GPJA: Protest US Consulate 11am Sat / Chile meeting cancelled

NB a previously advertised meeting this Friday commemorating the 30th anniversary of the coup in Chile has been cancelled)

NZ troops are to be deployed to Iraq on Sunday, September 14 and again on Friday, September 26. Deployment on Sunday is a preliminary team, on the 26th, the main body of troops leaves. This gives added urgency to the protest planned for outside the US consulate at 11am this Saturday as part
of an international day of action against corporate globalisation and war timed to coincide with the WTO meeting in Mexico.

The military engineers are going to help rebuild a country that the United States and the UK devastated. We must ask the question: why is the NZ government willing to put troops at risk and legitimise an illegal and immoral occupation?

The Chief of the Defence Force realises that the situation in Iraq is extremely unstable and that all foreign troops are regarded as part of the army of occupation. The attack on the UN in Baghdad last week which resulted in injuries to Major Todd Linton, is evidence of that.

New Zealand troops will be serving with a British unit. Wearing different uniforms and painting kiwis on the side of their vans is hardly likely to protect them from attack by Iraqi resistance forces.'

Minister Phil Goff has said that NZ must not bow down in the face of terror by reconsidering the deployment of 61 engineers to Iraq. But the Minister must remember that many in Iraq view the invasion and continued occupation of their country as terrorist attacks.

Given the US influence on the United Nations, including the post facto legitimation of the war on Iraq in UN Resolution 1483, the UN is viewed by many as just an extension of US power.

Global Peace and Justice Auckland is calling on the government to cancel the deployment of troops to Iraq.

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