Entered into the database on Friday, October 14th, 2005 @ 16:55:05 MST
United Nations human rights investigator has accused the US and British
forces in Iraq of breaching international law by depriving civilians of food
and water in besieged cities. But the US military denied the charge and said that while supplies were sometimes
disrupted by combat, food was never deliberately withheld. Jean Ziegler, a former Swiss sociology professor who is UN special
rapporteur on the right to food, said on Friday that the Geneva Conventions
banned military forces from using "starvation of civilians as a method
of warfare". But he said that in Falluja, Tal Afar and Samarra, Iraqi and US-led
forces had cut off or restricted food and water to encourage residents to flee
before assaults on entrenched Sunni fighters over the past year. "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," Ziegler told a news briefing in Geneva.
Geneva Conventions 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 he understood the military rationale of the US-led forces that
were "facing such a horrible enemy - these insurgents who do not respect
any law of war and who use the civilian population of cities like Falluja or
Tal Afar as human shields, who keep them as hostages". But he said their actions were nevertheless a "flagrant violation of international
humanitarian law". Ziegler said he hoped the General Assembly would "condemn this strategy
of the coalition forces" when he presents his report on the right to food
in New York on 27 October. US denial Lieutenant Colonel Steve Boylan, a spokesman for the US military in Iraq, said
Ziegler's accusations were baseless. "Any allegations of us withholding basic needs from the Iraqi people are
false," he said. "In conjunction with our combat operations, we take all precautions to
ensure that the Iraqi people are taken care of, as does the Iraqi government,"
Boylan said. "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." 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.
