In Baghdad, U.S. activists roll up sleeves to give blood, not shed it

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- American activists took to the streets yesterday outside the U.S. Interests Section of the Polish Embassy -- not to march but to lie down, "to give blood, not shed blood."

About a dozen men and women from various groups, including Seattle residents, donated blood in a demonstration calling for the lifting of economic sanctions and an end to threats of war.

Iraqi doctors set up shop on the dusty sidewalks outside the embassy while activists filled several cots on the street, as curious guards looked on.

"We are here to tell President Bush that if he is really serious about getting rid of weapons of mass destruction, he should immediately lift the sanctions that have killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis," said Ramzi Kysia of Washington, D.C., speaking for Voices in the Wilderness, a Chicago-based group trying to end economic sanctions and prevent another war with Iraq.

Spurred by fears of imminent war, humanitarian and peace activists from around the United States have been coming to Iraq in recent weeks to assess the damage done by war and sanctions and what further damage can be expected.

The Iraqi Peace Team, sponsored by Voices in the Wilderness, is here to work in clinics, food distribution sites, hospitals and other sites to make an anti-war statement and, if necessary, to act as human shields if attacks begin. An artist from Victoria, B.C., is creating a 24-foot-tall bronze sculpture with the help of artists in Baghdad.

"I came to Iraq for a second time because I wanted to reconnect with the people, many of whom I became very fond of when I was here before," said the Rev. Sharon Moe, minister of University Temple United Methodist Church in Seattle.

Moe, 54, traveled to Iraq in May with a delegation from Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility and returned on Sept. 29 as part of a Voices in the Wilderness group.

"But even more than that, I wanted to make a stand against what the president is calling on us all to do, which is to hate and be afraid of the people of Iraq," Moe said. "So, coming here was a stand against that, a refusal to give in to the fear that is being stirred up in the U.S."

"My heart grieves for these people," said Moe. "If there's a war, when there's a war, there will be an inordinate amount of suffering, and it will be suffering for the sake of a lie -- that we're afraid of weapons of mass destruction, when really we just want control of the oil market."

United Nations officials estimate that 500,000 children have died since 1991 in the wake of the war damage and subsequent international sanctions. Iraq still lacks some basic medical supplies, such as antibiotics, as well as fully functioning water systems and other services. Cancer patients are often told to buy their own medications

There are some signs of improvement, however. UNICEF figures show the malnutrition rate is declining, the vaccination rate is going up and there have been improvements in communications, agriculture and the electrical supply. Also, everywhere in Iraq, from Baghdad to Basra, there is a surge of housing construction.

Other Seattle activists now in Iraq as part of the Voices group include Bert Sacks, a retired engineer, and Ginny NiCarthy, a an activist in the non-violence movement since the 1960s who works for the American Friends Service Committee and the Fellowship of Reconciliation.

Sacks, 62, denounces the Pentagon for targeting civilian infrastructure during the Gulf War.

"The hospitals and clinics are the battlefield on which more children have died than all of the soldiers killed during the Gulf War," said Sacks, who is making his ninth visit to Iraq.

Early this year, Sacks received a letter from the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control demanding that he pay a $10,000 fine for taking some $40,000 worth of medicine on one of his previous trips. Instead of paying the fine, Sacks raised more than that amount in donations, but used the money to buy medicine for a hospital in Basra. He delivered that medicine to the Saddam Teaching Hospital on Monday.

NiCarthy, 75, said "the main reason I wanted to come to Iraq was to see real people. . . . I watch a lot of bad television, and I see the pundits, and in the background they have Hussein with his guns and they talk about all the terrible things he's done, but there is never a picture of a human."

Tom Nagy, a professor at George Washington University, and James Longley, a videographer from New York City, also came with the Seattle delegation.

Nagy wrote an article in The Progressive magazine documenting how extensive damage to Iraq's infrastructure during the Persian Gulf War led to the country's current epidemic of water-borne illnesses. Longley, whose documentary "Gaza Strip" is currently showing in the United States, is taping conditions in Iraq for use by Sacks' legal team should the dispute with the U.S. government over the unpaid $10,000 fine end up in court.

Derek Houston, the Canadian artist, has made three trips to Iraq, two at the invitation of the minister of culture.

"I do not like politics; politics are dirty," he said. "My work is about hope -- it is about speaking out when you see something wrong."

Houston plans to have his abstract bronze of a mother, father and child shipped to Canada, where it will be placed at the center of a peace park he is creating in northeast British Columbia, on the flank of Portage Mountain, north of a small town called Hudson's Hope.

"I love Iraq and its people, but I would rather be anywhere else in the world than here at this moment in time," said Houston. "But I have no choices -- I have to do this for the safety of my children's future."

Other activists who came individually or as part of other delegations include Nathan Mauger of Spokane; Danny Muller of Brooklyn; David Smith-Fevvi of northern California, but formerly from Seattle; and Henry Williamson of Charleston, S.C.

Editor's Note

P-I foreign desk editor Larry Johnson and photographer Paul Kitagaki Jr. have been dispatched to Iraq to report on the mood and conditions as the country faces the threat of attack from the United States.