The Growing Anti-War

Since the invasion of the USA and the UK to Iraq is getting nearer, the public opinion of anti-war is reaching to its peak. At the Iraqi capitol Baghdad, peace workers, who are willing to be ‘human shield’ voluntarily, are gathering one after another, and anti-war messages of world celebrities are ensuing.

▽‘Human shield’ is going to Baghdad=Following the arrival of 14 foreign civilians, who volunteered to be human shield for civilian facilities in Iraq, tens of volunteers got visas from the Iraqi Embassy in Turkey on the 13th. They insisted that they especially asked the former President of South Africa and a Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela to be human shield and got a positive answer.

The shield volunteers put a banner saying ‘it is a war crime to bomb here’ at the bridge on the Tigris River running through the center of Baghdad, and they also put anti-war banners on public buildings in Baghdad.

▽Anti-War Demonstration=On the 15th, There will be the biggest joint anti-Iraqi War demonstration of the world at more than 350 cities in the world including New York, London, Cairo, and Johannesburg, and millions of people will participate.

According to foreign media including AP, hundreds of thousands of people seem to participate on the demonstration in Manhattan, New York led by the ‘League for Peace and Justice,’ which was formed by some 200 anti-war organizations in America.

Bishop Desmond Toto of South Africa, Actress Susan Surendon, and Actor Danny Glover will say anti-war speeches, and the families of the 9.11 Terror victims will be there, too.

The BBC of the UK reported on the 13th that Director Spike Lee of the ‘25th Hour,’ which entered in the international competition of the Berlin Film Festival, and the Star of that movie Edward Norton criticized the Iraqi policy of the President George W. Bush.

▽The UN is helping them indirectly=The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees warned on the 13th, “The Iraqi War will create up to 600,000 refugees.” The High Commissioner Ruth Rubers reminded us that 2 million people took refuge at the Iraqi border with Iran and Turkey during the first Gulf War in 1991 and said that.

According to the recent report issued by the UN, now, the 23 million Iraqi people are relying on the food rationing provided by the Hussein administration; however, it is analyzed that if the food rationing system is collapsed because of the war, it won`t last for 6 weeks.

The World Health Organization worried that if the war broke out, 500,000 Iraqi people would be needed to be treated.

The Assistant Secretary General of the UN, Osima Genzo stated that, in case of the war breaking out, emergency relief fund of 120 million dollars would be needed and the international society had to take a positive role on this matter.

Rae-Jeong Park ecopark@donga.com