Anti-war Student Walkout at High School in Hayward

Isn't that typically called "Lunch"?

I think maybe we can get a speaker from the Iraqi Kurdish immigrant community to talk to the students.
He can talk about the town of Halabja, status of Kurds and Iraqi situation.
This town was attacked by Saddam Hussein by a chemical attack in March 1988. In a single day, an attack by Iraqi bombers with VX and nerve gas killed about 7,000 people. This was an attack on civilians - women, children as well as men in the town. This was part of a wider genocide, called Anfal, by Saddam Hussein that killed several hundred thousand Kurds.

It might inform the student of the dangers of chemical weapons and why they are so bad, and maybe also give some perspective on what the Iraqi
people are really suffering at the hands of the dictator Saddam Hussein.
Many Iraqis really long for the liberation of Iraq from the Hussein regime, but cant dare express it, since those who speak out against the regime are jailed or killed.

Their only opportunity is to let people here know their story. Will you listen?

The year after Saddam gassed the Kurds of Halabja the U.S. increased aid ot Saddam from $500 million to $1 billion dollars. Where was Rumsfeld then?

Source: Samantha Power, "A Problem from Hell" America and the Age of Genocide

Sisyphus, please open your eyes. You think if US did something improper 14 years ago in letting Saddam do his deeds, you should close your eyes now? Why?

"Why didn’t one slogan demand that Saddam be brought to justice?"
Times of London article:

Nazaneen Rashid says peace protesters ignore the plight of her people, the Kurds

Saddam Hussein must be thrilled by the support offered him by British peace protesters. But as an Iraqi Kurdish woman I want to ask my friends who marched last week: why are you defending Saddam? Why didn’t one slogan demand that Saddam be brought to justice?

Maybe they were not aware that 182,000 young men, women and children were killed or maimed or went missing in Saddam’s Anfal campaign in the 1980s? Perhaps they had no idea that Kurds were experimented on in Saddam’s laboratories to develop his biological weapons.

As a Kurd I don’t need to see weapons inspectors in Iraq. All the inspectors need to do is go to Kurdish villages in Iraq to examine the water and to see people dying and the birth defects caused by Saddam’s chemical weapons.

I grew up in Iraqi Kurdistan, what is known as northern Iraq. I was born in Kirkuk, the richest city in Iraqi Kurdistan, the fourth child in a family of three sons and three daughters. We were not rich, but we were well-educated. In the 1960s I studied history at Baghdad University and became a teacher. As a girl I was used to seeing Iraqi soldiers on the street when the government was trying to resettle oil-rich Kirkuk with Arab tribes.

But it all got infinitely worse when Saddam came to power. You couldn’t get a job unless you joined his Ba’ath party, and then he forced Kurdish people to leave their villages for camps in the south. Our family fled east from Kirkuk to Sulaymaniyah, but the worst was yet to come. Soldiers jeered at us: “We’ll teach you how to cheer for Saddam.” Soon it was too dangerous to go on the streets by ourselves.

Saddam’s stroke of monstrous genius was the way he violated the Kurdish people through Kurdish women. In the 1980s I knew many Kurdish women who were picked up by soldiers, thrown into prison then tortured and raped. One woman who spent nine years in jail had three children in prison through rape. When she was released she killed herself.

One tactic was to imprison a freedom fighter along with his wife. When he wouldn’t talk they’d bring in his wife and rape her in front of him.

Terrible things happened in my own family. My cousin, Sallah Ibrahim Rashid, was arrested, his house demolished, then his wife and four children were arrested. We didn’t know where they’d been taken but eventually the police released my cousin’s wife and told her to collect him. They gave her a body bag. In it was my cousin’s body, burnt by electricity.

A few years later one of their children was taken away by the security forces. He hasn’t been seen since. Two brothers of my sister-in-law were arrested and killed by the Iraqis. This kind of random brutality, murder, rape and “disappearance” was the experience of every Kurdish family during the Anfal campaign.

In 1991 Saddam surrendered after the Gulf war, and we saw the Iraqis kissing the shoes of American and British soldiers. It was fantastic for us Kurdish people and we seized the opportunity to try to recapture our cities. But the western help we had expected never came and the uprising failed. I had l8 cousins with me in Sulaymaniyah when I came home and everyone said: “We must escape now!”

The following morning, April 4, at 8am, Kirkuk was bombed by the Iraqis. I escaped with my brother, his wife and a good friend. We fled to the border mountains, which were covered with snow. Old people fell over dead with exhaustion; children died from cold, hunger and dysentery, and were buried by their parents. Eventually we got to the Iranian border, which we begged the soldiers to open. This was the start of the “safe haven” guaranteed by the British.

Eventually I returned to my students in Kirkuk and continued to teach, but I was being watched by the Iraqi security forces. In l995 I was told I was no longer safe. As a Kurd I had no passport so I had to be smuggled out to Britain. My flight cost £5,000. I live with the memories of my family and friends; yesterday I woke up crying.

I don’t like war because as a Kurd I’ve lived through war all my life. But the alternative is much worse. Of course I am worried for the family I have left behind but I want Saddam removed by any means, including war. My dream is that Saddam will be put on trial, like Slobodan Milosevic, so all the families he has destroyed can confront him and humiliate him. Perhaps then he would know how much people hate him.

Nazaneen Rashid was talking to Anne McFerran

Hi.I am also a student at Tennyson High School. I am working with Rachelle Cruz on a walk-out and possibly a teach-in. These actions are primarily to promote Peace, Non-Violence, and the Anti-War movement. However, reading the posted replies made me realize that peace alone is not enough- we also need justice. Because of this we (Rachelle and I) want to inform other students about the injustices that are occuring in Iraq that need to be stopped. We do not support war, but we do support making Saddam pay for his crimes against men, women, and their families. Thanks so much for the comments-they were educational and really helpful.

On a train in Germany I spoke with a Kurdish immigrant from Turkey. Neither of us spoke very good German, but we did puzzle together a conversation. We absolutely hated Saddam, and wanted a war against him. The motive was revenge, it seemed, with a hope that the Kurds could be free.

But, of course, the Kurds have been betrayed over and over again in the last century and they will be betrayed again. Turkey has no interest in a politically powerful Kurdish population anywhere, because Turkey oppresses its own Kurds so atrociously. Turkey will occupy northern Iraq to prevent separate Kurdish activity, which might spill over into Turkey. The most likely possibility is that another dictator will head Iraq, keeping the Kurds in place. Unfortunately, my German wasn't good enough to convey these nuanced points.

> We absolutely hated Saddam, and wanted a war against him
HE [the Kurd] absolutely hated Saddam, and wanted a war against him. I don't hate Saddam and don't want a war.