Iraqi Women’s League
Tel: 020 7278 5629 Fax: 020 7833 3970
Email: lppc@ukonline.co.uk

Press Conference
Monday 22 September 2003 11am

Crossroads Women’s Centre
230a Kentish Town Road, London NW5 2AB
Tel: 020 7482 2496

Since 1952, when it was founded, the Iraqi Women’s League (IWL) has played a significant role in the struggle against tyranny and oppression in Iraq. The IWL has members of different religions and ethnic minorities.

At a press conference next Monday, IWL-UK will issue an invitation to women and women’s organisations in the UK to march with us in a Women’s Contingent of the End the Occupation of Iraq march, (meet 11am at the tea hut by Speakers Corner, Hyde Park – look out for the IWL’s red banner) to demand, on behalf of women in Iraq, the end of the US/UK occupation.

All Iraqis are suffering unbearably, but we should know by now from long experience that women are always more vulnerable to occupying armies. The message coming from Iraq is: We have no security, water, gas, electricity or food, and unemployment has risen to 70%. Women the carers, despite the lack of these necessities for life, are as usual working hardest for day-to-day survival. Yet women’s situation is least likely to be considered.

According to the International Conventions and moral responsibilities, the occupation administration is obliged to restore law and order, provide security and all the essentials, and rebuild the infrastructure ruined as a result of their war on Iraq.

The participation of women and women’s organisations in a Women’s Contingent of the Anti-Occupation march will help to ensure that the UN takes the leading role in returning Iraqi society to Iraqis, and takes overall responsibility for ensuring that Iraqi society is rebuilt. It will help to accelerate the termination of the occupation and to ensure that the destruction and killing stop. We demand a new beginning and a better life for the Iraqi people in general and Iraqi women in particular – women as mothers, sisters, daughters, wives, have suffered the consequences of three brutal wars and many years of dictatorship.

The media have recently uncovered the reality about the Saddam Hussein regime by showing pictures of mass graves in which bodies even of children, women and the elderly were buried. They do not mention that if the countries now occupying Iraq had not armed and supported that regime as it carried out these atrocities against us, we could have got rid of him much earlier.

We say to women in Britain: We look forward to your solidarity and rely on your support. This will help to put pressure on the occupying forces to implement the demands above, for a better and humane life for the Iraqi people.

We enclose the Statement we issued last June describing the impact of the war on the families and communities women were trying to keep alive and functioning despite the brutal and inhuman bombing. At the press conference a new Statement will update this information, outlining what it means for Iraqis to try to survive the occupation.

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