PRESS RELEASE
Voices in the Wilderness UK [A]
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Wednesday 26 October 2005
INTERNATIONAL BELL TOLL PROTEST MARKS ANNIVERSARY OF IRAQI DEATHS SURVEY WITH 100,000 RINGS
LONDON: Edith Cavell Statue, St Martin's Place (just off Trafalgar Sq), 1-2pm, Saturday 29 October
A bell-tolling ceremony will take place this Saturday to mark the 1st anniversary of a survey that found that 100,000 Iraqis had died of war-related causes since the 2003 invasion.
The ceremony is one of over 70 such events taking place in the UK, US and Switzerland which aim to collectively toll 100,000 times - each ring symbolizing the death of an Iraqi person as a result of the war and occupation [B]. Saturday's event will also feature names and pictures of Iraqis killed over the past two and a half years.
On Tuesday 25 October, two activists were arrested for holding an unauthorised bell-tolling ceremony inside the anti-protest zone around Parliament established earlier this year [C].
The Lancet-published survey - conducted inside Iraq in September 2004 and published on-line on 29 October 2004 - concluded that '[m]aking conservative assumptions…about 100,000 excess [Iraqi] deaths, or more ha[d] happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq' and that '[v]iolence accounted for most of the excess deaths and air strikes from coalition forces accounted for most violent deaths' [D]. The survey's authors also noted that 'most individuals reportedly killed by coalition forces were women and children.'
A spokesperson for the protest said: "One year on from the Lancet survey, the Iraqi cities of Fallujah, Karabila, Qaim, Ramadi and Tal Afar have all been attacked and thousands more Iraqis have died in these cities and elsewhere. The military forces in Iraq are using aerial bombardment, mass detentions and indiscriminate torture on a widespread basis and acting as a major recruiting agent for violent resistance and suicide bombings. According to the available polls many Iraqis - including parts of Iraq's population most heavily repressed under Saddam - want the immediate withdrawal of the occupying forces, and a large majority of Iraq's Arab population - both Shia and Sunni - want an end to the occupation either now or soon. British troops must be withdrawn from Iraq."
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NOTES
[A] Voices UK has been campaigning on UK policy towards Iraq, in solidarity with ordinary Iraqis, since February 1998 (including sending 11 sanctions-breaking delegations to Iraq). See www.voicesuk.org for more info.
[B] See iraqmortality.org.
[C] See www.tinyurl.com/8s37j
[D] 'Mortality before and after the 2003 invasion of Iraq: cluster sample survey.' See www.tinyurl.com/brsbk