Do you Remember Fallujah?

An open letter to the UN Secretary General 

of the United Nations, Mr. Ban Ki Moon

Dear Mr. Ban Ki-Moon,

In April and November 2004 - ten years ago - US-led coalition forces attacked the Iraqi

 city Fallujah. Independent journalists and relief workers who were present in Fallujah 

in April 2004 reported how US Marines targeted civilians and blocked the hospital 

entrance preventing civilians from getting medical treatment. 

A conservative estimate by the British organisation Iraq Body Count suggests that during

 the April attack about 600 civilians “with over 300 of these being women and children” 

were killed in Fallujah. 

At the outset of the second attack, in November 2004, the conflict could have been

 settled peacefully. After receiving a request from a Fallujah-city-delegation,

 Mr. Kofi Annan, at the time Secretary General of the UN, had called for a dialog between

 US forces and the Fallujah resistance. However, no peaceful solution to the crisis was

 agreed that way. 

On 8 November 2004, US coalition forces conducted a full scale military attack on Fallujah.

 About 4,000 resistance fighters were expected to hide in the city. The American military 

used tanks, jets, helicopters, gunships, artillery and various forms of heavy explosives

 during the course of which Fallujah was largely treated as a “free-fire zone”. Due to the

 sealing of the city, about 50,000 civilians were trapped in a densely populated area with 

the size of about 3 x 3.5 square kilometres. Consequently, about 90% of the city was 

destroyed and between 4,000-6,000 civilians were killed. Also in November 2004, 

US forces jailed more than 2,000 civilians and “insurgents” from Fallujah without trial. 

In his book Fallujah: Eyewitness Testimony from Iraq’s Besieged City, the English 

writer Jonathan Holmes documented extensive evidence for possible violations of the

 Geneva Conventions of 1949, in particular the 4th Geneva Convention on the 

protection of civilians, as well as their relevant Additional Protocols from 1977. 

According to Holmes “the siege of Fallujah...contravened seventy individual articles of 

the Geneva Convention”. These include, for example the use of phosphor as an
 incendiary weapon, the use of cluster bombs, thermobaric weapons and other
 heavy explosive weaponry in residential areas, the direct targeting of civilians and
 wounded combatants,

 the raid of a hospital, the harassment of doctors, hospital staff and patients, the 

prevention of civilians from leaving the city and the prevention of relief organisations 

from entering the city. 

Louise Arbour, at that time the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, 

had vowed through her spokesperson to investigate “all violations of international

 humanitarian law and human rights law“ in Fallujah. But these issues have largely 

been ignored by Western powers, most notably the USA, UK and European Union, 

and their mass media. As yet there has not been an investigation by the UN or an 

independent body. 

Today, the use of phosphor and depleted uranium ammunition has caused widespread 

deformities and diseases among infants in Fallujah. Iraqi NGOs (MHRI and CCERF) 

found out in 2006 that there were 5928 cases of children with unknown deformities and

 cancer in Fallujah. 

On 24 July 2010 Patrick Cockburn reported in the British newspaper The Independent that

 a new study documented "dramatic increases in infant mortality, cancer and leukaemia 

in the Iraqi city of Fallujah” exceeding “those reported by survivors of the atomic bombs

 that were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945”. For instance, the survey showed

 “a four-fold increase in all cancers and a 12-fold increase in childhood cancer in

 under-14s. Infant mortality in the city is more than four times higher than in neighbouring

 Jordan and eight times higher than in Kuwait”. Dr Chris Busby, visiting professor at

 the University of Ulster and co-author of the study presented by The Independent 

suggested that “to produce an effect like this, some very major mutagenic exposure 

must have occurred in 2004 when the attacks happened”.

Weren’t the people of Fallujah protected by the Geneva Conventions? Weren’t the US

 assaults on Fallujah carried out in violation of international law because the US, as the 

occupant of Iraq, had to adhere to the Geneva Conventions and protect Iraqi civilians?

 Couldn’t the destruction of Fallujah be regarded as a violation of the general prohibition

 of “wanton destruction of cities, towns, or villages, or devastation not justified by military

 necessity” which were already spelled out as war crimes in
 article 6(b) of the Nuremberg Principles and were affirmed as such by the UN General
 Assembly in 1950?

We, citizens, intellectuals, political activists, and defenders of human and democratic 

rights and liberties beseech the restoration of the UN Special Rapporteur on human

 rights in Iraq and to instigate an investigation with a view to: 

1) Forming an international fact finding commission to examine US/Coalition actions in

 and around Fallujah in April and November 2004; 

2) Facilitating the establishment of an independent international criminal tribunal for Iraq,

 or a referral to the International Criminal Court, to prosecute any persons responsible

 for grave violations of international humanitarian law in Fallujah and other localities in Iraq,

 as in the cases of Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia;

3) Pressuring the current US government to start a congressional inquiry;

4) Pressuring the current US and Iraqi governments to release all those detained in 

the course of the 2004 assaults, or to charge them before courts of law, as the case may be.

This petition may be circulated. 

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Do-you-Remember-Fallujah-20141022-0078.html