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June 26, 2005
Protectors of "the Innocent and of Memory"
[From the World Tribunal on Iraq in Istanbul]
Something extraordinary is happening here.
Many different strains of people from around the world have converged here, in this meeting held among ancient stone walls, to reclaim a voice for what is right and just, and it is a wonder. In fact, it is breathtaking that we are all here, now, together.
Here, there are people who were well-integrated into structures of power when they found themselves put in positions that their conscience could no longer carry, such as Denis Halliday and Hans Von Sponeck, both former assistant secretary generals at the UN. There are people whose hearts carried them to become voices against injustice and cruelty even though a life of comfort and the glitter was theirs for the taking, such as Arundhati Roy. An young American veteran with California surfer-boy looks and mannerisms sits on a panel, moderated by an Iraqi anti-war and democracy activist who was imprisoned in Abu Ghraib and tortured by the Baathist regime, with participants ranging from an Iraqi secular feminist, to an Iraqi lawyer, who wears the headscarf, representing detainees and torture victims, to Iraq's Al Jazeera correspondent who was in Fallujah during the assault.
Many here have been thrust into a situation not of their own making but nevertheless took it on with courage and dignity, and their hearts now embrace the world, such as the jury member representing the mothers of the disappeared from Argentina, Plaza de Mayo, who starts many of her questions by saying "as a mother..." and often asks about the children. I avoid her at all times; I don't think I could bear learning what was torn from her. "Are there enough medicines from them, even if it is at the blackmarket?" she asked Dahr Jamail, who has single-handedly shown that if you only you have heart, the rest --experience, money, visibility-- may well become irrelevant.
Making this all possible are people of conscience from around the world, who never number that many but whom you will always find buzzing around like busy bees if you just look closely at most such gatherings, and dozens of young volunteers from Istanbul who wear woven skirts and nose-rings and don't sleep, yet mingle effortlessly among the U.N. bureaucrats, lawyers and academics many of whom sport crisply-pressed shirts, suits --and ties!-- even as the nicest of summer days envelopes this beautiful city.
And this is very concrete and imminently human. Who could but forget what this is all about? Yesterday, just as Tim Goodrich of Iraq Veterans Against War was about to speak, a long banner with a montage of pictures of maimed, mutilated, broken, sick, dead, dying, torn apart, shot, crushed, bleeding children, women and men was carried in. A minute of silence happened, I don't know if anyone had called for it. Some just cried. Then, Tim spoke about how human beings can be trained to do just that (and was mobbed for interviews after the panel, all of which he patiently and willingly sat through for hours and hours.)
Yet, at the same time, this is about international law and Geneva conventions and the U.N. and the nation-state, and the ICC and all those things that are negotiated among the rulers behind closed doors. This is the people of the world, letting the powerful and the cruel who want to dictate all the rules, all the norms, all the consequences that they do not have our consent, and we will not forget. That we will not abandon norms of civilization and decency. That we will not be cowed, nor will we stop holding the responsible, the culpable and the guilty accountable for their crimes.
And that is the source of the power of this Tribunal, not the police who will be sent out to arrest the war criminals, not the fines that will be levied, not the sentences that will be meted out. Here you feel the the power of perhaps the only thing that can stand up to the warheads, the tanks and the helicopter gunships; the power of things that cannot be bought and will not be sold; the power of simple yet miraculous things as stubborn memory, resolute sense of justice and an unrelenting insistence on human decency.
Hana Ibrahim, Tim Goodrich, Amal Sawadi, Fadhil Al Bedrani in a panel moderated by Haifa Zangana.
Taty Almeida of Madres de la Plaza de Mayo, being interviewed by CNN Turkey.
Tim Goodrich of Iraq Veterans against War demonstrating one of the techniques the military uses to train people to obey without thinking: making them "perform the most ridiculous tasks without questioning, like folding tshirts into tiny squares."
Posted by zeynep at June 26, 2005 07:24 AM