www.nodo50.org/csca) "We have decided to remain here in Baghdad once the military campaign against Iraq by the USA and its allies has begun and after the Basque Country Brigade has been evacuated, the fifth such brigade to travel to this country in the past month under the Brigades to Iraq Against the War initiative" Baghdad, 18 March, 2003 To our dear families, colleagues and friends: Teresa, María Rosa, Ana, Mino, Pepe, Imanol, Javier, Manu and Carlos have decided to remain here in Baghdad once the military campaign against Iraq by the USA and its allies has begun and after the Basque Country Brigade has been evacuated, the fifth such brigade to travel to this country in the past month under the Brigades to Iraq Against the War initiative. For this we count upon the acceptance of our Iraqi hosts, always respectful of our plans, but who have nevertheless requested that we abandon Iraq for our own safety. We also count on the support of the friends we have made here in recent years, and who have committed themselves to watch over us as over their own families. Finally, we count on the refuge, if it is necessary, offered to us expressly by the Cuban Embassy in Iraq, one of the few diplomatic missions in Baghdad which has decided to remain open, demonstrating by this a new example of the international solidarity of the government and people of Cuba. We have in addition taken basic steps toward our own protection and provisions. Our decision should not be taken as one of foolishness or presumption. It is not for the nine of us that you should be concerned: concern yourselves instead with the fate of the Iraqi people, to whom we have freely linked our own. Nor is our option a personal one: we are staying on here to continue vindicating, in the same manner that you will be vindicating, wherever you are, a people's right to self-rule, to its own sovereignty, to the administration of its own resources, to an authentic democracy founded on the enjoyment of inalienable social and economic rights. Feeling ourselves to be part of the powerful anti-war movement, in Spain and world-wide, we appeal for your attention and protection, not for ourselves, but for the people of Iraq and their principles. Those of us who have been travelling to Iraq over the past years, as well as those who have done so for the first time in the last few weeks, cannot imagine leaving this country now, even when our presence might already be considered futile. We have seen these people in their homes, in the workplace, in their schools and universities, in their markets and street-stalls face collectively, united in solidarity, the misfortune which has been imposed upon them without a trace of compassion: that permanent, covert war the daily, insupportable violence of the embargo. All of this they have confronted with tenacity, hard work, good cheer, and a ready, luminous smile. Despite our being from a nation which is among the aggressors, to this day barely 48 hours before the bombing will begin we have received nothing except affection and gratitude. Like that of Palestine, the Iraqi population, unarmed and exhausted as it is after 12 years of sanctions and permanent military aggression, is nevertheless a victorious people who have not given in, who have been able to move steadily forward, who maintain their dignity and their faith in themselves and in the future, who are eager to learn and to prosper, to live finally in peace. Those who have decided to attack this nation our own country included do so with the aim, even above that of controlling its energy resources or eliminating its leaders, of subduing this spirit of self-sovereignty in a region of subjugated, defeated peoples and regimes. It will constitute the most shameful of crimes. The governments implicated in this genocide hope to convince the media and international representatives still present in Iraq to abandon the country. No one knows for sure what may happen in the coming days and weeks, but it is clear that the aggressors and again we include the Spanish government do not want witnesses, nor, prepared as they are to use all of their military might against this country to smash any possible resistance, do they want victims with Western names and faces. Like the million and a half civilians already murdered by the sanctions, the Iraqi casualties of this war will have neither faces or names. For the nine brigade members, however, they do indeed have faces and names, and when we return we will bring with us a testimony of their expressions, the sound of their voices, the sincerity of their smiles. With all of our affection from Baghdad, Maria Teresa Tuñón Álvarez Baghdad, 18 March, 2003 |
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