Doctoral scholar, UWS: Iraqi-Australians on life after the American war

Back in 1990 an outstanding Australian humanitarian and medical scientist Professor Fred Mendelsohn (later to be head of the prestigious Howard Florey Research Institute, University of Melbourne) published a courageous letter in The Age stating that huge numbers of Iraqi children would die in the forthcoming sanctions and war.

Professor Mendelsohn was unfortunately correct in his prediction. Using data from the UN Population Division it is now estimated that under-5 infant deaths totalled 1.2 million under Sanctions (1990-2003) and a further 0.8 million died during US Occupation, 2003-2011, a total of 2.0 million under-5 infant deaths, 90% avoidable and due to US Alliance war crimes in gross violation of the Geneva Convention.

The UN data used for the above estimates was that pre-dating the US-backed Maliki Government which has evidently sought to minimize Iraqi deaths (the latest Maliki-informed UN data claims that 20 years of war resulted in a tiny increase in infant mortality in 1990-1995 and thence a big decline - a claim at odds with expert UN studies.

Thus Carol Bellamy (former UNICEF Executive Director in the period of war criminal US Alliance Sanctions against Iraq and who was involved in state-of-the-art health professional surveys on the horrendous impact of sanctions on Iraq infant mortality) found that in the south and center of Iraq - home to 85 per cent of the country's population - under-5 mortality more than doubled from 56 deaths per 1000 live births (1984-1989) to 131 deaths per 1000 live births (1994-1999); that likewise infant mortality -- defined as the death of children in their first year - increased from 47 per 1000 live births to 108 per 1000 live births within the same time frame; and that if the substantial reduction in child mortality throughout Iraq during the 1980s had continued through the 1990s, there would have been half a million fewer deaths of children under-five in the country as a whole during the eight year period 1991 to 1998.

The US Alliance-imposed Iraqi Holocaust and Iraqi Genocide has been associated with post-1990 and post-2003 violent deaths plus non-violent avoidable deaths totalling 4.6 million and 2.9 million, respectively, and refugees totalling 5-6 million – an Iraqi Holocaust and an Iraqi Genocide as defined by Article 2 of the UN Geneva Convention (see: http://www.edwebproject.org/sideshow/genocide/convention.html ) which states: “In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”.

According to the 2006 Revision UN Population Division data, medical literature data, and other authoritative sources, the Iraqi Holocaust has been associated with 1.2 million post-invasion non-violent avoidable deaths; 1.5 million violent post-invasion deaths; and 0.8 million post-invasion under-5 infant deaths (90% avoidable and due to gross US Coalition violation of the Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War which demands that an Occupier supplies food and medical requisites to “the fullest extent of the means available to it.” In addition, avoidable deaths under Sanctions (1990-2003) totalled 1.7 million, violent deaths in the Gulf War totalled 0.2 million and under-5 infant deaths under Sanctions totalled 1.2 million. Iraqi refugees (both inside and outside Iraq) total 5-6 million.

The ongoing Iraqi Holocaust (1990-2011) involves 1.7 million violent deaths, 2.9 million non-violent excess deaths, 4.6 million violent and non-violent excess deaths, 2.0 million under-5 infant deaths, 1.8 million avoidable under-5 year old infant deaths and 5-6 million refugees – an Iraqi Genocide according to the UN Genocide Convention definition of “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group“ (Google "Iraqi Holocaust" and "Iraqi Genocide" ).

Yet the taxpayer-funded ABC in reporting the final departure of the Americans from Iraq in late 2011 disgracefully reported that "tens of thousands " of Iraqis had died . All those politicians and generals responsible for the Iraqi Holocaust must be arraigned before the International Criminal Court.

In his Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech in 2005 (when some estimates had put post-2003 invasion Iraqi deaths at 100,000) Jewish British playwright Harold Pinter stated: "We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people and call it 'bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East'. How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice" (see: http://www.countercurrents.org/arts-pinter081205.htm ).

4.6 million? More than enough, I would have thought.