PGHIMC - Pittsburgh Independent Media Center

pittsburghers in Baghdad for m20
by vincent / blast furnace radio Saturday, Mar. 20, 2004 at 4:05 AM
eirene@lm.com

m20 message from baghdad

HELLO FROM BAGHDAD FROM BLAST FURNACE RADIO

I have been here with a delegation of journalists from across the US
and Canada for the past week.

With the help of the Occupation Watch organization, I have visited
hospitals with no medicine, in dire need of staff to care for the sick.
I have interviewed doctors, and have seen countless patients afflicted
with cancer or birth defects caused by depleted uranium residue from
weaponry used by American and British forces in Gulf Wars 1 and 2.

I have seen a town filled with soldiers and commissioned police who
have plunged the city into a state of fear.

I have met scores of unemployed people – over half the population of
Baghdad.

I have walked around this bombed-out city, its theaters, schools,
mosques all looted and burned. I have experienced the constant
blackouts the people must endure all day long.

I have seen the prisons holding 10,000 detainees, with no way for
families or lawyers to assist them.


BUT...

I have also met determined students planning how to rebuild their
culture.

I have met handicapped people who have built their own center without
funding from the provisional government.

I have met with squatters, writers, intellectuals and homeless people,
all determined to rebuild what has been destroyed by two wars, 12 years
of sanctions, and now the occupation.

I am bringing their testimonies home with me.

Today, the first anniversary of the beginning of the war, we must raise
our voices for peace. Today is the beginning of the work of peace that
will allow Iraq to live...

I have experienced for just a moment what the people of Iraq have had
to live with for over a decade. I join with others in Pittsburgh today
protesting this injustice and the war contracting of Carnegie Mellon
University. And I thank Pittsburgh Organizing Group for their
organizational genius in pulling together people of compassion from all
over our region.

Vincent Scotti Eirene

notowar.com

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