The intensity of the attacks on the Shi a civilians has increased steadily in southern Iraq. The Human Rights Organization in Iraq (HROI) has reported that 1,093 people were arrested in June 1999 in Basrah alone. None of these people had done anything to deserve this level of cruelty displayed by Saddam. After residents protested the intentional shortage of food and medicine in Shi a villages, the towns of Rumaitha and Khudur were attacked by tanks from the Hammarabi Republican Guards Division. The troops that accompanied the fleet of tanks killed 14 villagers, arrested more than a hundred more, and destroyed 40 homes on June 26, 1999. On June 29, 1999, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Resistance in Iraq reported that 160 homes in the district of Abul Khaseeb, near Basrah were destroyed. In March 1999, the Iraqi regime had Grand Ayatollah al Sayyid Mohammad Sadiq al Sadr gunned down. Dozens of Shi a clerics and hundreds of their followers have been arrested by the authorities or murdered in cold blood since 1991; their whereabouts are still unknown to this day. In the southern marshes, government forces have burned houses and fields in an attempt to relocate the citizens to a northern location. It has also taken a deliberate campaign to drain and poison the marshes from which people obtained their water supply and the government has had houses demolished with bulldozers. Villages that belonged to the al Juwaibir, al Shumaish, al Musa and al Rahma tribes were completely demolished and their inhabitants were forced to move on. Government troops have expelled the population of other areas at gunpoint and also forced them to relocate by cutting off their water supply.
In Resolution 688 (1991), the UN Security Council condemned the Government of Iraq s repression of the Iraqi civilian population, which it concluded threatened international peace and security in the region. The Council demanded that Iraq immediately end this repression and allow immediate access by international humanitarian organizations to all those in need of assistance in all parts of Iraq. Iraq has neither ended the repression of its civilian population nor allowed outside organizations access to help those in need. The government of Iraq uses military force to repress civilian populations throughout the country, resulting in the deaths of thousands and the destruction of entire villages. The nature and magnitude of the crimes committed by Suddam Hussein and his regime since 1980 demand that all efforts be made to hold those individuals accountable for their crimes.
The President of Iraq, Saddam Hussein, and the top-ranking officials of his regime should be brought to justice for both their past and current crimes. Movafac Harb is the Washington Bureau Chief of Al Hayat, an Arabic newspaper published in most major world capitals. He said that Hussein should be put on trial in an international court as a war criminal. Hussein used chemical weapons against his own people, the Kurds and in the war with Iran, Harb said. He continued, His human-rights record since 1990 is unmatched, but until now, we have failed to bring criminal charges against him, I personally believe it was a lack of resolve in the previous administration. there are many people groups and organizations that are looking for evidence to prove that Saddam Hussein is directly connected to the oppression of the Iraqi citizens.
Considering the fact that Iraq s oil revenues are surging, it seems that its people would be much better off. Iraq s people are in their current state because their government is mismanaging the oil-for-food program, either deliberately or by incompetence. Even though there are reports of widespread health problems in Iraq, its government has still not spent the full $200 million for medical supplies which is allowed as a result of phase 5 of the food-for-oil program. Only about 40% of the money was used to buy medicines for primary care, while the other 60% was used to buy expensive medical equipment. The average Iraqi only needs basic medicines due to everyday illnesses and basic medical care. The government of Iraq has acknowledged this but it still spent over $6 million on a gamma knife, which is a medical instrument that is used for complicated neurosurgery that requires a person with extremely advanced training to operate it. And to add to that $6 million, is another couple million spent on a MRI machine. Not only is the government using money for unnecessary equipment, but they are wasting the money that is greatly needed for normal medicines and vaccines. Such advanced medical treatment is reserved for regime body guards and other members of the elite force. This money, which was basically thrown away by Hussein, should have been used to help his people who are in great need of professional medical attention. There are many people throughout America that agree. A group of people have put together a website that states what they believe: This total of $10 million could instead have benefited thousands of Iraqi children if it had been spent on vaccines, antibiotics, and the chemothepeutics necessary to treat the large number of the children that are allegedly dying due to lack of medicine.
On May 11, 1999, Larry Johnsone, who is the Seattle Post Intelligencer Foreign Desk Editor wrote an article about the health crisis in Iraq. He tells about malnourished children covered with flies, lying on stained mattresses in Al Mansour Pediatric Hospital in Baghdad. Parents sitting on the beds next to their children periodically swatting at the flies. The hospital is dark because electricity is shut off at intervals to save energy. The doctor moving from bed to bed is listing all of the children s illnesses: typhoid fever, pneumonia, leukemia, tuberculosis, and cholera. He comments on how even polio and measles are coming back. A nurse runs past him carrying a small oxygen bottle to a two year old girl named Nemya. Nemya has meningitis and cannot breathe because of the fluid clogging her bronchial tubes. Her parents are still by her side while the nurse covers the young girl s face with an oxygen mask. But it is too late. She dies. Her mother turns away and cries silently, her father buries his head in his hands and begins to weep. Another doctor states that a 50-cent tube of a medication could have saved her life, but the hospital had none. This is a normal occurrence in the hospitals of Iraq. This article touched the hearts of millions and helped spark the now blazing inferno of human-rights activists that are working hard to get Hussein down off his throne.
Each month thousands of infants die of malnutrition and many related illnesses that would not be a problem if Hussein had not ordered the government to purchase multi-million dollar medical equipment that is limited to the people that he favors. According to Anupama Rao Singh, the United Nations Children s fund representitive in Baghdad, children under the age of 5 were dying from malnutrition-related diseases in numbers ranging from 2,920 to a staggering 5,357 a month from 1991 to 1998.
Since the Gulf War, Hussein has directed a multi-billion dollar palace construction program while complaining that the U.N. sanctions keep him too poor to feed and provide health care for his people. He restricts access to his palaces to himself and a few hand-picked groups of people while he keeps the hospital shelves empty. Rather than spending funds on helping the Iraqi citizens, he chose to build monuments for himself. He deprives those in need of water and food in order to please elites and other supporters of the regime. Saddam celebrated his birthday last year by building a resort complex for regime loyalists. In addition, he outfitted these monuments with only the finest foreign materials– from gold-plated plumbing to the finest European marble and crystal chandeliers. Saddam paid for these palaces with a part of the Iraqi national wealth that he had managed to hide form the U.N. s manditory oil-for-food program. Through that program, the U.N. controls how Iraq spends its oil revenues and urges the regime to invest its wealth for the benefit of the people. Every day that Hussein holds onto his power, he allows his supporters to steal hundreds of thousands of barrels of oil from Iraq for their own personal gain.
Saddam Hussein is, without a doubt, one of the most greedy and cold-hearted rulers of all time. He has forced his own people, his own flesh and blood, out of their homes without notice to move to a foreign country. He has killed thousands of people who were completely innocent and did not deserve the death penalty. He purposefully spread toxic waste in marshes to drive the inhabitants out. Some people say he is acting out of revenge, others say he is acting out of greed. More venture as far as to say that he is an instrument of satan that should be taken out of Iraq, stripped of his authority and shown the same courtesy that he has shown his own countrymen.