CINDY SHEEHAN AND OTHERS ARRESTED TRYING TO DELIVER PEACE PETITION TO BOLTON'S UN OFFICE

by Haider Rizvi

(IPS) UNITED NATIONS -- New York police arrested four women activists outside John Bolton's offices at the United Nations March 6 as they tried to deliver a petition signed by 72,000 people calling for immediate withdrawal of all foreign troops from Iraq.

The arrests took place after the U.S. diplomatic mission reportedly refused to meet with a delegation of Iraqi women who are currently on a rare speaking tour of the United States.

Among those arrested were Gold Star mother Cindy Sheehan, who lost her son, a U.S. soldier, in the Iraq war; Medea Benjamin, co-director of Global Exchange, a human rights organization, and the women's peace group CODEPINK; Rev. Patricia Ackerman; and activist Missy Beattie of the Gold Star Families for Peace.

Sheehan and Benjamin had just concluded a news conference outside UN headquarters, where they were joined by an Iraqi women's delegation calling for an end to the U.S. occupation of their country.

The five-woman delegation was invited by Global Exchange and CODEPINK with the aim of educating U.S. citizens about the horrors of war and the suffering it has caused for millions of ordinary Iraqis.

Witnesses said Sheehan and others wanted the U.S. mission to send one of its representatives to meet with the delegation of Iraqi women. They refused to leave the premises without delivering the signatures, which led to the arrests, activists said.

"I am outraged that the U.S. Mission could not send someone down to meet with a delegation of women whose lives and families were shattered by this destructive and immoral war," Ann Wright, a former U.S. army colonel and diplomat, told IPS.

Wright, who marched alongside Sheehan and the Iraqi women, said she was physically assaulted by security officers during the arrests.

Earlier, addressing a news conference inside the UN compound, peace activists from both countries urged the Security Council to call for the withdrawal of U.S. forces and all other foreign troops from Iraq.

The Iraqi delegation and women leaders from the U.S. blamed the Pentagon for provoking much of the violence in Iraq and demanded the replacement of U.S. troops with a UN peacekeeping force.

But they emphasized that the peacekeeping troops must not be drawn from any country that took part in the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

"What happiness they (the Coalition) have brought to Iraq. They have brought us death and destruction," Faiza Al Araji, a member of the Iraqi delegation, told IPS.

"They talk about reconstruction? What reconstruction? There is no water, no electricity, no security in Iraq. They should just leave our country," she said.

One member of the Iraqi delegation told reporters that every month in Baghdad's hospitals, about 1,600 people die as a result of violence.

"When I enter the hospital where I work, I see children with no arms, no eyes," said Dr. Entisar Mohammad Ariabi, a pharmacist at a Baghdad hospital, who broke into tears several times during her presentation.

"The occupation has destroyed our country. They have turned our country into a prison. They call it liberation!" she said. "We say, thank you for this liberation, but please go (from Iraq)."

Expressing her solidarity with the Iraqi women, Cindy Sheehan, whose son Casey was killed in Iraq, accused the U.S. government of committing crimes against humanity in Iraq.

"It's time for the UN to do something," she told reporters before her arrest. "We are saying, you have to stop killing our children."

The Iraqi delegation demanded that the UN Commission on Human Rights order an inquiry into the allegations of torture and abuse by the U.S.-led coalition forces and Iraqi police and ensure accountability for those responsible.

They also expressed their grave concern over the deterioration of the status of women and said the UN should help reverse this trend by ensuring the implementation of a Security Council resolution that mandates women's role in peacemaking efforts.

Benjamin told reporters that two women whose husbands and children were killed, reportedly at the hands of the U.S. military, were denied visa requests on the grounds that they have no family members to return to Iraq.

She said the U.S. State Department recently informed her that the two -- Anwar Kadhim Jawad and Vivian Salim Mati -- had "failed to overcome the presumption of intending to emigrate."

"It's really disgusting," she told IPS. "These women have no desire to stay in the United States. We had a very hard time convincing them to come."

Jodie Evans, a member of CODEPINK who met Jawad in Baghdad two years ago, said, "We all cried when we heard Anwar tell her story about losing her husband and three children."

"If the American people heard these stories their image of the Iraq war would be completely different," Evans added. "I suppose that is why the State Department does not want her to come here."

Jawad's husband and four children were driving down a road when they were suddenly caught in a hail of bullets from an unknown U.S. checkpoint, according to sources who have visited Baghdad. She was pregnant at the time. Only her 14-year-old daughter survived the attack.

The U.S. government has compensated Jawad with 11,000 dollars but she has described her loss as "incalculable" and her grief as "immeasurable."

"In my family, like many Iraqi families, the husband takes care of all the family business. My job is to take care of the well being of the family inside the house," Susan Galleymore, a U.S. military mother who visited Baghdad in 2004, quoted Jawad as telling her.

"Now I have no husband. I have no income. I have no house any more. I live with my parents and these two children. Everything else is gone. I will never recover," she was quoted as saying.

Mati, the other woman whose visa application was rejected, and her family had decided to flee their home when the U.S. military began bombing their neighborhood three days after entering Baghdad, according to CODEPINK.

Mati's husband was driving the family car, with three children sitting in the back, when they crossed paths with a U.S. tank. The soldiers atop the tank began shouting at them and within moments her husband and three children were killed. She too was wounded, but survived, the group said.

As of last week, more than 2,300 U.S. personnel had died in Iraq since the war began in March 2003, according to the Pentagon.

The U.S. government says it does not track local civilian casualties, but research published last year by the British medical journal The Lancet concluded that the war had claimed at least 100,000 civilian lives in Iraq.

Peace activists said they hoped that Iraqi women's stories would highlight the suffering of ordinary Iraqi people.

"These women are not politicians but ordinary Iraqis who are desperate to see an end to the violence and are taking great personal risk to come to the U.S.," Benjamin said before her arrest. "It's a rare opportunity to hear from Iraqis themselves, and we hope that U.S. officials will listen."

The women in the delegation, who come from diverse ethnic and professional backgrounds, plan to meet with U.S. government officials on Mar. 8, International Women's Day.

Meanwhile, despite the arrests on Monday, activists from Global Exchange and CODEPINK say they are determined to go ahead with their plans to deliver 100,000 signatures to the White House on Mar. 8 and U.S. embassies around the world.