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Partition by census

Abdul Ilah Albayaty, Hana Al Bayaty, Ian Douglas | 12 October 2010

For immediate distribution
Date: 12 October 2010

PARTITION BY CENSUS

We, the undersigned, defending the right of Iraq to independence, sovereignty, unity and territorial integrity, rejecting the attempts of Iraqi puppets promoted by the US occupation to trade the national rights of Iraqis and to institutionalise via census the criminal demographic engineering they have pursued by force, declare that:

From the first day of the US-UK occupation of Iraq, the occupation began to undertake a series of measures, directly or through its local allies, to destroy Iraq as a state and a nation and to partition it along ethnic and sectarian lines.

Today, the puppet government of the occupation and its Kurdish partners are trying to hold a population census in Kirkuk province whose aim is to give a permanent legal character to the criminal social engineering, ethnic cleansing and demographic changes that have been implemented under occupation.¹ This could unleash a full blown civil war across Iraq, and potentially lead to its partition and a consequent regional war.

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In addition to the death of more than one million Iraqis, the ethnic cleansing and other means pursued by the United States, United Kingdom and their allies in order to implement the process of partitioning Iraq, in its cities and regions, have caused the forced migration of 2.5 million Iraqis out of Iraq and the forced displacement of 2.5 million others from their homes inside Iraq.

The ethnic cleansing suffered by the population in the provinces of Mosul, Diyala, Salahuddin and the Baghdad area, and most notably in Kirkuk and the so-called “disputed areas” — where the population is forced by various means, including systematic assassinations, bombing civilians, collective punishment, transfer, displacement, deportation and other crimes against humanity, to migrate only to be replaced by people from other provinces or even from outside Iraq — is a clear crime of destruction and part of the intended partition of Iraq.

The United States, the United Kingdom and their allies waged an illegal war of aggression against Iraq and occupied its territory. This war in itself is a crime punishable under international law. International law, in particular The Hague Regulations of 1907, the Geneva Conventions and additional protocols, and the Genocide Convention, explicitly prohibits occupying powers from instituting changes aimed at permanently altering the foundational structures of occupied territories, including the judiciary, economy, political institutions and social fabric.²

International law considers the systematic transfer, deportation or displacement of population a crime against humanity.³ Residents of affected areas, the Iraqi national forces, the displaced, and the majority of the people of Iraq declare this census null and void. It has no binding legal consequences and cannot and should not be used to support or justify the intended partition of Iraq.

We demand that no census be conducted before the free return of all Iraqi refugees. We demand that the question of ethnicity not be used to instigate the partition of Iraq and that it be removed from any census, now and in the future. We declare as fraudulent the justification under occupation of a census on the basis of long term planning in the context of a temporary and unstable demographic situation.

We demand that the United Nations and the Arab League and all governments, personalities, organisations and institutions support the demands of the people of Iraq by not recognising the results of this census, and by not assisting in conducting it. This census is designed to reward criminals for their crimes at the expense of their victims.

Please sign to support this statement.

Dr Ian Douglas, coordinator of the International Initiative to Prosecute US Genocide in Iraq and member of the Executive Committee of the BRussells Tribunal
Abdul Ilah Albayaty, Iraqi political analyst and member of the Executive Committee of the BRussells Tribunal
Hana Al Bayaty, member of the Executive Committee of the BRussells Tribunal and the International Initiative to Prosecute US Genocide in Iraq
Dirk Adriaensens, member of the Executive Committee of the BRussells Tribunal
Prof. Em. François Houtart, Participant in the Bertrand Russell War Crimes Tribunal on US Crimes in Vietnam in 1967, Director of the Tricontinental Center (Cetri), spiritual father and member of the International Committee of the World Social Forum of Porto Alegre, Executive Secretary of the Alternative World Forum, President of the International League for Rights and Liberation of People, Honorary President of the BRussells Tribunal and senior advisor to the President of the United Nations General Assembly Miguel d’Escoto Brockmann, recipient of the 2009 UNESCO Madanjeet Singh Prize for the Promotion of Tolerance and Non-Violence
Prof. Dr. Lieven De Cauter, philosopher, K.U. Leuven / Rits, initiator of the BRussells Tribunal
Prof. Patrick Deboosere, Demographer, VUB – member of the BRussells Tribunal Executive committee
Prof. Dr. Jean Bricmont, Scientist, specialist in theoretical physics, U.C. Louvain-La-Neuve, member of the BRussells Tribunal Executive Committee
Ward Treunen, former TV producer – member of the BRussells Tribunal Executive committee
Hugo Wanner, VZW Netwerk Vlaanderen – member of the BRussells Tribunal Executive committee

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ALSO ENDORSED BY:

Rev. Miguel d’Escoto-Brockmann	Nicaragua	Former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Catholic priest, Senior Adviser on Foreign Affairs, with the rank of Minister, to President Daniel Ortega Saavedra. President of the 63rd session of the United Nations General Assembly
Denis Halliday	Ireland	Former UN Assistant Secretary General & United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq 1997-98, recipient of the 2003 Gandhi International Peace Award
Niloufer Bhagwat	India	Vice President of Indian Lawyers Association
Matthias Chang	Malaysia	Trustee of The Kuala Lumpur Foundation To Criminalise War
Dr. Curtis F.J. Doebbler	USA	International Human Rights Lawyer
Karen Parker	USA	Attorney , Association of Humanitarian Lawyers, partners of the BRussells Tribunal
Salah Omar Al Ali	Iraq	ex iraqi minister/ex Iraq’s ambassador to UN
Abdulkarim Hani	Iraq	Former Health minister
Ahmed Manai	Tunesia	Former expert with the UN, President of the Tunisian Institute of International Relations – Tunesia
Naji Haraj	Iraq	Former diplomat, Human Rights Advocate
Sabah Al Mukhtar	Iraq/UK	President of the Arab Lawyers Association
Eduardo Galeano	Uruguay	Essayist, journalist, historian, and activist
Jan Myrdal	Sweden	Writer
Prof. Michel Chossudovsky	Canada	Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
Dr Zulaiha Ismail	Iraq/Malaysia	Perdana Global Peace Organisation
Dr Souad Al Azzawi	Iraq	Researcher on the use of DU in Iraq, Asst. Prof. Env. Eng – University of Baghdad
Gideon Polya	Australia	retired senior biochemist, author: biochemical scientific publications and global avoidable mortality
Paola Manduca	Italy	Scientist, New Weapons Committee
Stephen Lendman	USA	Writer, analyst, co-host of The Global Research News Hour
Felicity Arbuthnot	UK	Journalist
Dahr Jamail	USA	Journalist
Nicolas Davies	USA	Author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.
Max Fuller	UK	Author of For Iraq, the Salvador Option Becomes Reality and Crying Wolf, deaths squads in Iraq
Merry Fitzgerald	Belgium	Europe-Turkmens of Iraq Friendships Association
Sigyn Meder	Sweden	Member of the Iraq Solidarity Association in Stockholm
Joachim Guilliard	Germany	Journalist, Anti-war movement
Inge Van De Merlen	Belgium	Member of the BRussells Tribunal

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This statement was drafted by Ian Douglas with Abdul Ilah Albayaty and Hana Al Bayaty, and was first published by the International Initiative to Prosecute US Genocide in Iraq: http://usgenocide.org/2010/partition-census/

Forced displacement and the construction of walled-in districts and their associated regimes, by contributing to demographic changes in Iraq, contravene international humanitarian law, including Article 49, paragraphs 1 and 5, of The Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in the Time of War, 1949, and as such constitute war crimes. ↩
Articles 43 and 55 of The Hague IV Regulations on Laws and Customs of War on Land, 1907 (HR); Articles 54 and 64 of The Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in the Time of War, 1949. Occupying powers are obliged to manage the resources of the occupied territory under the law of usufruct only. This means that while they may use national resources as necessary to the upkeep of the wellbeing of the population in the occupied territory (Fourth Geneva Convention, Article 64) they cannot profit from the use of such resources or award themselves partial or whole ownership of such resources. The US remains a belligerent occupier of Iraq. ↩
Article 7 (1) (d) of the Elements of Crimes of the International Criminal Court. ↩