News Release

Voices on Iraq: World Tribunal Convening

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The World Tribunal on Iraq gets underway Friday (June 24) in Istanbul, Turkey. Participants include award-winning author Arundhati Roy, who will chair a “Jury of Conscience.”

The following commentators are available for interviews:

AYCA CUBUKCU
Cubukcu is a member of the coordinating committee of the Istanbul World Tribunal on Iraq. She said today: “Official institutions of international law are not able to take any meaningful action because of the legal impunity that the United States enjoys. When official institutions fail, citizens of the world have the right and the duty to seek and register the truth about violations of human conscience, and to write a counter-history that the victors will not write themselves.”

RICHARD FALK
DENIS HALLIDAY
HANS VON SPONECK
Falk is a professor of international law at Princeton. Halliday is a former assistant secretary general of the United Nations and, like Von Sponeck, headed the UN “oil-for-food” program until resigning in protest over the continued sanctions on Iraq. Tolga Temuge is the international media coordinator for the World Tribunal on Iraq and can arrange interviews with the above experts and witnesses, among others.
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HANA AL-BAYATY
Al-Bayaty is an Iraqi journalist for the Al-Ahram weekly in Egypt and a filmmaker. She said today: “The Tribunal is very important because many Iraqis will be attending and testifying about the truth of the occupation, voices that rarely get heard. Some of the Iraqi witnesses who will be here were dissidents under Saddam Hussein and now they oppose the occupation…. The government of America uses the word democracy as a label for getting its way in the region, whereas the people of the Middle East desire genuine democracy and sovereignty, not American hegemony and dominance. We see democracy as a genuine process from within, not as conditions dictated from afar or through an occupation.”

Al-Bayaty can arrange interviews with the Iraqi delegation, which includes the following: SALAAM AL JOBORIE, an Iraqi journalist who lost relatives in the war; WAMID NADHMI, a professor of political science at Baghdad University who opposed Saddam Hussein, the sanctions, the war and the occupation; RANA MUSTAFA, an Iraqi filmmaker and human-rights activist; and AMAL AL KHEDAIRY, an expert on Iraqi culture and archeology and director of a cultural center that was destroyed by American bombs on April 4, 2003.
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DAHR JAMAIL
Jamail has been an unembedded reporter in Iraq. He will be testifying before the Tribunal about torture victims he interviewed and the state of the hospital system. He also will provide a brief update about the situation on the ground.
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[Deep Dish TV will provide a global broadcast of the World Tribunal on Iraq and is offering all media outlets a free one-hour program for television or audio downlink each of the four days of the conference. There will also be live audio and video streaming of the Tribunal hearings at their website.]

For more information, contact the Institute for Public Accuracy at (415) 552-5378.