Part 5 - DW062 001 021 005

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Speech of Hugh Stephens, Co-ordinator of the British Commission of the International Commission of Inquiry on Economic Sanctions, to the Second International Athens Conference Against the Embargo on Iraq. One hundred and fifty years ago, beautiful fields of corn and barley waved in the wind in one of the most fertile lands in the world, yet the industrious and creative people who cultivated those fields, with their ancient culture, never even saw any bread. They had to live off a few potatoes cultivated in their back gardens. The gardens became overworked, the potatoes became diseased, and though corn continued to be exported to the great profit of the dominant power, a million people died, millions more emigrated, and the population which was at one time eight million has now declined to around three million today. In history books we read of this as the 'Irish famine'. In fact it was no famine, in the sense of being a natural disaster; it was, on the contrary, the deliberate inflicting of hunger and death on a people to secure colonial objectives. My friend the Reverend James Moon yesterday very forcefully recalled that the British created the ideology of racism, the British originated the Transatlantic slave trade, and the British drew the divisive and mischievous frontiers in the Middle East. We can in fact add another crime to this list: the British invented the weapon of hunger. Though I have recalled past history, we in this Conference have heard powerful, detailed testimony on the effects on the effects of the embargo on Iraq today which mirror exactly the same terrible effects of this, the cruellest weapon of mass destruction — a weapon which is worse than indiscriminate, since it discriminates against the weakest in society. Listening to the speakers here, particularly the women speakers who feel the strongest sympathy with their Iraqi sisters who suffer first and deepest, I have been sharply reminded of the terrible scenes I witnessed in the hospitals of Iraq last year during my tour with Ramsay Clark, former US Attorney General, together with Sarah and Anne who are here with us today. And once again, the country suffering is overflowing with natural and human resources, yet a country where the weak are dying from deprivation and untreated disease deliberately inflicted by policies imposed in our name.

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