Open letter to Danish MP Villy Soevndal: Impunity for the Danish responsible for 655.000 dead Iraqis?
By Carsten Kofoed, Free Iraq Blog of Denmark, October 14, 2006.
Picture: Villy Soevndal, Danish MP
and chairman of Socialist People’s Party in Denmark.
Dear Mr. Villy Soevndal, chairman of the Socialist People’s Party (SF).
In your press statement “The SF and the Red Green Alliance demand the withdrawal
of the Danish soldiers in Iraq” issued on October 13, I have just read that the
SF and the Red Green Alliance, as soon as possible and in the light of the
shocking report published in The Lancet about 665,000 dead Iraqis due to the war
and the wish of the head of the British Army Richard Dannatt for a soon
withdrawal of the British occupation forces, will put forward a proposal for
decision in the Danish parliament demanding the immediate withdrawal of the
Danish occupation troops in Iraq. For the sake of the deeply tortured Iraqi
people, I hope from all my heart that there will be a parliamentary majority for
that. Unfortunately, I have serious doubt when it comes to the war makers in the
Danish government and its deeply reactionary, non-Danish supporting party (the
chauvinist, Islamophobic Danish People’s Party, translator’s note).
But the real reason why I am writing to you, the most known opponent of the war
on Iraq in the Danish public, is because I would like to know what the SF, which
has indeed been opposed to the war, think regarding the Danish responsibility
for it and the heinous war crimes, including use of chemical weapons, torture,
rape and mass murder, in Iraq.
In your press statement, you state the following on the Danish participation in
the war and occupation:
“It is a historical crime of which Denmark is part, and for which the government
together with the Danish People’s Party carries the political and moral
responsibility.”
I and many other Danish opponents of the war on Iraq completely agree with you.
But when you commit a crime, you also deserve a punishment. My questions, which
I think that many others in the anti-war movement in this country have posed to
themselves, are therefore the following:
Which consequences should the war against Iraq that has allegedly cost more than
half a million Iraqi lives have for the Danish government and those politicians
in the parliament who voted for Danish participation in the illegal, unprovoked
aggression against Iraq?
Does the SF support the legal case, which the Constitution Committee of 2003,
supported by Mr. Johan Kirkmand whose son was killed in Iraq, have initiated
against Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen for breaking the Danish
Constitution when he and his government sent Denmark to war against Iraq?
Will the SF work for the establishment of an international war crimes tribunal
on the war on Iraq – like the Nuremberg Trials following the Second World War –
which shall proceed against George W. Bush, Tony Blair, Anders Fogh Rasmussen
and other state leaders and responsible for the unprovoked aggression on Iraq,
an action that the Nuremberg Trials at that time characterized as “the supreme
international crime”?
Will the SF support an eventual extradition of supposed Danish war criminals,
including Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, to such a tribunal?
Let me conclude by saying that I believe that the victims of the war – the
Iraqis – have the right to justice. This will not in any way be met by simply
receiving excuses or regrets from the mass murderers – yes, we can fairly call
them that as they have more than half a million Iraqi lives on their consciences
– who filled their own peoples with lies, violated the UN Charter with their
unprovoked attack on Iraq and caused a gigantic catastrophe for the Iraqi
people.
It is up to the opponents of the war and all honest people with a sense of
justice to ensure that this terrible history about Iraq will not pay off and
therefore be repeated at a later time. The responsible for the criminal war
against Iraq must be punished, and the Iraqis must receive compensation,
economically, politically and morally, for all their incomprehensible losses and
sufferings, which not at least the Danish government has been inflicting on them
as part of the US-led occupying power.
I hope that you, just like me, believe that criminals are criminals, also if
they happen to be politicians and state leaders, and also if their surnames are
Rasmussen and Moeller (the surnames of the Danish Prime Minister and Foreign
Minister, translator’s note), and that it must have consequences if you break
international law and expose a whole country and people to the enormous crimes
that we have been witnessing in Iraq. If not, we can just forget another and
better world for the coming generations. Barbarity, lie and injustice would have
won. We must not let that happen.
Yours sincerely,
Carsten Kofoed, Free Iraq Blog of Denmark and active in the anti-war movement in
Denmark since October 2002.
Copenhagen, October 14, 2006
Frit Irak Blog, Free Iraq Blog of Denmark
Hjemmeside/Website: http://fritirak.blogspot.com/
E-mail: fritirakblog@yahoo.dk
Phone: (+45) 61 27 41 77
Link: http://fritirak.blogspot.com/2006/10/open-letter-to-danish-mp-villy.html