10,000
Civilians Were Killed
In Iraq During 2003
Iraq
Body Count
08 February, 2004
As
many as 10,000 non-combatant civilian deaths during 2003 have been reliably
reported so far as a result of the US/UK-led invasion and occupation
of Iraq, according to Iraq Body Count (IBC), an independent group of
US and UK researchers. These reports provide figures which range between
a minimum of 8,235 and a maximum of 10,079 as of Saturday 7th February
2004. IBC's experience of data-gathering throughout the preceding year
shows that reports of additional deaths often continue to emerge many
months after the event. Many civilian deaths are almost certainly, as
yet, unreported, and even the current IBC maximum cannot be considered
to approach a complete and final toll of innocent deaths.Calls
for an official reckoning are mounting.
Based on corroborated
media reports, IBC has compiled a data-base of some 300 separate records
of civilian deaths. The latest entry (x298) focuses on the hundreds
of Iraqi policemen murdered in violent attacks since April 2003. Seen
by the occupying authorities and anti-occupation paramilitaries alike
as the occupation's front-line defence, Iraqi police have become easy
targets compared to heavily-protected US officials and soldiers, and
their deaths are just the latest example of how it is the Iraqi people
who are paying the heaviest price for the the occupation, just as they
paid the major human cost of the war.
In an extensive
editorial, the co-founders of IBC show how the official response on
both sides of the Atlantic has been characterised by evasive tactics
such as:
repeated
professions of ignorance and a denial of any possibility of gaining
useful knowledge;
denial of
responsibility, placing this instead on convenient "others"
at various points in time e.g. Saddam during the war, Al Qaida
for recent bombings;
the establishment
of narrowly-limited military "self-investigations," the majority
of which are never completed or publicly reported;
official
focus limited to US and UK military deaths with wilful ignorance of
the price paid by Iraqis;
deliberate
obstruction of Iraqis' own efforts to count their war dead;
insultingly
low token "compensation" payments to a small and arbitrarily-limited
number of Iraqi claimants.
At the heart of
all these tactics is an implicit double standard, a standard which values
the life of a Westerner far above the life of an Arab or an Asian, and
which considers lives devastated by our own actions to be unworthy of
serious interest and investigation, let alone genuine concern.
Iraq Body Count
spokesperson John Sloboda said: "This official disinterest must
end. We are now calling for an independent international tribunal to
be set up to establish the numbers of dead, the circumstances in which
they were killed and an appropriate and just level of compensation for
the victims' families."
For further information
contact:
John Sloboda ([email protected])
Hamit Dardagan ([email protected])