Iraqi
Women’s League (IWL) - APPEAL
While US administration continues its efforts to
launch a military strike against Iraq, the dictatorial regime is intensified
repression all over our country and continuing its hollow rhetoric about
challenging the American threat.
The dictator’s main concern is his own
interest and survival, not the interests of Iraq and its people; even if this
meant sacrificing the whole people.
The main looser in these extremely difficult
conditions is our people; men and women, who have been the victims of
dictatorship and unjust international blockade, and are now frightened by the
unknown as a result of the current tense situation.
The effects of Saddam’s misrule over Iraqi
women were: the disappearance of women activists, their torture and execution.
Their forcible conscription into the repressive Para-military regiments
of the fascist regime (such as the “Al-Quds Army).
Horrific crime were also committed in the name of morality, by beheading
innocent women and then leaving their bodies outside their family homes.
Following these new developments, wide sections
of Iraqi women are aware that the US, which is threatening and promising to
bring about change in Iraq through military action, is only concerned with
protecting its interests, drawing the political map of the area, preserving its
Gulf War gains, and reshaping the state of affairs in the Middle East to suit
its interests. Iraqi women also know that the dictatorial regime has no
credibility whatsoever when it voices concern about the future of the homeland
and people.
The women of Iraq dream of stability, a secure
and dignified life. They aspire to democracy, ensuring their fundamental rights,
lifting the blockade and salvation from dictatorship. This dream can only
achieved through the patriotic and democratic alternative. Such an alternative
calls for rejecting the American war option and also rejecting the
dictatorship’s option, because both are coincide on the destruction of Iraq
and its people.
We call upon all the women organisations; all
those concerned for the cause of world peace, and all people of good will, to
intensify their solidarity with the Iraqi people in general, and with Iraqi
women in particular, by raising their voices loud for the prevention of war, the
lifting of the blockade from the Iraqi people; the implementation of UNSCR 688
which calls for respect for human rights and fundamental rights for all Iraqis,
through free elections supervised by the UN ..
To achieve a unified democratic, pluralistic and
federal Iraq.
(Issued from a plenary meeting of
Iraqi Women’s League, held in London on 28/9/2002)