Six Iraqi women who say they or their families were brutalized by the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) on Tuesday called for the Iraqi leader to be indicted for war crimes and said regime change is the only way to save their desperate nation.
The women refused to either endorse or oppose plans by the United States and Britain to invade if Saddam refuses to get rid of any weapons of mass destruction in his possession. But it was clear the women supported the ouster of the Iraqi dictator by almost any means.
"The Iraqi people have been living in a state of war for 30 years," said Nazand Beghakani, a founder of the International Kurdish Women Study Network. "I'm calling on the international community to stop this war that has been forced on the Iraqi people."
Representing a handful of the country's different ethnic communities, the women told a Paris news conference of deaths and disappearances of their relatives, the beheading of innocent women, and of living day to day under threat.
They called on the international community to help halt "ethnic cleansing" and oppression of minorities in Iraq; to investigate the disappearance of thousands of Iraqis; and to send Saddam before an international war crimes tribunal for prosecution.
Aida Ussayran, a member of the Union of Iraqi Democrats, fled her native land 25 years ago after being jailed three times for pro-democracy activism and an act of particularly harsh punishment ? the execution of her son.
"My story is no different that any other political activist living under a cruel regime," she said. "The regime is merciless in its bitter pursuit of any innocent man, woman or child."
The women also denounced the systematic beheading of innocent women who belong to families suspected of opposing Saddam's regime. Ussayran said 16 innocent women were decapitated in front of their own children three months ago.
In the north, Iraq's Assyrians, who are Christians, have suffered cultural oppression and thousands have been forced to leave the country, said Pascale Isho, a member of the Assyrian Women's Union.
In December, two human rights groups released a report detailing the agonies of daily life under Saddam that drew on accounts from Kurdish groups, humanitarian agencies and 80 witnesses from Iranian refugee camps or the Kurdish autonomous zone in Iraq.
The report by the International for Human Rights and the International Alliance for Justice said that more than 1 million people have been killed by Saddam's government since he took power in 1979 and that up to 4 million Iraqis have been forced into exile or fled.
for the link to this story, but as he/she observes although this press conference took place in Paris, it might as well have taken place in Paris, Texas for the scant attention it received from the Froggies.
