Untitled Document
The city of Fallujah was subjected to a genocide war by the American forces. The
military machinery destroyed almost 70 per cent of the city, from civilian houses
to medical center and general services facilities especially water, electricity.
This war resulted in killing thousands of innocent civilians and sending almost
a half million refugee.
It is well known that the American forces and their puppet government prevented
any medical or humanitarian relief agency to enter the city throughout its siege
to the city.
Since the beginning of this year, the citizens are increasingly returning to
the city, driven by the very bad living conditions in the places where they
took refuge and the will to try the reconstruction of their houses and shops.
Except for the few who found their houses still standing, the majority lived
on the ruins whether by using tents or other means. In this bad living condition,
the American occupation forces continue to commit grave violations to the basics
principles of human rights and international law.
In order to give the international community a clear image of what is happening,
we present this short report:
1 - Following the two reports that our center issued in mid January 2005 and
the other facts that came to the knowledge of the UN, the human rights office
of UNAMI and the Iraq office of WHO have – in two occasion- officially
requested to enter the city of Fallujah in order to examine the situation there
but the American occupation authority did not respond to these requests until
now on the pretext of the dangerous security situation. Here we must ask, if
the security situation is still dangerous, then how are families and children
allowed to return to the city? Are the lives of the UN officials more precious
than those of the Fallujah citizens? Or is it that there are crimes that the
international bodies are not allowed to examine.
2 - The citizens of Fallujah are suffering of many sorts of humiliations when
entering or leaving the city. In their daily life, they go through many sorts
of harassments and threats by the American occupation forces which consider
them as terrorists simply because they refuse the occupation. Not to mention
the continuous random killing in all part of the city that does not exclude
children or elder people, men or women. In a dangerous step of racism and freedoms
limiting, the American occupation authority issued special ID cards for the
citizens of Fallujah, preventing visitors from other cities to enter it. This
step isolates the city Fallujah from its surroundings and the rest of the country
and so turning it into a huge prison.
3 - Until the issuing of this report the effort to find the corpses of the
victims of November 2004 comprehensive attack on the city still going on. The
specialized burier teams have found about 700 corpses and we definitely think
that the number of martyrs is greater than that. The American occupation forces
itself announced that they have killed about 1300 individuals but no one knows
where those bodies were buried. This assures that there are mass graves in the
city, the American continual refusing to allow the UN representatives to enter
the city, confirm this assessment. Furthermore, the medical authorities and
the citizens could not find the burial ground of 450 bodies of the citizens
of Fallujah that the American occupation forces have photographed and buried
in a place that is still unknown.
4 - There are hundreds of missing personnel from Fallujah, but afraid of arrest
and intimidation by the American forces, the families still hesitate to register
the names of their missing with the official committee for registering the missing.
That is why the registered number is less than the actual one.
5- The detainees from the Fallujah citizens are suffering of inhuman and bad
treatment in both Abu Graib and Basra prisons. There is no reason behind keeping
those detainees in the prisons. Unfortunately, there is no legal or official
Iraqi authority that handles the issue of those detainees, it left to two mosque
in the city.
6- As a measure of collective punishment, the American occupation forces and
the National guards continue to use some schools inside the city as compounds,
depriving students from pursuing their education without offering substitutes.
7 - There are deliberate delay by the interim government and the American occupation
authority in reconstructing the city of Fallujah even in restoring the basic
services. What are being announced about the reconstruction are mere lies uncovered
by the fact that the people who are working in Fallujah are only those governmental
employees in the city, indeed their number does not match the size of destruction
that the city suffered. The American themselves admitted that more than 90000
houses have been demolished. We wonder about the difference between the destruction
that Fallujah has suffered and the destruction of the areas which devastated
by Tsunami. Both are devastated areas but the difference is that Fallujah is
not announced officially as a devastated place in order to cover the crimes
perpetrated on its soil.
7 - Despite that there is an Iraqi official committee for reconstruction, the
occupation forces give out contracts without knowledge or coordination with
that committee. For example one contract to build a school cost One million
US dollar for each school, while the official committee estimates the cost between
200 000 and 300 000 US dollars. No local or official committee is supervising
these money transactions.
8 – It was not allowed until now for any body to examine the environmental
pollution that affected Fallujah due to the usage of prohibited and dangerous
weapons, except for analyzing the recently established processed water. Some
cases are appearing now of feats deformation for some of the newborns that is
taking place in the city. As an example the case of the child Mina Jabbar Mahmood
Aljumaili that was recently born and is 3 months now in addition to another
child in the same neighborhood that was born in a short period after in Al'andulus
neighborhood.
9 - The civilians who stayed in the city during the American offensive have
gone through numerous tragic stories and inhuman treatment by the occupation
forces and the Iraq so-called National Guards. The deliberate killing of the
civilians was the daily practice of the American forces. Many children had to
watch their parents being shot to death in front of them, or men who had to
watch their children and their wives being killed. Almost every family who stayed
in Fallujah has to bury a victim in their garden. As example, Hamid Abdulrazzak
Sultan, a citizen from Fallujah, witnessed the killing of his pregnant wife
along with his 4 sons during an American attack on 9 Nov 2004. Four members
of Fawzi Hussein Salman al-Aisawi family where deliberately killed in their
house by the American forces in front of their daughter on the morning of 9
November 2005.
10 – Until now, the citizens and the sick people are not allowed to cross
the bridge which connects the city to the main hospital a matter that causes
a great suffering. The city has no mean of communication to be used to report
the urgent health cases during the curfew hours which force the sick to stay
at home until dawn to be able to go to hospital. Many cases happened of appendicitis,
labour, death due to clots which need immediate health care. Not to mention
to war phobia in thousands of women and children which warns of a permanent
psychological disaster that will be difficult to cure since it is becoming a
chronic case.
11 - Not allowing issuing death certificates that explain the real causes of
death and their numbers that occur due the crimes of the occupation forces because
there are no clear instructions until now. The crime of bombing cities with
so much brutality and destruction is the biggest evidence of disrespect for
the lives of the unarmed civilians that were in the first year of occupation
more that 100 000 citizens.
12- The puppet government is deliberately ignoring the crimes and the grave
violation of the human rights happening every day in Iraq by the American forces
and continued to talk about an old allegation of violations that allegedly happened
years ago. These allegations were tackled by the commission in details, whether
by reports of special rapporteur or by the several decisions it had adopted
and accordingly some measures which were implemented aggressively against Iraq
in unprecedented way.
What more tragedies that international bodies are waiting for in order to raise
their voices demanding to stop the massacres and mass killings of the civilians.
Is what happened to Fallujah and its citizens is just an accident while the
entire world is on alert if a western citizen is killed in Iraq forgetting that
all that is because of the hated occupation.
We call upon all countries and organizations both governmental and non governmental
which taking part in the meetings of the 61st session of the UN Human Rights
Commission to raise their voices and denounce those violations and exercise
pressures to dispatch an investigation team to visit the city of Fallujah to
examine the facts and the tragic situation that its citizens are going through.
We demand the commission to nominate a special rapporteur to the human rights
situation in Iraq during the occupation. We hope that this report will be distributed
as among the documents of the session.
Studies Center of Human Rights and Democracy.
26 - 3 - 2005 , Baghdad - Iraq