Join the 19 March demo
Bring the troops home
Stop the War Coalition demonstration
Saturday 19 March
Assemble 1pm, Hyde Park, London
AT ITS peak, the anti-war movement mobilised tens of millions around the world. Now a new international day of demonstrations is taking place on 19 March against the bloody occupation of Iraq.
Karim Brikci
The occupation is supported by just 2% of Iraqis and 70% of the British public want British troops withdrawn.
The latest ‘revelations’ about the legality of the war and the torture carried out by British soldiers can only increase this mood. It is widely understood that it was not a few ‘rogue’ soldiers but the entire policy of the government and the British army that led to the torture.
The situation today in Iraq for the majority of the population is worse than under Saddam’s dictatorship. Ordinary Iraqis and ‘coalition’ soldiers are dying in an occupation designed only to increase the power, and the oil supply, of US imperialism.
Well over a year since the war was officially declared over, there is mass unemployment and large areas of Iraq are still without electricity or clean water. Car and suicide bombings, assassinations and kidnappings have become the norm. The carnage in Hilla, when a suicide bomber detonated a car near a crowd of police recruits killing 125 people and wounding 130, is the bloodiest attack since the fall of Saddam Hussein.
The Iraqi people will never be able to truly decide their own future whilst there is an occupation by foreign forces. Far from bringing democracy to Iraq, the elections which took place at the end of January have brought a bloody civil war closer.
We believe that the only way to guard against ethnic and religious clashes is through the formation of multi-ethnic defence forces, under the democratic control of working-class people, to struggle against the occupation and protect the security of all.
We support the building of a mass movement of the working class and poor in Iraq for an end to the occupation. This movement should stand on a socialist programme, fighting for an Iraq run for the benefit of the Iraqi people instead of for the imperialist warmongers and the Iraqi elite.
We also need an alternative to New Labour’s attacks against workers and young people here, as well as in Iraq. So we call on everyone to join our anti-capitalist and socialist contingent on the 19 March demonstration.
