Remembering The Genocider: Colin Powell

During the summer of 1991 I was contacted on behalf of several Mothers in Iraq whose children were dying at astounding rates because of the genocidal economic sanctions that had been imposed upon them by the Security Council in August of 1990 at the behest of the Bush Senior administration. They requested that I do something in order to save these innocent children from perishing in agony in front of their mothers’ very own eyes. Using the format of the Writ for World Habeas Corpus that had been previously provided to me by my friend and colleague, the late Luis Kutner, Esq. of Chicago, Illinois, I filed a class-action Complaint on behalf of the 4.5 million children of Iraq against President George Bush Senior and the United States of America with the United Nations Organization that was dated 18 September 1991.[1] I submitted the Complaint to the Secretary General of the U.N., member states of the General Assembly, the Economic and Social Council, the Commission on Human Rights, the Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities, UNESCO, and UNICEF. A copy of my Indictment, Complaint and Petition for Relief from Genocide on behalf of the 4.5 million children of Iraq is reprinted below.

This Complaint accused the United States and President Bush Senior (1) of committing the international crime of genocide against the 4.5 Million Children of Iraq in violation of the International Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide of 1948 and in violation of the municipal legal systems of all civilized nations in the world; (2) of a gross and consistent pattern of violations of the most fundamental human rights of the 4.5 Million Children of Iraq as recognized and guaranteed to them by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948; (3) of the complete negation and denial of all the rights guaranteed to the 4.5 Million Children of Iraq by the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child; and (4) of the systematic violation of the special protections of international humanitarian law guaranteed to the 4.5 Million Children of Iraq by the Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and Additional Protocol I thereto of 1977.

My Complaint demanded (1) the termination of all forms of multilateral and bilateral economic sanctions against Iraq; (2) the massive provision of international humanitarian relief supplies to Iraq by all organs of the United Nations System; (3) that monetary compensation be paid to the children of Iraq and their families for deaths as well as for all physical and mental injury by the United States; and (4) that criminal proceedings for genocide be instituted against President George Bush Senior by the appropriate organs of the United Nations System as well as by all municipal legal systems in the world, including by the United States government. My Complaint estimated that since sanctions were first imposed against Iraq in August of 1990, Iraqi children were dying as a direct result thereof at the rate of about 500 per day.