Bahgdad, April 10, 2003

Early this morning, Umm Zainab sat quietly in the Al Fanar lobby staring at the parade of tanks, APCs and Humvees that slowly rolled into position along Abu Nuwas Street. Tears streamed down her face. “I am very sad,” she told me. “Never I thought this would happen to my country. Now, I think, my sadness will never go away.”

Wanting to give Umm Zainab some quiet time, I took her two toddlers, Zainab and Miladh, outside to enjoy the sunshine and fresh air. Several soldiers stood guard not far from me and the children. I wanted to bring the children over to them, to let them behold these tiny beauties. But, no, too much of a risk-what if it would add to Umm Zaineb’s pain?

Eun Ha Yoo, our Korean Peace Team friend, unrolled a huge artwork created by a Korean artist, Chae Pyong Doh, and sweetly laid it out in the intersection just outside the Al Fanar. As I write, Neville Watson and Cathy Breen are taking their turns sitting in the middle of it.

A map of the world covers the top third; grieving victims of war fill the middle third; piles of ugly weapons with various flags scattered over them bulge out of the bottom third. Neville has set up his prayer stool and a small wooden cross where he sits. Cathy is wearing her “War Is Not The Answer” t-shirt.

At least a dozen soldiers have stopped to talk with us since we began the vigil at 3 this afternoon. “OK, can you tell us your side of the story?” asked one young man. “Can I sit there with you for awhile?” asked another. Each of them has assured us that they didn’t want to kill anyone. One young man said he was desperate for financial aid to care for his wife and child while struggling to complete college studies and work full time. He felt he could gain some respect in this world and also help his family by joining the Marines. He’s relieved that he was stationed at the rear of a line coming up from the south. His role was to guard prisoners. He didn't shoot anyone. But he saw US soldiers shoot at a civilian car with three passengers as it approached. The child in the car survived - both of his parents were immediately killed. “They could have shot the tires,” said the soldier. “Some just want to kill.”

One soldier offered earnest concern for us, saying “You're sitting in a dangerous place.” We smiled. “Thanks,” I said, “But we’ve been in a dangerous place for the past three weeks.” He was puzzled. “What do they mean,” said a soldier standing next to him, “is that they've been here all through three weeks of bombing.”

“Do you try to put yourselves in our shoes?” asked one soldier after he’d respectfully listened to me explain major contradictions between US rhetoric and practice regarding Iraq. “Well, yes,” I said, “We try. We’re taking the same risk as you by being here, and perhaps an even greater risk since we’re unarmed and unprotected. Actually, just now we're lucky not to be burdened by all that heavy gear.”

It looks like we're on “lock-down” for a while longer. Iraqi minders are gone,—US soldiers are here. They’re uncoiling barbed wire at the intersection. Anyone wanting to walk across the street is stopped, questioned and searched. Since I began this letter, there have been four huge explosions nearby. Looting and burning continue, here in Baghdad. I’m sick of war—disgusted to the point of nausea. I think all of us at this intersection, residents of the Al Fanar, journalists in the Palestine Hotel next door, and soldiers on patrol, share the same queasy ill feeling. The line, “War is the health of the state” makes no sense whatsoever here.

With love,

Kathy Kelly

Voices in the Wilderness
Post Mail Box 634
5315 N. Clark St.
Chicago, IL 60640
Email:
Phone: 773-784-8065
Web site: http://www.nonviolence.org/vitw/

In the opposite corner another mother kept vigil by her seventh, youngest and only surviving child. Two month old Sajah Ali laid still on the bed, smaller and more fragile than an antique china doll. The boy weighted a mere 3 3/4 pounds; his ideal weight would be 11 pounds. His thigh was smaller than his mothers index finger which rested alongside it. The boy became sick after drinking infant formula mixed with contaminated water. The mother, anemic and malnourished, was forced to feed her child formula when her breast failed to produce milk and ran dry.

What sort of drought steals a mother's milk and keeps a tear from the eye of a tortured babe?

We later returned to Baghdad to recount the day. We were gathered as a group in the hotel restaurant when a man in his 40s approached the group and asked for Mr. Chris. The man had traveled 6 hours to Baghdad with his wife and ailing daughter in search of treatment for his child. The family had sold all their furniture to pay for the trip to Baghdad. When he heard that our group was staying in the hotel he sought us out to see if we could help his girl. He returned with his wife and their daughter Mayes Ahmad Judi. Seven year old Mayes was carried into the restaurant by her mother. Her right eye was lazy, saliva fell from her lips, and her face was swollen. She was carried by her mother because she is no longer able to walk; nor can she lift her arms or talk. Her mother showed me a photo of Mayes taken 6 months ago. The girl in the photo is a smiling cheerful child.

The father handed me a summary from a neurosurgeon which described the child's condition and various failed courses of treatment. The final line of the summary read: “We advise steriotactic method but not available in Iraq.”

In a measured cadence, the mother told me that one doctor said that her child's cancer is the result of the depleted uranium in the soil and food chain. The family is from the southern city of Basra where the cancer rate has risen perhaps 7 fold since 1991. During the bombing, American war planes fired thousands of depleted uranium rounds which left behind hundreds of tons of radioactive debris. Most of the radiation is concentrated in and around Basra.

The mother soon lost control of herself and asked me if I was American. I looked to the floor and told her that I was. My confession added righteous indignation to her grief. Sobbing, she pointed at me across the table. Seething , she said to me through tears and clenched teeth: “You did this to my baby.”

I apologized. It is all I could do. The father begged me to take Mayes to the U.S. for treatment. I couldn't. I apologized again. I made some phone calls and sent faxes until two in the morning but my efforts were fruitless. I returned to the hotel and cried myself to sleep.

Our military is fighting a secret and dirty war against the civilian population in Iraq. The war is being kept secret through the collusion of our free press, a press that is free not to report more than the Pentagon explanations and the Administration's justifications. Our tax dollars pay for this war, our silence is approval, our inaction is collusion. The pilots flying over Iraq severing young limbs and killing dreams are our proxies in killing. As the death toll climbs what distinguishes us from the “good Germans” who silently paid for the Holocaust?

May God have mercy on us.

Banning Child Sacrifice: A Difficult Choice?

By Kathy Kelly

March 9, 1998 -Just one month ago, U.S./ U.K. bombardment of Iraq seemed almost inevitable. Even though the most comprehensive economic sanctions ever inflicted in modern history have already crippled Iraq, slaughtering over 1/2 million children under age 5, the U.S. and the U.K. were poised for further assault. Today, the U.S. still threatens air attacks upon Iraq, massive strikes that would heap more agony on civilians who've endured a seven year state of siege.

On February 9, our small delegation of eight, two from the United Kingdom and six from the U.S., representing thousands of supporters, traveled to Iraq carrying 110,000 dollars of medicines. We were the 11th Voices in the Wilderness delegation to deliberately violate the sanctions as part of a nonviolent campaign to end the U.S.-led economic warfare against Iraq.

From previous trips, we knew exactly where to find overwhelming evidence of a weapon of mass destruction. Inspectors have only to enter the wards of any hospital in Iraq to see that the sanctions themselves are a lethal weapon, destroying the lives of Iraq's most vulnerable people.

In children’s wards, tiny victims writhe in pain, on blood-stained mats, bereft of anesthetics and antibiotics. Thousands of children, poisoned by contaminated water, die from dysentery, cholera, and diarrhea. Others succumb to respiratory infections that become fatal full body infections. Five thousand children under age five perish each month. Nine hundred sixty thousand children who are severely malnourished will bear lifelong consequences of stunted growth, brain deficiencies, disablement. At the hands of UN/US policy makers, childhood in Iraq has, for thousands, become a living hell.

It is a story of child abuse, of child sacrifice, and it merits day to day coverage.

A Reuters TV crew accompanied our delegation to Al Mansour children's hospital. On the general ward, the day before, I had met a mother crouching over an infant, named Zayna. The child was so emaciated by nutritional marasmus that, at seven months of age, her frail body seemed comparable to that of a seven month premature fetus. We felt awkward about returning with a TV crew, but the camera person, a kindly man, was clearly moved by all that he'd seen in the previous wards. He made eye contact with the mother. No words were spoken, yet she gestured to me to sit on a chair next to the bed, then wrapped Zayna in a worn, damp and stained covering. Gently, she raised the dying child and put her in my arms. Was the mother trying to say, as she nodded to me, that if the world could witness what had been done to tiny Zayna, she might not die in vain? Inwardly crumpling, I turned to the camera, stammering, “This child, denied food and denied medicine, is the embargo's victim.”

I felt ashamed of my own health and well-being, ashamed to be so comfortably adjusted to the privileged life of a culture that, however unwittingly, practices child sacrifice. Many of us Westerners can live well, continue “having it all,” if we only agree to avert our gaze, to look the other way, to politely not notice that in order to maintain our overconsumptive lifestyles, our political leaders tolerate child sacrifice.

The camera man had moved on. “I'm sorry, Zayna,” I whispered helplessly to the mother and child. “I'm so sorry.”

Camera crews accompanied us to hospitals in Baghdad, Basra and Fallujah. They filmed the horrid conditions inside grim wards. They filmed a cardiac surgeon near tears telling how it feels to decide which of three patients will get the one available ampul of heart medicine. “Yesterday,” said Dr. Faisal, a cardiac surgeon at the Fallujah General Hospital, “I shouted at my nurse. I said, ‘I told you to give that ampul to this patient. The other two will have to die.’”

A camera crew followed us into the general ward of a children's hospital when a mother began to sob convulsively because her baby had just suffered a cardiac arrest. Dr. Qusay, the chief of staff, rushed to resuscitate the child, then whispered to the mother that they had no oxygen, that the baby was gasping her dying breaths. All of the mothers, cradling their desperately ill infants, began to weep. The ward was a death row for infants.

Associated Press, Reuters and other news companies’ footage from hospital visits was broadcast in the Netherlands, in Britain, in Spain and in France. But people in the US never glimpsed those hospital wards.

While political games are played, the children are dying and we have seen them die. If people across the US could see what we've seen, if they witnessed, daily, the crisis of child sacrifice and child slaughter, we believe hearts would be touched. Sanctions would not withstand the light of day.

Being Peaceful: Our Only Hope

By Tom Roberts

Baghdad, Iraq, May 21, 1999 - The imam stood in the center of a circle of women who were kneeling, praying and studying the Qur’an at the mosque in the Adamia neighborhood of Baghdad. Abdul Gaforer Al-Quisi, spiritual leader of the mosque, introduced the American visitors, who had just sat through his extended tirade against the Clinton administration. He explained that every time the women studied the Qur’an and prayed, they prayed “against the American administration.”

His voice rising, he said through an interpreter, “Each of these women has lost a husband, a son, a brother in the war or children to the sanctions. So you can see how they hate Americans.”

The pause that followed seemed to last forever, a deep silence begging some response, a defense, an explanation, something. Everyone, it seemed, was straining for what was to come next. Chicagoan Kathy Kelly quietly asked the imam through a translator if she could say something.

“Certainly,” he motioned her to come forward and engage in the discussion. She moved forward and knelt, filling a small opening in the circle of women. “Like all Iraqi women” she said softly, waiting for the translation “you have taught us.” Then, touching the arm of the woman next to her, she said, “And we are sorry.”

The gesture brought tears to those in the circle and some of the onlookers. The imam was silent. The woman leading the teaching, the servant of the Qur'an, walked across the circle with a cloth for Kelly to dry her eyes, and she, in turn, dried the eyes of the woman next to her.

As if on cue, the call to evening prayer sounded from the main part of the mosque. Time for the men to leave the women’s section. Kelly dared one more request of the imam as the group was leaving. “May we,” she said, motioning to include the other American women who had joined the kneeling circle, “stay and pray?”

“Of course,” he said.

The moment disarmed, the discussion had gone where Kelly always wants it to go, person to person, beneath the hardened lines of battle. It is one of the guiding motives of the group she leads, Voices in the Wilderness, a campaign to end the economic sanctions against the people of Iraq. Kelly, more than most, knows that the geopolitical conflict that has reached down into these women's lives is terribly complex and that Iraq's President Saddam Hussein bears a measure of responsibility for aggravating it. Yet she also knows those subtleties mean little to a mother who has watched a child starve to death or die of a disease that Iraqi doctors could have treated if there were no sanctions.

The women went on to pray, the Americans listening and mimicking movements. And then, through a translator, they began to share: the Iraqi women about the losses of loved ones to war, the Americans about how some had spent time in jail for protesting U.S. military policy. By the time the men returned, the women were smiling and embracing. It looked like an interfaith kiss of peace.

The scene incorporated the extravagant Arab hospitality for which this region of the world is known and Kelly's absolute conviction that pacifism is the world's only hope. In this case a moment was transformed. Perhaps it takes a dreamer to press on, for in the case of Iraq and the United States, there is an ocean of moments in need of transformation.

Voices in the Wilderness accepts donations at:
1460 West Carmen Avenue, Chicago, IL 60640.

Visit Voices in the Wilderness online at http://nonviolence.org/vitw

Between the Bombs: Journey to Iraq

By Deryk Houston

The black desert landscape was lit up by a bright flash on the horizon. The road sign read, “Baghdad”, marking the end of our fourteen hour, overland journey from Jordan.

As a Canadian artist visiting Iraq for the first time, the lightning storm was unsettling. I had no idea what lay ahead of me for the next ten days. I had joined a delegation of 22 people from the United States, England, Australia and Canada. We came to witness and record the brutal effects of sanctions imposed on a small country isolated politically, militarily and economically.

Our bus was loaded with medicines and journals for the Iraqi hospitals in direct defiance of the sanctions.

In the morning, I woke up early and ventured out of my hotel for a walk along the quiet streets. I stopped at a tea stand where a middle aged man was just setting up for the day. He did not speak English so I showed him a photo of my two children. He immediately kissed the photos. He then made tea and refused to take money. This was my introduction to the people of Baghdad. All my anxieties disappeared after that first cup of sweet tea.

Our group met with representatives from various organizations including, UNICEF, the Red Cross and the United Nations. These organizations confirmed the following statistics: Four thousand-five hundred deaths per month; destroyed infrastructure; distribution problems of getting medicines to the people; and chronic malnutrition. Evidence that the Oil For Food program has always been a disaster and is totally inadequate to stop the hemorrhaging of an entire country. What disturbed me the most were the number of representatives who would speak freely only after video cameras and all the recording devices were shut off. One person said that they felt like “prostitutes” for the United States. Nobody wanted to jeopardize their pensions by speaking out.

The infrastructure in Iraq is collapsing in a spiral. Everything imaginable is run down or broken. People mend their shoes with cardboard. They wedge plastic bags into metal cans to stop leaks. They replace bald tires with less bald tires. But one of the biggest problems is the lack of migrant workers. In the West we depend on computers. In Iraq it is migrant workers. Take away all our computers and try to imagine what it would be like. Try to distribute your food or goods. Try to communicate. Try to fix your forklift in the warehouse. Try to run anything.

An example of this is found at The Saddam Art Center. It is a modern building but even before you enter the building, the dead trees in the ruined garden make it obvious that it takes valves, pumps, electrical generators, expertise and pipes to get water to the trees. Most of these items have been refused or delayed for months by the sanctions committee. Inside the building there is a strong smell of crude oil. When I mention this to the staff, they say they don't even notice it anymore. The director says he can't get art magazines. The music teacher is desperate for sheet music. Potters can't get glazes for their ceramics. Despite these difficulties the artists continue to create music, paintings, pottery and sculpture. I am assured by these wonderful people that America will never be able to build a bomb big enough to silence the Iraqi people.
I

I had dinner with friends who live a block away from this shelter and I was assured that only civilians who lived in the area, used this shelter. The neighbors said that they now sleep as a family in the same room at home. If they are going to get bombed they want to die together. They want to die with dignity. Not like those in the shelter. One woman, who now looks after the shelter and gives tours, lost several family members. She said, “I feel sorry for George Bush” (Bush was in power at the time of the destruction of this shelter in February, 1991.) The Iraqi people strongly believe that ultimately we will have to face judgment for what we do in life. She also told us that she finds her strength in the memories of her dead children and told us to go home and hug ours. The governments that committed this crime against humanity have also callously stood by and let sanctions strangle the life out of a large part of the population of Iraq for nine years. This is obscene.

At night we often found ourselves crying as we sat around in a group talking about each day’s experience. As an artist, I had taken a simple line drawing of a child held in its mother’s hands. I was able to lay this design out, using stones, in the gardens of the most important hotel in Baghdad. I dedicated the project to the children of Iraq. I hope it will serve as a reminder that these children are guaranteed rights under international law and that these rights have been trampled on and gambled away by all our governments. Dr. Noam Chomsky said, “silence is complicity.” Please write your government.

Deryk Houston is a Canadian artist. He represented the city of Vancouver in a solo exhibition in the former Soviet Union; his paintings can be found in both private and public collections across North America. To find out more about Deryk Houston and his work, visit: http://coastnet.com/dhouston/

Diary From Iraq

A delegation of citizens from The Voices in the Wilderness campaign first delivered medical supplies to hospitals in Iraq. The following is from a diary kept by Kathy Kelly on her mission to Iraq in 1996.

By Kathy Kelly

Wednesday, March 27, 1996—Amman, Jordan-Tarom Airline’s Chicago-Amman flight arrived at 2:00 a.m. Bleary-eyed, jet lagged and a bit anxious about where to go next, I felt relieved to see four men waiting for us at the airport gate. Chicago friends had asked Mr. Zaia, an Assyrian Iraqi, to help us arrange transportation into Iraq. He and his friends quickly loaded our supplies onto a van and took us to a hotel. Five hours later, we were at the Iraqi Embassy trying to get visas approved for Chuck and Brad. Mr. Zaia's advice and translation helped us get an appointment with the Iraqi Ambassador and Consul. We decided to wait another day.

Friday, March 29, 1996 Amman, Jordan—No word yet on the missing visas. Our delegation is small, and we want the entire group to enter Baghdad. Mr. Suleiman, the consular official in Amman, wants to help us. We appreciate his good will, but agree that it is wise to send me ahead, on pubic transport, to do advance work in Baghdad and to press officials there to issue the visas.

The next available bus to Baghdad was also the least expensive. Boarding the bus was a raucous affair, but after two hours passengers and belongings were settled. Many, through gestures and smiles welcomed me, the only Westerner.

An English speaking Iraqi woman, Rania, sat opposite me. I had shown her our Arabic leaflet, hoping to clarify that our effort was not sponsored by the U.N. or any government. Quite the contrary. Rania’s eyes widened as she read, her head nodding slightly. “I will help you,” she responded. “I want to do anything I can for you. Yes, you can come to my home. Rest there for a few hours. Then use my telephone.”

Several hours into our trip, Rania confided that she had spent the past three months in Yemen, working as a gynecologist. She was nervous that government officials would learn of her three month absence. In Baghdad, she no longer worked as a doctor since the salary was not enough to help feed her family of five. “One month's salary buys a little meat, and 30 eggs,” she said. Many workers in the medical field have left positions in hospitals to seek higher paying jobs as taxi drivers, waiters or vendors. She and her family agreed it was best for her to become an “away worker” for one year in Yemen. Recently, word arrived that her husband had suffered a serious heart attack. Rania pointed to her purse, which contained the medicines her husband desperately needs.

Our bus took six hours to clear the border, but passengers and drivers relieved the tedium with good-natured banter about small scale smuggling endeavors. Despite news headlines about increasing tensions between Iraq and Jordan, Iraqi and Jordanian passengers enjoyed easy camaraderie.

After we cleared the Iraqi border, two teenage soldiers accompanied us. One shivered in the cold, leaning on his rifle, as he carried on an earnest conversation with Rania. The other joked with the Jordanian drivers, who treated him like their kid brother.

Saturday, March 30, 199—Baghdad, Iraq-When I stepped off the bus, in Baghdad’s City Center, money changers, taxi drivers and beggars immediately began quarreling for my attention. Rania took my hand and firmly stated “She is with me.” Later, she said that scene would never have happened in Baghdad before the Gulf War. The combined effects of the Gulf War and the harsh sanctions have led to rising economic desperation in Baghdad.

We carried our baggage beyond the bus station and hailed a taxi to her home. There, Rania's sister in-law Fatina gasped with joy when she spotted us. Weeping, she hugged and kissed Rania many times. Then Fatina clutched Rania's purse full of medicine to her heart. I felt privileged to witness this moving scene. Later, I wondered about the families I met in Iraq in 1991, during and just after the Gulf War. What happened to the families we huddled with in the basement of the Al Rashid Hotel? Did they survive the cruel effects of the economic sanctions? Are the children we played with alive today?

From Rania's home, I called St. Raphael's hospital, run by Dominican sisters. In Arabic, Rania described our project to Sr. Marianne, the Director. Smiling, she hung up the phone. “Please sit and eat something. They are sending a driver to pick you up.”

The driver stayed with me throughout the day. At the Ministry of Information office, I asked if our delegation could deliver medical relief supplies to the Al-Qadissiya Children's Hospital in the poor area just outside of Baghdad. Arranging a press conference to cover the donation of supplies (and our violation of the sanctions) was relatively simple; yet I was frustrated at being unable to communicate with my friends in Amman to let them know that the visas had been issued. Calls to Amman can only be placed at the post office, where it takes two hours for a call to go through.

Archbishop Emmanuel Delli boosted my confidence in our project. “Food and medicine comes here,” he said, “but people have no money to buy.” His warm eyes defy cynicism. “No one will believe the suffering here. People must come here and see for themselves.” He paused, then nodded gravely and added “Try to end the embargo.”

At Sacred Heart parish, Fr. Kasseb, who distributes flour, rice, lentils and oil to needy neighbors responded similarly. “We don't want handouts. Really, we can take care of ourselves if this embargo is lifted.” The latest U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization report concurs: “The only viable long-term solution is for Iraq, a potentially rich country, to use its own resources for earning foreign exchange and hence be able again to feed itself and provide for the sick and vulnerable.”

March 31, 1996, Baghdad, Iraq—Six members of our delegation are now in Baghdad. This morning we met with the Minister of Information and members of the press corps, then drove to the outskirts of Baghdad, en route to the Al-Qadissiya Hospital. Beyond Baghdad, piles of garbage line the streets. Clogged sewers cause deep puddles of backed up sewage. Our driver told us that conditions worsen as you travel further to the north and to the south.

At the Al-Qadissiya Hospital, mothers sit on the beds holding thin despondent children. Dr. Allo, the Director, is a kindly man who has worked there since 1982. He described their diseases: infection, premature birth, sandfly disease, dysentery. Without adequate food and medicine, Dr. Allo and his colleagues are hopelessly incapable of curing the children.

I felt intrusive bringing cameras and television crews into wards where some mothers were spending their final hours with dying children. One mother lifted her child's tattered garment to reveal the baby's bloated, swollen stomach. Another mother placed her child, an emaciated infant, in my arms. For 20 minutes, I cradled the infant and could feel that tiny weight, in my arms, struggling to breathe.

April 1, 1996. Faluja, Iraq—Fr. Bob Bossie and I traveled back to Amman. At a rest stop, another passenger and I stared at each other for a few minutes. “I've met you before,” said the man, who had already identified himself to Bob as an orthopedic surgeon. Suddenly we both remembered. “Yarmouk Teaching Hospital!-during the Gulf War.” Dr. Husseini had met with our Gulf Peace Team delegation, taken us to various wards, explained the trauma endured by patients in a hospital deprived of electricity, anesthetics, medicines and food. With the pang of remorse, I remembered that he had pleaded then for medical journals. I made a mental note, “Next trip, bring journals.” He has spent the past several years working in Basra, a southern city devastated by the Gulf War. “Basra's children,” he said, “are so malnourished, they become even more vulnerable to water-borne diseases.”

Amman, Jordan-At the U.S. Embassy in Amman, I asked the U.S. consul, Charles Heffernan, “Why is the U.S. imposing collective punishment on infants and children?” Fr. Bob Bossie offered him a quote from the Lancet, a British medical journal. “Western arms and diplomacy have failed to unseat Saddam Hussein. Why expect a population enfeebled by disease to do so?”

Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark calls the sanctions against Iraq the “one crime against humanity in this last decade of the millennium that exceeds all others in its magnitude, cruelty and portent.”

I still can't believe that three million suffering, stunted, starving children won’t matter to those who insist on sanctions.

Walking out of the huge opulent U.S. Embassy, I felt stronger determination: Better a few voices in the wilderness than deadly silence.

Kathy Kelly can be contacted at: 1460 Carmen, Chicago, IL 60640.

Mother's Day in Baghdad

By Kathy Kelly

Several members of the Iraq Sanctions Challenge stood at the bedside of Mustafa, one of at least a dozen dying children in a crowded, wretched ward of the main hospital in Basrah, Iraq's southern port city. His mother, tall, thin and quite beautiful, sat cross legged on the mattress beside him, waving away flies, as the doctor explained to us that the child, hospitalized for the past twenty days, now suffered from dehydration, diarrhea, acute renal failure and extensive brain atrophy. Lacking equipment and medicine to diagnose and treat Mustafa, the doctors could only stand by, helpless and frustrated, while the child’s condition worsened over three weeks time. If Mustafa survives, he will be severely crippled.
I

For more information, please contact:

Voices in the Wilderness
1460 West Carmen Avenue
Chicago, IL 60640 U.S.A.
Phone (773) 784-8065 Fax (773) 784-8837

Visit Voices in the Wilderness online at http://nonviolence.org/vitw