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US
Plans Police State Measures for Fallujans: Report
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Fallujan
men will reportedly be forced to work in military-style
battalions.
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FALLUJAH,
December 6 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The tens and maybe hundreds of thousands of
Fallujans who fled the western Baghdad
city before the US-led onslaught have more to be concerned about than
just flattened houses, devastated infrastructure and bullet-ridden
mosques.
The
US occupation forces are planning a set of police state measures to be
strictly applied to any of the battle-scarred city’s residents
yearning to come back, reported the Boston Globe Saturday,
Sunday December 5.
This
includes funneling Fallujans to so-called citizen processing centers
on the outskirts of the city to compile a database of their identities
through DNA testing and scanning, according to the American paper.
Fallujans
would also be forced to wear, at all times, badges displaying their
home addresses while the use of cars would be banned inside the city,
added the Globe.
About
80-to-90 percent of Fallujah's 300,000-strong
population are
said to have evacuated the city, escaping the hell of continuous US
air raids.
Some
10,000 US marines and army forces, alongside some 2,000 Iraqi national
guardsmen unleashed
a long-expected
onslaught on the resistance hub on November 8, capping long nights of
massive US raids.
The
successive air strikes have caused huge damage in the western Baghdad
city, with dead bodies littering the streets.
Slave-Like
Another
humiliating proposal, which even triggered debate among Marine
officers in control of the city, is to force all Fallujan men to work
in military-style battalions, reported the Globe.
They
would work in such fields as construction, waterworks, or
rubble-clearing platoons and get paid, it added.
“You
have to say, 'Here are the rules,' and you are firm and fair. That
radiates stability,” said Lieutenant Colonel Dave Bellon,
intelligence officer for the First Regimental Combat Team, the Marine
regiment that took the western half of Fallujah during the US assault
and expects to be based downtown for some time.
“They're
never going to like us,” he admitted, echoing other Marine
commanders who cautioned against raising hopes that Fallujans would
warmly welcome troops when they return to ruined houses and
rubble-strewn streets.
An
eyewitness, who escaped the hell in Fallujah, told IslamOnline.net
Saturday, November 13, that bodies of children and injured in the
western Iraqi city were “deliberately”
crushed by
US tanks.
Model
City
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Only
Humvees and dogs travel freely in Fallujah, says the Globe
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The
US occupation forces and the interim government repeatedly said they
wanted to make Fallujah a “model city,” where they can maintain
the security that has eluded them elsewhere, according to the Globe.
The
US forces maintain that the use of such coercive measures is allowed
by the martial law imposed last month by interim Prime Minister Iyad
Allawi.
“It's
the Iraqi interim government that's coming up with all these ideas,”
Major General Richard Natonski, who commanded the Fallujah assault,
said of the plans for identity badges and work brigades.
The
interim government declared on Sunday, November 7, a state
of emergency
across the war-torn country, except for the Kurdish-run north, which
gives it sweeping powers.
In
an unusual criticism of the bloody situation in war-torn Iraq, the
International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) lambasted Friday,
November 19, “ utter
contempt”
for humanity shown by all parties.
“As
hostilities continue in Fallujah and elsewhere, every day seems to
bring news of yet another act of utter contempt for the most basic
tenet of humanity: the obligation to protect human life and
dignity,” said Pierre Kraehenbuehl, the ICRC's director of
operations.
Red
Crescent Forced Out
The
Iraqi Red Crescent complained Sunday it had been forced to leave the
war-battered city on US military orders.
“Multinational
forces asked the IRC to withdraw from Fallujah for security reasons
and until further notice,” the organization's spokeswoman Ferdus al-Ibadi
told Agence France-Presse.
The
IRC distributed food, water and blankets to around 1,500 people in the
city, whose population was around 300,000 before a massive assault by
US-led forces began on November 8.
The
US military had since Thursday been interviewing military-age males
who came to the IRC for food aid as well as testing them for gun
powder, an AFP correspondent said.
There
had been friction between the IRC and the US military as the agency
was prevented from distributing aid throughout the city.
US
occupation forces have for many days banned
relief teams from entering war-battered Fallujah to help the wounded
and bury the dead.
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