Kathy Kelly: 'Social Security'- On Trial for Delivering Medicine to Iraq

[seemslikeadream]

Wednesday, June 02 2004 @ 09:22 AM EDT

"I hope they'll inspire me, beyond these confines, to use our freedoms creatively and constantly in hopes of shaping a more secure future for our children.."

By Kathy Kelly
The Palestine Chronicle

ON June 4, 2004, lawyers for Voices in the Wilderness (VitW) will argue, in federal court, that a judge should allow further "discovery" to help establish why VitW travelers believed they had a duty to challenge economic sanctions against Iraq. The US Government charges us with the "crime" of delivering donated medicines to Iraq, without authorization. The US Treasury Department is attempting to collect $20,000 from VitW for violation of US sanctions against Iraq, sanctions which resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children in Iraq and effectively destroyed the civilian infrastructure. VitW is countersuing for reparations for the catastrophic effect of US led economic sanctions.

From 1996-2003, our resolve not to be bound by unjust UN/US led economic sanctions deepened, each time we personally witnessed innocent Iraqis being brutally and lethally punished by shortages of food and medicines, deteriorating infrastructure, contaminated water and disastrous breakdown in their health care systems.

Prosecuting lawyers will argue that our case should be resolved swiftly since we have already acknowledged delivering medicines to Iraq. Our attorney, Bill Quigley, professor of law at Loyola University, New Orleans, who traveled to Iraq prior to the US war counters, "The US government has no business punishing people for bringing medicine to Iraq, while its sanctions and occupation cause the daily deaths of Americans and Iraqis and continue to create a desperate need for medicine and basic goods for many Iraqis. This case is about justice, this hearing is an attempt to further criminalize dissent, and we will continue our civil resistance and actions regardless of the outcome of this case."

Only the lawyers will appear in the courtroom on June 4. But our role, in the wider court of public opinion, continues.

I can't directly participate in activity outside a courtroom, on June 4th -- a federal court has already imprisoned me for protest at a US military combat training school which has been graduating Latin American trainees who've later been implicated in torture, disappearance, assassination, and murder upon return to their home countries. But here in the Pekin Federal Prison Camp, between work shifts in the dish room, I have several hours each day to contemplate up further nonviolent resistance to US war making.

http://www.palestinechronicle.com/story.php?sid=20040602092227136