[South Asia Citizens Web | April 13, 2003]
OPEN LETTER TO THE US PRESIDENT
GEORGE W. BUSH
April 7, 2003
Mr. President,
The whole world watches in horror and growing anger as the country with the most powerful and largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction rains death and destruction on the people of Iraq and their homeland.
The whole world watches in shocked amazement as you repeat ad nauseum and without a shred of evidence your claim to be fighting terrorism while you defy all norms of the international community of nations and inflict daily and merciless terror on the lives and livelihood of the people of Iraq.
The whole world watches in disgusted disbelief as you deliver your arrogant and patently false speeches about bringing freedom and democracy to the people of Iraq while your armed forces maim and kill innocent men, women and children, obliterate their homes and poison their environment.
The whole world watches with outrage and revulsion as the vultures representing American oil corporates gather greedily over the spreading blood of the Iraqi people to dispossess their country of their oil wells and to gloat over the new billion-dollar fortunes they hope to amass.
The whole world watches, doubtless in shock and awe, as the US Administration that has repeatedly preached democracy to the rest of the world shuts its eyes and turns its face away from the worldwide public protests including in your own country against this barbarous war.
Mr. President, you have repeatedly claimed that those who are not with you are against you. We write to tell you that we are against you, we are against your bloody war, we are against your plans of global domination.
We speak on behalf of teachers in universities and colleges in Delhi but we can tell you that all sections of the university community ñ teachers, students, research scholars, non-teaching staff -, across the length and breadth of our vast country share our views. Our protest today is in expression of our solidarity with the people of Iraq in their courageous struggle against the invaders. But you should be warned, Mr. President, that we, as millions of other people across the globe, see your bloody war as a threat to the future of mankind and to its hopes of a just and equitable world order. We see you as the real threat to freedom and the democratic aspirations of the peoples of the world to determine their own destiny.
You have not only acted in open defiance of the UN Security Council, you have sent your invading armies to crush underfoot the national sovereignty of Iraq. And yet you indulge in the brazen hypocrisy of accusing Iraq of violating the Geneva Conventions.
You allow US newspapers and media to flash the faces of Iraqi POWs, you use your control over international media to put on exhibition before the whole world the humiliation of Iraqi POWs forced to their knees before eager cameras, you train your cruise missiles and cluster bombs to target markets, water, power, transport, food stocks and defenceless citizens and yet you have no shame in condemning Iraq for using the only means at its disposal to tell the world that the Iraqi people are fighting back.
We wish to remind you, Mr. President, of what you do not wish to remember or speak about ñ the murky record of the US Administration over the last hundred years or more in inflicting wars, conducting military invasions, and extending outright and covert support to brutal dictatorships against the right to liberty and independence of the peoples of this planet. The list is long and the record damning, covering many countries and millions of people in every continent.
We realise that legality for you is defined as the right of the US Administration to lay down laws not only for the American people but for all the peoples of the world, to ensure that they do not question the aggressions of the US Administration. We recognise that security in your language is defined as securing the economic and military might of the US against the rest of the world. We understand that freedom is defined in your vocabulary as the freedom of the US Administration and the powerful corporate interests it represents to appropriate and plunder the natural and man-made resources that belong to the peoples of this planet. We harbour no illusions that democracy for you is nothing but the rhetoric which you use to impose your might and dictate terms to other nations and peoples. We are left in no doubt that your plan is to cow down and subjugate the peoples of the world under a new colonial and imperialist world order, albeit by another name, controlled by the US.
With the 1991 War the US reduced Iraq from a modern state with an impressive economic and social infrastructure to an embattled economy and society, pushed brutally back to pre-industrial conditions and struggling for survival. Over the last decade, war and sanctions imposed by the US have reintroduced poverty, illiteracy, malnourishment and chronic illnesses, denied access to essential medicines and killed a million Iraqis including 500,000 children. Your bombs and poison-tipped missiles have contaminated the environment and natural resources, spread disease and disfigurement amongst the Iraqi people and made the infant mortality rate jump from 38 per thousand in 1989 to 131 per thousand in 1999. But that was obviously not enough to satisfy your lust for blood and spoils.
We do not expect shame or remorse from you. In the eyes of the world you are a criminal who believes he has the might to impose his criminal will and ambitions of world domination on the freedom-loving peoples of the world. Whatever the nature of your so-called "successes" in this brutal and barbarous war, we can assure you that you have unleashed worldwide anger against you and the US Administration and ignited afresh the will of the people across the globe to resist and defeat your imperialist designs.
Shaswati Mazumdar, President
R.S. Dahiya, Secretary
DUTA
(Delhi University Teachersí Association)
Ajay Patnaik, President
S.M.A. Alam, Secretary
JNUTA
(Jawaharlal Nehru University Teachersí Association)
S.A. Khan, President
N.Z. Khan, Secretary
HUTA
(Hamdard University Teachersí Association)
E. Vayunandan, President
Satyakam, Secretary
IGNOUTA
(Indira Gandhi National Open University Teachersí Association)
M.N. Beg, President
Abdul Qaiyum, Hony. Secretary
AMUTA
(Aligarh Muslim University Teachersí Association)
Khalid Ifthikar, Secretary
JTA
(Jamia Teachersí Association)
S. A. Khan, President
R.S. Dahiya, Secretary
M.N. Beg, Vice-President
Khalid Iftikhar, Treasurer
FEDCUTA
(Federation of Central Universities Teachersí Associations)
B. Vijay Kumar, General Secretary
V.K. Tiwari, National Secretary
V.S. Nehra, Vice-President
Atam Prakash, Zonal Secretary
AIFUCTO
(All India Federation of University & College Teachersí Organisations)
DELHI UNIVERSITY TEACHERSí ASSOCIATION
MAIN BUILDING, UNIVERSITY OF DELHI, DELHI-110007, INDIA
Phone : 91-11-27667822, 91-11-27667725/1697 E-mail: duta0103@yahoo.co.in
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