Welcome to Asia2025.

I’m Maryann Keady and today we’re going to be looking at the recent violence in East Timor, the coronial inquest into the deaths of five men in Balibo thirty two years ago…and Iraq today, under US occupation….

Since independence in 1999 Timor Leste has witnessed it’s fair share of violence. From riots in 2003, protests in 2004, rampaging gangs in 2006, and now rival martial arts gangs and rebel leader Alfredo Reinaldo and his supporters in 2007.

It’s a rather curious beginning to nationhood for a country that celebrated its independence with a bedazzling array of international guests in 2002.

And like many other countries in the Pacific, it seems China has weighed into the country – making for an interesting geo-political landscape of Australian, US and Chinese interests.

No-one is willing to talk about who or what is behind the ongoing destabilization in the country, except to say that political leaders and regional actors - such as Australia and the US – have been accused of orchestrating the violence for geo-political ends.

At the moment, rebel leader Alfredo Reinaldo remains at large despite 800 Australian troops in the country, and some crack Australian SAS soldiers, who allegedly tried to arrest him on Sunday.

Speaking to me from the capital Dili, to talk about the current violence is reporter and cameraman JOSE BELO…

Asia2025: Jose, you’ve just been to a press conference, what has the President said?

Jose: Mr. President, President Gusmão said about nine or eight points.

The first point that I could share is that he is going to take such a strong action to use force - national and international forces on the ground to stop the violence.

Asia2025: Okay, so he’s not talking about coming up against Reinaldo, who’s he talking about using force against?

Jose: It is against some people who have committed crimes of violence in Dili mainly, the capital of East Timor; this is what he referred to, not referring to Alfredo.

In regards to Alfredo case, he has said just yesterday he is calling on Australian troops, or international led by Australian troops, to track down Alfredo. That’s what he said yesterday, but today he’s only referring to the national issue.

Asia2025: To the national issue, that’s right. Now, I heard there was rioting in Dili and Gleno over the weekend, is that right?

Jose: Yes it is, that is why the President came in with this kind of strong statement.

Asia2025: Why was there rioting?

Jose: I was filming some of the banners, this was showing support for Mr. Reinaldo, they were saying “Free Mr. Reinaldo” and calling a traitor of Mr Xanana Gusmao.

Asia2025: Jose, how is it possible for eight hundred Australian troops and New Zealand troops and crack SAS troops, how is it possible that they can fail to capture Reinaldo? Tell us what happened there.

Jose: Well, the terrain is quite difficult, and these Australian boys, they just come in and they don’t know the terrain, and whatever they can do – they have the equipment but they can’t…they don’t know the terrain, or where they are going and this is a challenge for the Australian troops.

Asia2025: Why can he not be simply arrested by police or security forces? Why have neither the police or security forces tried to arrest him if the Australians cannot?

Jose: I think this question is directed at the President of East Timor, Mr. Gusmão. He’s the one who authorised the international forces to capture Mr. Reinaldo, and why didn’t he use the Timorese police, why he has to use the Australian troops – I don’t know the answer.

I think when the President made a statement, it was regarding the eighteen or twenty five weapons as President said, …but Mr Reinaldo said only eighteen weapons that was handed over to him. He received these weapons from the police border unit, the East Timor border unit, but Mr President said Mr Reinaldo has …….. and raided a PPU post and taken twenty five weapons….maybe beause of that, the President’s use of Australian force.

Asia2025: Well the fomer Prime Minister, Mari Alkatiri said recently that we must arrest him to improve the country’s security situation and reveal the true causes of the crisis in Timor Leste and identify the people behind the crisis.

But even when Alkatiri was Prime Minister there was little investigation into who was behind this recurring violence.

Are people starting to question the motives of Reinaldo and wonder why no one can aprehend him?

Jose: Well, there has been some kind of questions towards mainly the Australian troops or UN or government what kind of work they are doing to arrest Reinaldo. This has been going on for almost a year.

You know it has been going on for almost a year, but only last week the President issues a statement giving permission to the Australian troops to arrest Reinaldo.

Asia2025: And people are wondering why he’s only given that a year later.

Jose: Yes, there is some questions of that, yes, there is some question of that .

Asia2025: Now I see that Reinaldo’s now coming out and saying that the presence of Australian and New Zealand troops is illeagal in the country. Isn’t this a turn around? Isn’t this different to what he was saying before?

Jose: Yes. I remember on a day we were filming up, I was with David O’Shea from SBS, we did film combat in Fatu-Ahi where Mr. Reinaldo was involved. Mr. Reinaldo himself said that we need international forces here to bring stability to the country. And I don’t know why he is now saying …. and why he’s turning around and saying that, I don’t really understand it.

Asia2025: There are fears this will destabilise the country in the lead up to elections in April. Do you think that may be possible?

Jose: That might be possible if the United Nations, the International forces and the East Timorese stakeholders or the leaders of this country are not strong enough to come out and say this is enough.

But I think there is some question, especially in optimism, at this stage, because the President is now making it clear that this must be over so he is using all the mechanisms he has to stop this violence so the elections can go ahead.

Asia2025: Okay, you think there’s now a possiblity that the country may be stabilised in the leadup to the election after the presidents press conference?

Jose: In this last week, in one week only, he has come out very strong and condemned this attitude of violence. And I think if Mr. President had done this in the beginning, then….but it’s not too late. There is still an opportunity for this violence to stop, but I don’t really understand why it’s just today, he’s doing this.

Asia2025: Now, the UN claims that twenty five thousand people are in camps. That figure may be a little high, but surely this ongoing unrest is unsettling for the people of Timor….they really have endured this almost since Independence.

Jose: Yes, there is a lot of people stressed in this kind of situation. You know there is a lot of girls in the camps and the parents are scared, and I think this kind of situation has to be finished or stopped.

The violence has to be stopped, the people have to go back home to start their normal life again. But so far, the government is putting a lot of effort, a lot of appeals, but the people don’t take heart and this is not a good sign for the people towards unity.

But what’s going to happen is that the televison, is what the President said, is going to announce the State in Emergency.

Asia2025: A State Of Emergency…..

Back to the elections. Prime Minister Jose-Ramos Horta says he will now run for President in the April 9 poll. Does that mean that Xanana Gusmão will be looking at the Prime Ministers seat?

Jose: Well, every political party in this country is fighting towards this election and what’s going to happen is this election in going to be fantastic if it’s really going to be democratic. And there is no challengers; even Mari Alkatiri welcomes the Opposition. He said to me in an interview that the Opposition today is not real Opposition, I need a real Opposition so Mari Alkatiri welcomes Xanana’s party, CRNT. This is what he said.

Asia2025: And so Xanana will be going for the Prime Minister’s seat?

Jose: He hasn’t yet made it to the public, so we don’t know yet who is going to be the Prime Minister of this country – whether Xanana wants to be the Prime Minister or who else. He hasn’t made it clear so I can’t comment on that.

Asia2025: Listen, thanks so much for your time Jose.

And that was journalist JOSE BELO speaking to me from Dili.

I’m Maryann Keady, and you’re listening to Asia2025.

Shirley Shackleton has been a tireless campaigner for an independent judicial inquiry into the deaths of her husband Greg Shackleton, as well as fellow journalists Brian Peters, Malcolm Rennie, Tony Stewart and Gary Cunningham in Balibo on 16 October, 1975.

Indonesian and Australian government’s have over the years, maintained that the journalists were killed in crossfire by warring Timorese factions, not by Indonesian forces. This was two months before Indonesia invaded the former Portuguese colony.

However, a coroner’s inquest into the death of one of the men, Nine Network cameraman Brian Peters has heard evidence that Indonesian forces killed the men.

Two former top level government officers have told the inquest that they saw an intercepted intelligence report which indicated the men were killed in Balibo on orders from Indonesian forces.

And while an arrest warrant has been issued for Indonesian general turned politician Yunus Yosfiah, the outcome of the inquiry is still unclear.

I spoke to Shirley Shackleton about what the Inquest has revealed so far – and whether it may change the official record of the men’s deaths.

Asia2025: Well, obviously these reports, I know the Sherman report, maintain the journalists were caught in cross fire.

Shirley: (laughs)

Asia2025: Why do you believe successive Australian governments have insisted this was the case? Was it fear of upsetting Jakarta, was that it?

Shirley: Well no, it’s really trade; it’s a lot dirtier that fear of upsetting Jakarta. It’s for grubby money because, you know, governments today really, they don’t know how to govern. They think they’re there to make money and that’s what they do.

So because there’s such a huge population in Indonesia, nothing must be allowed to interfere with Australia’s trade deals and therefore nothing must happen that would show the Indonesian military in a bad light and I think it’s still going on of course thirty-two years on.

Let me just add that I think this coroner means business, and you know, I don’t know quite what she’ll find of course, there’s no use me trying to guess that, but I think what she’s done so far has shown determination to get every little wrinkle, every little thing out because she’s actually, as you know, she’s made an arrest warrant for Yunus Yosfiah if he ever comes to Australia. She wants him to come and appear. She says it doesn’t mean he’s done anything wrong, she wants him to come and explain his role in all of this. But of course he won’t dare because we know what his role was, we knew that, within weeks that he led the attack team into a village that was not guarded, where there was no shooting and there were only five journalists.

Asia2025: Do you think it’s likely that any of those Indonesian units involved will be prosecuted because Indonesian authorities have laughed that off and said they’ve not received any requests from the Australian and New South Wales governments....

Shirley: No they will always laugh it off because they can’t do anything else. No, they’ll protect their soldiers, that’s what they’ll do. They know those men were ordered to do that and they’ll protect them.

What it does do, is cramp Yunus Yofiah’s style. Last I heard he had dreams of becoming his golfing expert son’s manager. Well, he won’t be able to come to Australia and I think that other things will come up, and we might be able to…. I think other countries will issue warrants for his arrest and he won’t be able to go anywhere in the end. That would be my hope.

You can’t get justice, you can’t get closure, you’ve simply got to get what you can to say you can’t get away with this entirely – you’ve got away with murder, but you can’t get away with it entirely. And that’s my…that’s what keeps me going.

Asia2025: Well, it has been an extraordinary inquest so far.

As I understand it, there have been two former government officers who said they saw an intercepted intelligence report that said the men were killed in Balibo on orders from Indonesian forces. Can you tell us more about that because we haven’t been there?

Shirley: Well I wasn’t there either. That actually happened after I left in disgust because that was all going to be done in camera, but they must have slipped this fellow in, this particular one, he says he remembers every word because he’s had nightmares about it ever since.

The others all fell back on “oh, my memory’s very bad”, and you know, I could make mince meat of their so-called evidence and I’m not a trained barrister, but a barrister could make mince meat of it easily. So they’ll fall back on the faulty memory thing, “I cannot remember”. That seems to be the excuse that people use now, “I can’t remember”.

That man that you’re talking about, or those two, they have said that they remember absolutely to the letter. They’ll be very valuable, and that wasn’t done in camera.

Asia2025: And also Robin Dix who worked at the Defense Signals Directory gave evidence to this effect and said very early on that Canberra knew that journalists had been killed. Now that’s quite extraordinary isn’t it?

Shirley: It does seem extraordinary to me, but what I’ve realized you see, is that these men are from Prime Ministers down, and we’re talking about thirty-two years of infamy because they’ve all known this, but they’ve always used the thing of “Oh we weren’t there, nobody knew”. Now we find out they knew, they knew within minutes of receiving the intercepts that the journalists were dead, and they left us hoping that maybe they were just taken prisoner, or harmed in some way, but would survive. It’s so cruel, it’s so terrible.

The damage that’s done to the children is unforgivable.

But what it tells us is they think they’re great men. You can tell. Even the men who came and gave that evidence, the way they sauntered into the witness box, the way they conducted themselves, they think they’re really wonderful men. They think they’re intelligent, and what it tells me is that intelligence is absolutely no evidence of decency.

Asia2025: Well the thing is, I guess they believe they were doing the state’s or the government’s duty.

One of the men said they believe the intercept may have been suppressed or destroyed, but that’s what governments do. I mean, has that given you any comfort considering your claim from the very beginning that the Australian government was involved in a cover up?

Shirley: Well, it’s been pretty obvious to me from what I’ve been told.

I mean, have I ever told you about the telegram that I received from a doctor who was at the consulate in Indonesia who sent me a telegram stating that he had been given the remains of the journalists, and that the most he could say was that they were possibly humans?

Extraordinary, because he signed it Dr. Henry Will, and I found out that there was someone of that name seconded there, and what it told us was that, what did they get?

The other question was, why did these remains go to Indonesia? Why didn’t they do to Darwin, which is much closer to East Timor? How did these remains get into the hands of the Indonesian if the Indonesians had nothing to do with the murders?

So, right from the very first, that telegram was absolutely essential to help me understand what was going on, and on the day I received that telegram, I received the one and only phone call from the Australian government, purporting to be from Foreign Affairs.

Because I was so upset I didn’t ask the man’s name, but he asked me, did I want the bodies brought back to Australia? I said “What condition are they in, are there five bodies?” He said no. I said “would there be five coffins?” He said “No, but in fact it will cost you $48 000 dollars to bring them back”. I said “Are they in suitcase or a shoebox or what?” And then I lost my temper and I said “Look, I’ll read you this telegram I’ve just received”.

Now, I knew three of those journalists very well, and they were definitely human, and therefore what they’ve got up there isn’t the journalists at all and what they’ve got there could come back in the pilots pocket in a matchbox. A forensic….he can’t even identify them as human, that’s not them. And I believe that that’s exactly, you see, I mean you just don’t know when you lose it like that, you play into these bastards hands because I believe now he turned around smiling and typed up a report saying “Mrs. Shackleton has given us permission to do what we like with the journalists remains”, and therefore they went ahead and held a bogus funeral.

So, you know, why would I not think that everything to do with this was bogus?

Just as an addendum to that, I did finally track down Dr. Henry Will, he lives in Tasmania, and he tells me straight up, “I didn’t send you that telegram”, he said, “but whoever did knew exactly what I wrote in my report”.

Asia2025: Will you continue to maintain that these journalists were killed because they were reporting on a pre-invasion of Timor by Indonesian forces?

Shirley: Yes, yes. I think that’s terribly important because it seems to me that quite a lot of men, and some journalists looking for headlines, want to think that it was an invasion because it’s a bigger story you see, but in fact, if it was an invasion force, where was the backup? Because only one hundred secret warfare troops came across the border into Balibo okay, so if that was the invasion, it’s a pretty miserable kind of invasion. There were troops attacking Batugade but they withdrew. There was no pre-invasion naval bombardment of Dili, there was no troop invasion of Dili, there were no para-troops landing on Dili, and there was no attack on Bacau airport.

So, if we conclude that the hit and run attack by a mere one hundred secret warfare troops was part of an invasion, why did it have to be secret warfare troops? Why were they ordered to wear clothing that could not be identified as uniforms and certainly no military insignia at all? See, if it was an invasion, it would have automatically been exposed by the numbers of people pouring over and then moving on through the country, but it stopped dead. So, there had been….

Asia2025: And the witnesses of course, the outside witnesses of course were dead.

Shirley: They were dead, yes, and why did they kill them if it was an invasion? You see, I think if it wasn’t an invasion, and they didn’t want anyone to know they were doing these hit and run attacks along the border, because they’d been going on for a year, that’s one of the reasons Greg went to find out, as it happened for a year.

In fact, one Indonesian soldier fell and broke his legs; they came across him at night. He was taken to Dili and cross examined and he said he was told he was fighting communists in West Timor.

Asia2025: Well you’ve said that the then Prime Minister Gough Whitlam should testify about his knowledge of events…

Shirley: I believe he should, because he may be quite innocent, I don’t know. He claims he is and we deserve to know this. I don’t mean ‘we’ as the families, or me, but we as Australians, we need to know the quality of the leadership that he had. He may be being most unfairly criticized; I have no idea until I hear his part of the story, why he would consider that he is quite innocent in these matters.

Personally, what I’ve got against him is just that he allowed the Timorese to be decimated.

Asia2025: Well the inquest resumes in May, what are you hoping for in terms of an outcome?

Shirley: I never hope for anything Maryann, because that’s the way to set yourself up to fail. I’ve done that from day one. I’ve said there’s no use me trying to plan this dream thing where I manage to pull this particular thing off or that particular thing off, I simply set the ball rolling and then I do anything I can to assist in something like this and then I wait to see what comes out of it.

Asia2025: But being there I guess and hearing some of the inquest, did you get a feel….

Shirley: I think I’ve already discovered a huge amount. I mean, they’ve discovered, there’s no question of it, the government knew back in ’75 and yet all through the so called investigations held into the Balibo deaths, that information was never made public.

Mr. Sherman, I think personally, his reputation is shot because he knew about it and he actually said I think I’ll let sleeping dogs lie. If I had ever been found guilty by the DPP, while he was in charge, I’d be asking for a re-trial.

Asia2025: Well do you think this will contribute to altering the official record as it now stands regarding the events of the journalists’ deaths? Because I guess I was just looking at what’s coming out and I’m thinking there has to be an alteration because this is just extraordinary what’s coming out.

Shirley: Well, Professor Ball and Hamish McDonald’s book, ‘Death in Balibo, Lies in Canberra’ gives extraordinary details; not only about missing intercepts, missing papers but that notes of meetings were re-written to enhance the reputations of people who were present at the meetings which were all to do with Balibo. So that’s been known for many years, but you see if that’s ignored, then it doesn’t exist.

But I think these proceedings at the moment, or the inquest, that has already brought all of that information to the fore again and we have got the people with the intercepts more or less agreeing that yes, you know, we know things were changed, that’s how things are done.

One man was asked after giving detailed information about this, what was that about, and he said we call it an ‘arse-covering’ situation.

(Laughs)

You know, I sat there listening to these bureaucrats who were very sanguine about giving all this information out, “yes, it’s an arse-covering situation”, talking about the intercepts detailing these bodies being found and what was going to be done or had been done to them, they were talking as if they were just reading off a shopping list, and I thought, why am I not standing up screaming, because I can’t believe it means that little to them.

People say I should be grateful to them – I’m not.

They should have spoken up years ago. There are ways to give information to blow whistles and this is something that is a national disgrace, because it’s not just Whitlam, it’s not just Fraser, who must have also known, it’s all the others.

It’s the Keating’s, it’s the Hawke’s. They’re all sitting there with this horrible knowledge, knowing that the families are disintegrating slowly by with pain and suffering and they’re saying “oh well, let’s make a shopping list and go and buy something to cheer ourselves up”.

It’s just disgraceful. If this is the way governments….this is why this is important.
If this is the way governments behave, what else do they get up to?

None of those men giving the information about the intercepts think there was anything unusual about the lies, about the fact that a lot of information was destroyed and got rid of. I mean this is supposed to be information absolutely essential to the record and it’s just got rid of because it could be slightly embarrassing.

And that was Shirley Shackleton, wife of deceased journalist Greg Shackleton and tireless Timor campaigner talking to us about the coronial inquest that is reviewing the circumstances of Brian Peter’s death, in Balibo in 1975.

You’re listening to Asia2025, and I’m Maryann Keady.

Next up, we listen to a young French Iraqi woman Hana Al Bayaty and her account of the situation in Iraq.

Music: Let It All hang Out -Katalyst.

The news out of Iraq seems to get grimmer by the day. News reports talk of the insurgency, civil war, as well as Sunni and Shiia factions ruling different parts of the country.

However at the Perdana Peace Conference in Malaysia, a young French Iraqi woman questioned the media depiction of a divided Iraqi society, and asserted that this was a media fiction, created to hide the oppression of Iraqi’s under the US-led occupation.

Her name is HANA AL BAYATY – and she is from the Brussels War Crimes Tribunal. I have decided to run her speech from the conference so that others can hear her account of Iraq today.

Speaker: Now we have our final speaker, Miss Hana Bayaty.

She is a film maker and journalist. She studied political science and specialized in International Relations and Military Strategies at the University of Sorbonne in France and joined a Cinema and Documentary School in 2001. In 2003 she made a documentary on the democracy in Iraq providing an insight into major tendencies in the Iraqi opposition which took place in London three weeks before the invasion.

I read somewhere that Miss Bayaty’s father was in fact an active politician in Iraq.

Hana: No he is out of Iraq since 32 years, but he is political animal, sure.

And she is a member of the Executive Committee of the Brussels War Crimes Tribunal, a Commission of inquiry organized in Brussels in April 2004.

Miss Bayaty.

Hana: Thank you. First, thank you for having me here. Thank you to the speakers, even if they make my life impossible in fact, because I had prepared a presentation, but many of the aspects have been covered, so I don’t want to bore you again by repeating, I would rather address a few small issues that I think have been missing.

First of all, I will just read one paragraph that I wrote on the anniversary of the invasion, the third anniversary of the invasion.

‘If you see the state of the country today, three years have passed and the world continues. On fifteenth February 2003, collective humanity felt it so deeply, that it’s used every available tool to get organized against power, taking to streets across the planet to oppose this terrifying war.

Three years have passed, and as we sensed collectively it’s a massacre, a bloodshed of unspeakable brutality. Three years have passed and Iraq has been destroyed as a state and as a nation. Its natural resources have been plundered; its civilization and cultural heritage littered; it’s religious heritage desecrated; its people raped, tortured, murdered and even melted.

Cynicism nowdays refuses the call for immediate and complete withdrawal of occupation forces for fear of civil war. So this is about a year ago, and until now, international public opinion, because of pragmatism, is asking not to call for an immediate and unconditional withdrawal of occupation forces, while we see and can document that the occupation itself has been organizing and mounting a series of strikes that are bringing the nation, the Iraqi nation, to the verge of civil war.

Where I want to interfere, is in the area of terminology. The problem is we don’t have the right tools because we don’t dispute the terminology that is being used by the US Administration.

First of all, we have to insist that the Iraqi so-called insurgents not be called insurgents. Insurgents is a force that is rioting against a legitimate and legal government. In Iraq there is no such thing as a legitimate and legal government. So there is a resistance, who has combatants, who should be considered combatants. It has an army who should benefit from the rights that have been drafted by humanity after 1945 and should be protected by the Geneva Conventions and the Hague et cetera, and should be considered prisoners of war.

At the time being, the situation is very blurred. We don’t know what or who is fighting. We profit from the blur that they are creating with their terminology so that people actually never know who is the resistance. The resistance, basically in Iraq, when Baghdad fell, as we say, the army melted into the population.

There was not a treaty, nobody signed a peace agreement, and nobody surrendered. The army is still active in Iraq and is fighting for the sovereignty of its nation and for the sovereignty of Iraq’s resources. This army is combatants and they should be recognized as combatants and they should continually fight the journalists in their terminology because then we cannot understand the situation.

Then when we talk of the political process, we see that it is prohibited under international law to change the judicial, economic, political, social fabric of the occupied territory.

Despite the fact that the UN Security Council declare that the occupation is over, if you look at the reality, in law itself, occupation itself is a de facto reality, it is not a visual reality, therefore if you have more that two hundred thousand troops occupying an area you cannot declare it a sovereign state or a sovereign government.

Further, what is sovereign about this so called sovereign government? Every attribute of a state remain in the hand of the occupation. Security is in the hand of the occupation, economy is in the hand of the occupation. The legislative cannot, the constitution and all those that are drafted under occupation cannot contradict the transition in administrative law that was drafted by civil administrator, American civil administrator Paul Bremmer under occupation.

So therefore, by International Law, everything, it’s an illegal war we all agree, I will not go through this, everything that derives from this illegal war is illegal. The Constitution is illegal, the elections are illegal, the laws, the contracts, the current law on oil which will deprive Iraq of seventy percent of control of the resources and the profit of other resources are illegal and should be recognized null and void.

The oil companies that supported the drive to war understood this. They know that as long as Iraq is not stabilized and with some sort of government that would have some kind of legitimacy they will not invest, they will not. That is why they pushed for the big hand out on research because they understood that they could not actually go and exploit the resources and situation. They know it’s illegal.

Now they see that it was impossible to divide Iraq in three conflicting and weak entities that would, as the project wanted, that would conflict and contradict each other so much that they would need the presence and domination, military, political and economic of the United States.

Why is it impossible? It’s impossible because Iraq has never had a history of sectarianism. Iraq is a socio-economic entity since four thousand years because it’s a geo-political reality, it’s a basin where several civilizations and people have settled and developed civilization. You have the Sumerians who invented writing, you have the Babel who invented law you have the abacus and lately you have the Arab-Muslim civilization, who we are very proud of.

Okay, the point where the project is actually incapable of succeeding is that you cannot build in modern era; you cannot build a state on the basis of sectarianism. You can only build a state, efficient, democratic, if you want to build an efficient and democratic state, you have to build it on the idea of citizenship. The whole project of the Americans since they arrived is to destroy the concept of citizenship.

We don’t know who is Iraqi, so this means there is no Iraqi people. We don’t know who can go and vote in the referendum, there is no census; there is nothing to make it legitimate. So they brought in these feudal, sectarian war lords who are making a lot of money and who do not represent whatsoever the Iraqi people.

The Iraq….that’s the problem with propaganda; we think the Iraqi’s Head of State is Saddam Hussein, that’s all we hear since twenty five years.

Iraq is a people and is a society. It’s a people that has a very large educated middle class including, thanks to the nationalization the regime made in the seventies. When they nationalized, they redistributed and they created institutions, created mechanisms, they had the greatest health system, the greatest education system in the region. It’s not one man who does this; it’s a society who does this.

It’s the Iraqi people who built their country and developed and they are very proud of it. The Americans come and they think they can suddenly destroy ….and the people, they are very proud of how they developed, especially for third world country, and we know when we go from ….we start to build little by little, and we not accept to surrender this achievement.

I agree completely with the first analysis where I want to point to something - which is the invasion of Iraq by the United States proves its weakness rather than its strength. If such a super-power has to go and occupy such a little people it proves that it is weak. And it was obvious before the invasion. If you look, they think they control international media and international public opinion. There was millions of people in the street who despite the propaganda understood that this was an unjust and immoral war first.

Second, they think that their military superiority will allow them to occupy a country that has a proven force in south Lebanon. There is no way that even Israel can go back and whatever the Americans, the superiority cannot guarantee the capacity to occupy and stabilize the resources or the people.

Third, economically, okay they have a very big crisis with their dollar economy because everybody’s switching to Euro, if they had better policies towards the world maybe people would continue to trade in US dollars, but considering their attitudes, it’s in our interest to shift our reserve currencies.

Fourth and this is the main problem, is that their plan, which is very old and was more sophisticated in eighty-two, an Israeli document of dividing the entire region into smaller entities, smaller states, so that the Arabs will never be able to develop, never be able to achieve democracy, is the enemy of our people.

And our people is not divided according to sectarian lines, it’s politically divided, and Iraqi’s was right to ensure those political divisions. There are Nationalists, there are Islamists, there are Leftists. Where they leave us now, is there are three tendencies that exist in the political movement of especially Iraqi society, have a common interest in fighting the Imperial agenda.

The Islamist is written in the Koran that you should fight for an occupation. The Nationalist, they insist on the control of national resources. And the Leftists, I hope, are supposed to be anti-imperialist even if we see that some people call themselves communist and participate in the occupation. So it is a little tricky, I have to shoot some Iraqi’s who are covered with blood, covered with blood.How did they criminalize the right to resist inside Iraq? The whole political process is the way to criminalize the right to resist.

If you look at the elections for example. They started to, long before the war they started to, from 1994 they started to demonize the Sunni’s. Basically from 1991 they decided that Iraq should never stand as a strong nation. Neither politically nor economically or militarily, so they started propaganda of pushing the Kurds and the Shiia’s to rebel in the name that their government is Sunni. If you are just a little intellectually honest, you know that the Ba’athist Party may have flaws, but the party was never sectarian either in its ideology nor in its membership.

It’s obvious by the results of the occupation itself, when they made the policy in order to criminalize a whole range of the society, they discovered, the commission for the eradication of the Baath, discovered that after a hundred thousand Iraqis who were unemployed, fifty-eight percent of them were Shiia.

How come the Sunni, fifty-eight percent of its membership is Shiia? Even in the cars of the most wanted Baathist leaders the majority of them are Shiia.

How do journalists accept to carry on the lie? It’s a complete lie. It’s an utter catastrophe for the Iraqi nation, an utter catastrophe.

So throughout the election what did they do? They brought in ballots from Iran. They let two hundred thousand Israelis, Iraqi Israelis vote in the election. I was allowed to vote in the elections and I don’t even have Iraqi citizenship. While the Iraqi people inside the country were being bombed and entire cities leveled in the name of the election. Fallujah was destroyed, leveled to the ground in the name of the election. Whole Sunni towns have been leveled. I am being attacked when I say that there is an ongoing genocide against the Sunnis in Iraq. I am accused of being Sunni when I refuse sectarianism. What I do is I defend the weak. At the time being in Baghdad there is ethnic cleansing. There is an attempt to push all the Sunnis out of Baghdad, to divide Baghdad in two and nobody’s talking. Nobody’s speaking out. How can we continue when we don’t research enough to use the tools?

So what are the tools available? They are available because we are a human civilization which develop instruments to continue the enhancements of civilization. These instruments are imperfect of course, but at least we have some basis of international law so we can first defend Iraqi sovereignty. Defend the people who are resisting this occupation and recognize them as the continuity of the Iraqi state because this bullshit about “yeah but when we leave who will lead them, there will be civil war” et cetera, there is an army that is defending the sovereignty of the state and it’s supported by all the people. It’s not only legal it’s legitimate.

How do they fight? They made a massive operation; they attacked a camp of ammunition, the biggest camp of ammunition in Baghdad about two months and a half ago. It was a five hour battle. Don’t tell me this is pre-terrorist work or insurgents operation. Sure, it is officers who are skilled enough to understand warfare. Sure they cannot defeat militarily the Americans, who would be silly enough to think that such a poorly equipped force could defeat militarily, but what they can do is they can tire them. They can make them scared every minute. They can lower the morale of the troops. And they are doing it so successfully that have almost…

(applause)

I am humbled. I was told that the Iraqis would resist et cetera, but really I’m humbled. How this little people is achieving, to destabilize so much, to show the morality of the project so much in three years and a half, it’s historic. It’s un-equalable in history, there is no such example, especially after fifteen years of sanctions and all we’ve heard since yesterday is plenty of information to know the circumstances of the start, the Americans thought that the Iraqis were on their knees and that they would surrender, they would bow.

On the contrary, you know the Iraqis, they are a little…they are mad…. (laughter) they are, they are. They love their country like they love, I don’t know, they love their country like they love dreaming. They love Iraq like you would love dreaming. You cannot compare, they are so patriotic it’s insane. So it’s impossible to kill their wish to struggle and their wish of freedom. It’s impossible. They have proved that they wanted independence and freedom since… a long time. They have proved they were able to manage the resources for the benefit of their people. They have proved that even when they needed expertise they were contracting – they were not inviting foreign companies, they were contracting.

They will refuse any interference and any, what I mean is, where us outside, we can help is by appointing their right instead trying to…what a lot of people are opposing saying “Yeah, but who are they and what is their ideology?” Why should you care? This is people who are trying to recover their sovereignty, we should support their struggle whatever is their ideology. This is the business of these people. What they believe in the future, how they will get organized and how they will withstand government or which kind of states they will take is the business of the Iraqi people, it is not the business of outside or even of the Western Peace Movement.

The business of the Western Peace Movement is to struggle and not to interfere in internal Iraqi affairs; it’s to expose the crime and struggle, to voice the concerns of the Iraqis and to be a bridge, to be humble enough to know that they are under the bomb and we are not and how can we help? And the most important is to understand what would be the consequence if they win? If they win. Yeah, yeah, very important, if they win…if this little people wins.

We are sure in a new world order, sure. Sure we are in a situation where, for example, the wish of Dr Mahathir to criminalise war is possible because you can show that even with the greatest military power you cannot succeed in achieving your goal. So not only it’s immoral, but it’s useless.

If they win, the people of the south will be empowered to have a greater say and to push for the reform for a more democratic UN system. If they win, they will defeat a big part of the agenda of globalization by military power by interference in the national affairs of countries. If they win, many consequences, if they win.

I don’t understand the reluctance to support it. They are defending all of us. They are defending our right to have a culture, every culture they are defending, not only the Muslims. They are defending the Asians, they are defending the Africans, they are defending the people of this planet. This is what they are doing. In that sense, I hope, we have some demands, I hope we set some demands politically; it’s true that there are some practical things to do because the situation is dire.

Okay, I talk about the practical first and then I will say other ones.

The practical first, inside the country at the time being it is very difficult to help. It’s very difficult to get things in, to get medicine in et cetera. What we can do is create networks so we can get information out that is built on this information. We struggle to expose the crime and to say to which extent; they say for example, they have assassinated thousands of academics. People talk of two thousand academics. The crime is so big you never know to start.

Practically inside, we see it is very difficult, especially the people are fleeing. Even the news agency of the United Nations wrote a report two weeks ago saying there is the first exodus that exceeds the exodus of the Palestinians in 1948. There is more Iraqis in these last three years who have left, and in this last summer, who have fled the country. The major thing where we could help is for these people. Because for these people, they arrive in hosting countries who refuse to give them the status of refugee because it means maybe they will stay.

Who refuse to give them access to health or education or a stable situation, they have to go back in the war zone to get their pensions, and to come back out, the odds are extremely dangerous. They are in a very, very difficult situation.

I think the international community can have an effect to help. There is about three million and a half people, some in Syria, some in Jordan, we should be pushing to protect them, to find ways to invite the teachers or the students, to give grants, so that we continue the knowledge and the process of thinking because we will be liberated soon and eventually we will have to stand up.

And that was HANA AL BAYATY from the Brussels War Crimes Tribunal.

That’s it for this week.

Next week, I’ll be looking at China in East Timor, and running an extended interview with DAN ROSEN on the US and Chinese economies – and who’d win an economic poker game if it was held today.

Thanks for listening, have a good week.