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reparations
Reparations Demanded 20 Years After US Launched 'War-for-Profit' in Iraq
"We should not let the difficulty of securing justice deter us from seeking it—for Iraqis and for all others harmed by U.S. imperialism, exploitation, and genocide," said the Center for Constitutional Rights.
Mar 15, 2023
Ahead of the 20th anniversary of the George W. Bush administration's illegal invasion of Iraq this weekend, the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights on Wednesday renewed its call for reparations "for those harmed as a result of the U.S.'s unlawful act of aggression in its cruel, senseless, and baseless war-for-profit."
"Ten years ago, we teamed up with Iraqi civil society groups and U.S. service members to demand redress," the nonprofit explained, "and this need only becomes more urgent as the incalculable human toll of the war continues to grow: hundreds of thousands dead, some two million disabled, some nine million displaced, environmental devastation, countless people tortured, traumatized, or otherwise harmed in ways unseen, occupation and embrace of torture as policy in the so-called 'War on Terror,' and an entire generation that was born and raised in only war."
As Common Dreams reported earlier Wednesday, the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs estimates that already, "the total costs of the war in Iraq and Syria are expected to exceed half a million human lives and $2.89 trillion" by 2050.
The project also said that "an estimated 300,000 people have died from direct war violence in Iraq, while the reverberating effects of war continue to kill and sicken hundreds of thousands more."
"Justice also entails accountability for the perpetrators of these horrific crimes, including those responsible for the torture."
Such figures have fueled calls from groups like the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which asserted that "reparations are rooted in precedent and international law, as well as a strong tradition of justice-based organizing by civil rights movements, and we should not let the difficulty of securing justice deter us from seeking it—for Iraqis and for all others harmed by U.S. imperialism, exploitation, and genocide."
"Justice also entails accountability for the perpetrators of these horrific crimes, including those responsible for the torture" in Iraq and beyond, argued the center—which since 2004 has filed three lawsuits against U.S-based military contractors on behalf of Iraqis tortured at the Abu Ghraib prison and also sued Erik Prince and his company Blackwater over the Nisour Square massacre
"Legal efforts against high-level political and military leaders for the invasion itself and the many crimes committed in the 'War on Terror' pose a different set of challenges, as demonstrated by our efforts to hold high-level Bush-administration officials accountable at the International Criminal Court for crimes in or arising out of the war in Afghanistan or under universal jurisdiction," CCR noted. "Those of us pursuing accountability can draw inspiration from activists in other countries like Argentina and Guatemala who waged successful campaigns over several decades."
Highlighting that "Congress continues its overbroad authorizations for use of military force," the center argued that "such authorizations must be repealed, and the unlawful policies of endless war and militarization must be replaced with international-law-based, rights-respecting policies and practices."
The U.S. Senate is expected to vote Thursday to repeal both the 1991 and 2002 authorizations for use of military force against Iraq. While the measure's sponsor, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), has been publicly optimistic about passage, it would then need approval from the GOP-controlled House of Representatives before being sent to President Joe Biden's desk for signature.
In a move decried by progressives as "madness," the president last week proposed a budget for fiscal year 2024 featuring a historic $886.4 billion in military spending, including $397.5 million to fight what is left of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
Meanwhile, as CCR pointed out Wednesday, "just this month, the House voted 414-2 to maintain unilateral sanctions on Syria even though—or because—they have caused widespread suffering and hindered earthquake relief efforts. The U.S. has imposed similar deadly sanctions on Cuba for decades. Such manifestations of imperialism differ from the war on Iraq only in degree. Indeed, deadly sanctions on Iraq were a precursor to the U.S. invasion."
In its lengthy statement, the center also said that "as we call for justice for Iraqis, we stand in solidarity with all people who live in countries targeted by U.S. imperialism, and in particular, in Afghanistan, whose civilians have been subjected to endless war and destruction, politicization, and then abandonment of human rights protections, and state-facilitated humanitarian suffering."
"They include not only those killed and maimed by the U.S. military and its proxies but also those harmed by U.S. sanctions and coups, corporate plunder and extraction, and austerity regimes imposed by U.S.-dominated colonial institutions," the center added, pointing to the International Monetary Fund. "It also includes Palestinians, who are subjugated by Israel, a U.S. imperial outpost."
"U.S. warmaking has long fed fascism at home," the group continued, calling out police violence, immigration restrictions, racial and religious profiling, and mass surveillance. "The trillions of dollars spent on militarism and criminalization abroad and in the U.S. must be reallocated to address the material needs and fulfill the human rights of our most marginalized communities."
"On this ignominious anniversary," CCR concluded, "we recommit to our vision of a world in which revolutionary movements across countries and continents struggle together for liberation from U.S. imperialism and all other oppressive systems of power."
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Japan Offers Reparation to Korean 'Comfort Women'
Dec 29, 2015
The Japanese government recently agreed to pay $8.7 million to dozens of Korean women who were forced to become prostitutes serving Japanese soldiers. The payment is meant as compensation for their suffering. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed his "deepest regrets" and "contrition" deep in his heart to the victims.
Among the estimated 100,000 to 200,000 women recruited from different countries to serve Japanese soldiers, 80 to 90 percent were from Korea. Girls as young as 11 years old were forced to serve between 5 and 40 soldiers a day and almost 100 soldiers on weekends. Those who resisted were often beaten, burned, or wounded. The abuse was such that many women took their lives. During the Japanese retreat, many were left to starve or were executed to eliminate any trace of the atrocities the Japanese military subjected to them.
After the end of World War II, the Japanese government insisted that the "comfort stations" were private brothels administered by private citizens. Only in 1993 did the government admit that the Japanese military had been "directly or indirectly" involved in establishing and operating the "comfort stations" and transporting the women.
The first Korean former comfort woman to tell her story was Bae Bong Ki in 1980. Another comfort woman, Kim Hak Soon, who died in 1997, related in 1991 how she was abducted by Japanese soldiers when she was 17 years old and forced to carry ammunition by day and serve as a prostitute by night. Her testimony sparked several other testimonies by women who were obliged to work as sexual slaves in military comfort stations. Evidence of such stations has already been found in Korea, China, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, Thailand, Myanmar, New Guinea, and Okinawa.
Illustrative of the ordeal comfort women went through is the testimony of Chung Seo Woon in the book titled "Making More Waves" (Beacon Press, Boston, 1997). Chung was an only child born in Korea to the family of a wealthy landowner. Because of his activities against colonial rule, her father was sent to prison and badly tortured. When she was 16, she was allowed to visit her father. The Japanese official who allowed her to see her father later visited her house. He told her that if she went to work in Japan for two years, her father would be released. Despite strong objections from her mother, she agreed to do so.
Chung was placed on a ship with many other girls and women. She was hopeful that at the end of the two years, her father would be released from prison, as the officer had told her. After being taken to Japan, the women were sent to several other countries,s and a group of them left in each country. After reaching Jakarta, the group that included the young Chung was taken to a hospital where she was sterilized.
The group was then taken to Semarang, a coastal city in Indonesia, and placed in a row of barracks. From then on, they were obliged to perform sexual intercourse every day with dozens of soldiers and officers. In the process, she was forced to become an opium addict. Chung attempted to commit suicide by swallowing malaria pills.
Two of her friends reported her to the authorities, she was revived; and she remarks, "It was then that I made up my mind to survive and tell my story, what Japan did to us." When the war ended and she returned home, she found her house deserted. From neighbors who came to help her, she learned that her father had died while in prison. Her mother, humiliated by the Japanese soldiers' attempt to rape her, committed suicide.
Chung decided to rid herself of her opium addiction. She could do this after eight months, and she worked hard to regain her dignity. She was never able to attain a normal sex life but found companionship and care from a physician who had had a nervous breakdown after serving in the Japanese Army. In 1993, the Japanese government apologized to the comfort women, although it didn't admit that the military coerced the women into serving against their will.
In November of 1994, an International Commission of Jurists stated that "It is indisputable that these women were forced, deceived, coerced and abducted to provide sexual services to the Japanese military . . . [Japan] violated customary norms of international law concerning war crimes, crimes against humanity, slavery and the trafficking in women and children . . . Japan should take full responsibility now and make suitable restitution to the victims and their families."
Japan has made the right decision by apologizing and financially compensating the remaining victims of abuse by Japanese soldiers. However, the gesture only renders partial justice to the Korean "comfort women." There are tens of thousands of Korean women who are not alive to claim it.
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As of Today, Humanity Has Exhausted its 2015 Supply of Natural Resources
According to the calculations of the Global Footprint Network, the planet will be running on 'ecological deficit' for the rest of the year
Aug 13, 2015
As of Thursday, August 13, humans have officially exhausted the planet's yearly supply of natural resources. For the rest of 2015, the earth will run an "ecological deficit"--accumulating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and depleting the planet for future generations.
This is the disturbing estimate of the Global Footprint Network (GFN), which calculates the planet's "overshoot day" annually. The troubling milestone occurred less than eight months into 2015 and six days earlier than last year's, a symptom of what the organization warns is a "looming catastrophe."
"We have a metabolism problem," Mathis Wackernagel, president of GFN, told Common Dreams. "In the end, the biggest knowledge gap we have is whether physical reality matters or not. Most of our planning assumes resource reality is a minor issue."
"Earth Overshoot Day" is calculated by dividing the planet's biocapacity—defined by the group as "the ability of an ecosystem to regenerate biological resources and absorb wastes generated by humans"—by humanity's overall ecological footprint and multiplying this ratio by 365.
According to the group, in the 1970s, the earth passed a "critical threshold" where human consumption began outpacing the planet's ability to restore itself. Today, humanity's "demand for renewable ecological resources and the services they provide is now equivalent to that of more than 1.5 Earths."
"In planetary terms, the costs of our ecological overspending are becoming more evident by the day," GFN warned. "Climate change--a result of greenhouse gases being emitted faster than forests and oceans can absorb them--is the most obvious and arguably pressing result. But there are others--shrinking forests, species loss, fisheries collapse, higher commodity prices, and civil unrest, to name a few."
Others have pointed out that the world does not contribute to planetary depletion equally. For example, a report released earlier this year by Oil Change International finds that wealthy countries are driving the global expansion of coal extraction and power generation. Meanwhile, poor people and nations across the world are impacted the most by the ongoing effects of climate change. Social movements and countries from the Global South have argued that rich countries owe a "climate debt"--to be paid in the form of reparations.
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