Pipol Power

The editorial of this week's The Lancet reads like an endorsement for John Kerry in the upcoming US presidential elections. "Anything but Bush" seems to be the prevailing opinion among anybody who doesn't want to be identified as a reactionary in Europe these days. I'm not convinced though. Still, the Lancet editorial makes some interesting points and criticizes the health profession's lack of advocacy against the continuing occupation:

The continuing silence of doctors and public-health advocates over the human burden being borne in Iraq is utterly astonishing. It is understandable that the major US media focus has been the passing of a gruesome milestone--1000 American servicemen and women killed in Iraq since the war started. But even with a huge ground force of American military, the situation in the region has only worsened. Doctors should be speaking out about this appalling human disaster. (...) As far as Iraqi civilian casualties are concerned, estimates vary. The figure is likely to be well over 10 000 killed and 40 000 injured. Five hundred days after Bush declared "mission accomplished", Iraq represents a public-health catastrophe.

Interestingly, the Lancet points to the connection with the precarious public health situation of the US population:

Domestically, the health of Americans rests on a background of increasing poverty. 1·3 million Americans moved into poverty by the end of 2003. The total number of people living in poverty swelled to 35·9 million--12·5% of the population. To add to this dismal picture, 1·4 million people joined the ranks of the uninsured, taking the number of those without health coverage to 45 million (15·6% of Americans). The proportion of US citizens now living in poverty is the highest since 1998. Children and African-Americans have been hardest hit by the nation's faltering economy, which continues to worsen.

That is exactly why the Health NOW! campaign calls for "healthcare, not warfare!" And, by the way, this campaign's Health and Occupation Watch also proves that The Lancet might be too pessimistic after all: Public health advocates actually do speak out against the occupation. The "Billionaires for Bush," on the other hand, seem to have another opinion...

Progressive Philippine congress man Satur Ocampo (Bayan Muna) made a privilege speech last September 7 to draw attention to the deterioration of the Philippine public health care system. The speech is based on a survey done by the health alliance, Kilosbayan Para sa Kalusugan, in 13 public hospitals from August 29 to September 2, 2004 showed that 89% of the patient respondents had to wait from three days to one month before they were admitted to the hospital. Most of the respondents, or at least 61%, said they had no money to pay for admission fee; another 17.3% said there were no beds available. Some even had to wait for one to two years to be admitted. Poor patients cannot get treatment even for emergency cases in public hospitals if they cannot shell out P500 to P2,000 for admission fee.

Meanwhile, the health budget has declined by about 40 percent in the past 8 years. In 1996, per capita spending on health amounted to P230, but the current spending is now only P114 – or 37 centavos a day. This amount is not even enough to buy a tablet of Biogesic, or its generic version, which costs P1.

Kevin Williams, who lives in Baghdad, muses on the 3th anniversary of the September 11 events: "The total number of deceased on the day of the attacks on New York, Washington and Pensylvania fell just short of 3000. In Iraq today the figure for the dead is not counted - but is widely believed to be in the tens of thousands. Now over 1000 US troops have also been killed. The resistance to the "Occupation" is increasing. The question must be asked over and over - When will it stop?" He recounts his experience on September 11, 2oo4: gun battles and bomb explosions, no water, no electricity. A 'normal' day in Baghdad.

In an article in this week's issue of The Lancet bioethicist Steven H. Miles condemns the complicity of U.S. military medical personnel in torture of prisoners and other human rights violations. Citing military documents, eyewitness accounts and news reports, Miles says medical personnel were involved in a range of violations including falsification of death certificates, tampering with Iraqi corpses and in one instance, reviving a man brutalized into unconsciousness so that soldiers could resume a torture regime.

Last month, the New England Journal of Medicine, another medical journal, already carried an article citing evidence that U.S. doctors, nurses, and medics have been complicit in torture and other illegal procedures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay.

Both reports call for a wider investigation in the topic.

The Lancet's lead editorial argues that human rights have become a casualty in the desperate attempt to get results in the war against terrorism. The prestigious journal concludes:

Health-care workers should now break their silence. Those who were involved in or witnessed ill-treatment need to give a full and accurate account of events at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. Those who are still in positions where dual commitments prevent them from putting the rights of their patients above other interests, should protest loudly and refuse cooperation with authorities. The wider non-military medical community should unite in support of their colleagues and condemn torture and inhumane and degrading practices against detainees.

The Iraqi city of Fallujah was the scene of war crimes by U.S. troops last April. This time it is Najaf's turn. The city’s top health official talked about "a real catastrophe" for local health services. Ambulances are prevented from reaching the injured, US troops have turned the city’s best-equipped hospital into a base of operations and are indiscriminately firing machine guns and rockets into civilian neighborhoods according to reports. British activist Jo Wilding, who witnessed the siege of Fallujah, writes now:

It repeats itself: the main hospital has been closed down by US troops and is being used for military operations, ambulances are being prevented, again by US troops, from moving around the town, which is being pounded from the air while the US and the Iraqi militias, disparate armed groups, fight in the streets and
US soldiers drive around with loudspeakers, ordering civilians to leave or be killed.It could be Falluja in April; this time it’s Najaf. I hear that Kut has been bombed, the hospitals reporting massive casualties which the US says were fighters, the locals say were mostly civilians. I hear nothing about Nasariya, Samawa, although I know that when Najaf kicks off, my friends in the other southern towns just have to lock their doors and wait.

More in Health & Occupation Watch.

After weeks of potest, it seems the Filipino military contingent in Iraq is finally leaving. The protests against the deployment of Philippine troops heightened after Angelo De la Cruz, a truck driver from Mexico, Pampanga, was taken hostage. The Iraqi rebels threatened to kill Angelo unless the Philippines withdrew its troops from their country.  President Arroyo was caught inbetween the public opinion, which favored a pull-out, and the pressure from the US government to maintain a hardline stance. The domestic public opinion, and pressure by progressive groups, proved to be decisive and convinced president Arroyo that a pull-out was the only way to avoid her own political isolation so early after her contested victory in the polls.
 
Arroyo concedes...

A friend of mine got hurt last Tuesday when a peaceful rally on Plaza Miranda in downtown Manila was dispersed. The police used water cannons and truncheons to drive the crowd away.  I was out of town and could contact her only this morning when she reassured me she was doing fine after losing lots of hair and blood and gaining seven stitches. Apparently she hadn't lost her fighting spirit either. (Text / pictures)

The Philippine International Forum, a network of internationals living and working in the Philippines for peace and justice, joined today's Prayer and Candle Lighting for Genuine Peace and Sovereignty in Iraq with a powerful statement by Becca and Jessica. 
 
The statement debunks the Bush administration's claims that it has handed-over 'full sovereignty' to the Iraqi people and observes that the Iraqi people are now subjected to an oxymoronic 'handover of sovereignty' to an interim government handpicked by the United States, an interim government intended to carry-out the US agenda under a neo-colonial framework of pseudo-sovereignty.

For us internationals who play both an observer and participatory role in our work in the Philippines, the US conquest and occupation of Iraq is glaringly similar in many ways to the US conquest and occupation of the Philippines more than a century ago.  Just as the soon-to-be proclaimed leadership in Iraq will remain under the management of the United States, the leadership of the Philippines has lent unrelenting support to the US War on Terrorism and served US military and economic for decades. After more than a hundred years of the US-Philippine friendship, the Filipino people still long for genuine peace, still long for genuine democracy, and are still struggling for genuine sovereignty.