 |
|
Ziegler, a former Swiss sociology professor, lashed out at the American practice as "a flagrant violation of international law".
|
BAGHDAD,
October 15, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – The UN
special rapporteur on the right to food has accused the US-led
occupation forces of starving Iraqis civilians in besieged cities and
depriving them of water to force them.
"A
drama is taking place in total silence in Iraq, where the coalition's
occupying forces are using hunger and deprivation of water as a weapon
of war against the civilian population," Jean Ziegler told a
press conference Friday, October 14, reported Reuters.
He
stressed that Iraqi and US-led forces cut off or restricted food and
water to force residents in Fallujah, Tal Afar and Samarra to flee
before onslaughts allegedly targeting entrenched resistance fighters.
The
Iraqi army announced Thursday, September 22, the end of the
"successful" Tal Afar offensive, which involved 6,000 Iraqi
soldiers, backed by 4,000 US troops and claimed the lives of 157
"rebels".
US
air strikes and bombardment have sent residents into panicky flight
from the city, ending up in a refugee camp on the city’s peripheries
where they faced serious shortages of clean water, food and medicine.
Resistance
hub Fallujah was the scene of one of the bloodiest US raids in
November 2004 with at least 700 people killed, including children and
women, and thousands injured.
Amnesty
International has harshly
criticized the US for killing dozens of civilians
in a number of deadly consecutive air strikes into the war-battered
city.
Law-breaching
Ziegler,
a former Swiss sociology professor, lashed out at the American
practice as "a flagrant violation of international law".
He
underlined that the Geneva Conventions on warfare, which form the
basis of international humanitarian law, not only forbid starving
civilians, but actually make the occupying force responsible to
provide it.
Two
1977 protocols to the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which lay down rules of
conduct in armed conflicts, ban using deprivation of food or water as
a weapon of war.
They
also prohibit destruction of food stocks or interruption of food
supply lines.
Ziegler
said that he had been in touch with British authorities on the issue,
and "a channel seems to be opening", but that attempts to
start a dialogue with US authorities had been fruitless.
He
would present a report on 27 October at the UN General Assembly in New
York expressing his personal "outrage" at the practice and
calling on countries to "condemn this strategy" in a
resolution.
The
UN official presents an oral report each autumn at the UN General
Assembly and a written report each spring at the 53-nation UN Human
Rights Commission.
Denial
 |
|
The UN official said Iraqi and US-led forces cut off or restrict food and water to force residents in besieged towns to leave.
|
A
US military spokesman in Baghdad, Lt-Col Steve Boylan, dismissed the
criticism as inaccurate.
"Any
accusations of coalition forces refusing basic needs from the citizens
of Iraq are completely false," he said.
Boylan
maintained that they "take all precautions to ensure that the
Iraqi people are taken care of".
"There
have in the past ... been some supplies that have been delayed due to
combat operations, but they were due to transit the area once it was
deemed safe. It does not do relief supplies any good if you have them
going into a firefight."
Yet,
Ziegler insisted that civilians who could not leave besieged cities
and towns for whatever reason should not suffer as a result of this
strategy.
In
a report to the UN Human Rights Commission in September, Ziegler
concluded that twice as many children are malnourished in Iraq now as
there were when the US invaded Iraq in March 2003.
"Malnutrition
rates in children under five have almost doubled since the US-led
intervention - to nearly 8 percent by the end of 2004," the
report said.
