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WASHINGTON, Aug 8 (AFP) - Park police said they arrested 102 protesters Monday at a demonstration in front of the White House against sanctions imposed on Iraq.
The detainees were charged with "demonstrating without a permit," a police spokesperson said. They will have to pay a $50 fine or appear in court, where they would risk a maximum potential sentence of six months in prison. Organizers of a larger demonstration on Sunday estimated that some 3,000 people gathered in front of the White House that day to demand an end to the sanctions and sing folk songs originally composed and sung in the 1960s and 1970s to protest the Vietnam War. "Stop the sanctions now!" chanted the crowd in Lafayette Square as folk song legend and long-time peace activist Pete Seeger played the banjo and sang "Down by the Riverside," a time-honored hymn of the Vietnam War generation. The crowds braved driving rain to vent frustration with the U.S., Britain and other western powers that have led international efforts to maintain sweeping U.N. sanctions against Iraq initiated 10 years ago this past Sunday, following its invasion of Kuwait in 1990. "What is the purpose of this policy?" asked Green Party presidential candidate Ralph Nader, one of about a dozen speakers at the rally. "Is it to destabilize the dictator of Iraq?" he continued. "The policy increases the repression and the power of the dictator of Iraq. Is it to demonstrate that the U.S. of America is the most powerful country in the world? I don't think that needs to be demonstrated on the graves of one million innocent Iraqi civilians." Nader said 5,000 Iraqi children were dying each month from diseases and malnutrition resulting from the sanctions. Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio echoed this view by saying the sanctions were "wrong" and did nothing but continue to "weaken and kill innocent children." According to a recent report by the U.N., the sanctions on Iraq have profoundly affected the Iraqi population. Annual per capita income fell from $3,416 in 1984, to $1,036 in 1998 and infant mortality doubled from 64 out of 1,000 in 1990, to 129 out of 1,000 in 1995. |
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