Blair disinformation
CANA (CHRISTIANS AGAINST NATO
AGGRESSION) UK STATEMENT JULY 1ST 2002
Peter Schwarz @ the World Socialist
Web Site www.wsws.org ( see News & Analysis Afghanistan ) 29 June 2002 reported further
evidence of a massacre of Taliban prisoners.
"New reports from a human rights
organisation and the German press have substantiated charges that
US troops, aided by local and international allies, massacred
thousands of defenceless Taliban in the course of the war in
Afghanistan."
Schwarz reports how last January and
February, a team from Physicians for Human Rights (PHR), a group
based in Boston, visited a number of graves in the Mazar-i-Sharif
and Sheberghan area & in a May 1 letter to the provisional
Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, PHR wrote how the forensic team
found evidence of recently disposed human remains @ gravesites
they had visited. "While we are not in a position to verify
the provenance of the remains in these sites, we heard
speculation from well-informed international observers that one
of these sites, near the city of Sheberghan, could have been a
disposal ground of Taliban prisoners who had surrendered to the
Northern Alliance in November and December 2001.”
The full report detailing
the investigation (including photos) by the PHR and its letter to
Karzai are available at
and
To quote further from the Schwarz
report: "Earlier this month, Irish documentary filmmaker
Jamie Doran screened his uncompleted film Massacre in Mazar in a
number of European cities.
"Witnesses appearing in the film
gave more accounts detailing a massacre of up to 3,000 Taliban.
"The international press first
reported treatment of Taliban prisoners that systematically
breached the Geneva Conventions at the end of November.
"At that time, American aircraft
and helicopters quelled an apparent revolt by prisoners at the
fortress of Qala-i-Janghi near Mazar-i-Sharif, which was bombed
from the air. Several hundred prisoners died as a result of the
bombardment, with just 86 surviving the attack.
"The victims were members of the
Taliban, who had previously surrendered in Konduz to troops led
by the Uzbek general, Rashid Dostum, an ally of the Americans.
Having surrendered, the Taliban were prisoners of war entitled to
full protection under the Geneva Conventions.
"From the approximately 8,000
fighters who surrendered in Konduz only 500 to 800 were taken to
Qala-i-Janghi. Soon information emerged that other Taliban had
been murdered.
Two of the mass graves that they
investigated were of recent origin.
"The
team quoted testimony from inhabitants of the region, who claimed
to have seen scores of bodies unloaded from container trucks and
buried in the desert by bulldozers.
"According to these witnesses,
between 200 and 300 of the prisoners from Konduz were packed into
each of the containers, which were ostensibly being used to take
them to the prison at Sheberghan.
"En route, approximately half of
the captives suffocated or were killed by shots fired by soldiers
into the airtight containers. Others were executed as the
containers were unloaded into a mass grave in the desert.
"According to the witnesses American soldiers were present
during this massacre."
"The German weekly newspaper Die Zeit
recently sent two reporters, Giuliana Sgrena and Ulrich Ladurner,
to Masar-i-Sharif to carry out their own investigation. Their
report confirms many of the statements made in the film by Jamie
Doran.
"In the latest edition of Der Zeit,
they write: “It is not difficult to find people in
Sheberghan who can relate what took place in the desert of
Dascht-i-Laili. Without exhibiting any degree of excitement they
tell of executions and Taliban suffocated in containers.”
"The reporters quote the
inhabitant of a nearby village, who said: “I counted at least 13 containers. They were
transported on lorries. It was daytime when they arrived.”
Asked how these men died, the villager responded: 'We were told that they had
suffocated in the containers, but some of the containers were
splattered with blood.'
"According to the report in Die
Zeit, the local population was certain that the operation took
place in the presence of American soldiers:
“We enquired further. No one doubted that the Americans
had taken part. Even at higher
levels there are no doubts on this issue.”
The World Socialist Web site report
concludes:
"the various reports emerging from Afghanistan
present a horrific picture of a ruthlessly conducted colonial
war.
"These accounts contrast sharply
with the official image projected by the Pentagon and the media,
and indicate that the US military is guilty of major war crimes.
"There are
increasing demands for a full and independent investigation of
what took place in Afghanistan.
"The Physicians for Human Rights is
demanding that the mass graves be protected to ensure no evidence
is removed from the site or destroyed. The United Nations has
also taken up this demand. However, neither the Afghan government
nor Washington has responded to these calls. The European
Parliament plans to discuss the issue at the beginning of
July."
Anyone concerned with human rights
violations world wide is advised to read the whole document.
The World Socialist Web site report
follows on from allegations of Holocaust conditions
pertaining for prisoners of war in Afghanistan made by an EU
observer in May 2002.
CANA UK holds the
British Government as complicit in these war crimes, both in violating the Geneva Conventions
& encouraging the Americans to do the same, & in the
restriction of reporting of these dreadful events.
CANA UK believes Mr Blair is as usual
engaging in disinformation when he told the UK Parliament today
July 1st it is "inconceivable" that any US troops
involved in so called peacekeeping exercises could ever be
prosecuted for war crimes before the newly established
International Criminal Court.
For Blair to make this
statement on day when news appears of yet another attack by US
bombers on innocent civilians celebrating at a wedding party in
Afghanistan is an obscenity.
The world demands that the leaders of the
United States who are the main perpetrators of war crimes
internationally, either directly or through their surrogate
forces, be arraigned before domestic & international
tribunals.
Meanwhile the farce of the so called
"trial" of Mr Milosevic (now temporarily suspended
while the CIA continues endeavours to poison him, now he has
discredited the prosecution case) should be discontinued
immediately, on the simple ground of natural justice, that unless
law applies to all it should apply to none.
CANA UK Director William Spring pledges
to continue all legal efforts to establish violations of the
Geneva Convention Act in the UK Courts. A bill of
indictment against Defence Secretary Rumsfeld + supporting
evidence will be settled & forwarded by William Spring to the
UK Director of Public Prosecutions for further action later this
month.
Further information telephone 44 208 376
1454
