Under the Fourth Geneva Convention, collective punishment is war crime. Article 33 states that “No protected person may be punished for an offense that he or she did not personally commit.” Today we punish entire nations by sanctions, even when only the leaders are guilty, even though the burdens of the sanctions fall most heavily on the poorest and least guilty of the citizens, and even though sanctions often have the effect of uniting the citizens of a country behind the guilty leaders. We treat nations as though they were persons. The effect of sanctions against Iraq was to produce more than half a million deaths of children under five years of age, as is documented by UNICEF data. The total number of deaths that the sanctions produced among Iraqi civilians probably exceeded a million, if older children and adults are included. Pharmaceuticals and medical equipment do not fall under the international sanctions, but the country is facing shortages of drugs for the treatment of 30 illnesses, including cancer, heart and breathing problems, thalassemia and multiple scleerosis, because Iran is not allowed to use International payment systems. In addition, there are 40,000 haemophiliacs who can't get anti-clotting medicines. An estimated 23,000 Iranians with HIV/Aids have had their access to the drugs they need to keep alive severely restricted. Ramsey Clark, who studied the effects of the sanctions in Iraq from 1991 onwards, wrote to the Security Council that most of the deaths “are from the effects of malnutrition including marasmas and kwashiorkor, wasting or emaciation which has reached twelve per cent of all children, stunted growth which affects twenty-eight per cent, diarrhea, dehydration from bad water or food, which is ordinarily easily controlled and cured, common communicable diseases preventable by vaccinations, and epidemics from deteriorating sanitary conditions. There are no deaths crueler than these. They are suffering slowly, helplessly, without simple remedial medication, without simple sedation to relieve pain, without mercy.”
The motive for sanctions seems to have been the strategy that the economic and psychological impact would provoke the Iraqi people to revolt against Saddam. However he remained in place, supported by universal fear of his police and by massive propaganda.
The sanctions imposed on Iran are an example of collective punishment. They harmed the health of ordinary Iranian citizens, who can in no way be blamed for the policies of their government.
In the current case of Iran sanctions are being promoted as a kinder, gentler alternative to war. Yet sanctions is a form of war against an entire population, a weapon of mass destruction, that is already imposing enormous suffering on the Iranian population. The claim is that sanctions are "targeted" and only aimed at Iran 's government—the Islamic Republic—and its top leaders. But because the U.S. and its allies are sanctioning and embargoing Iranian banks, they have crippled Iran's ability to pay for urgently needed imports—including medicines—and halted many shipments. In addition, many drugs and needed chemicals aren't getting into Iran thanks to the banning under the sanctions of "dual-use" chemicals with possible military applications. "Hundreds of thousands of Iranians with serious illnesses have been put at imminent risk by the unintended consequences of international sanctions, which have led to dire shortages of life-saving medicines such as chemotherapy drugs for cancer and bloodclotting agents for haemophiliacs," the Guardian reports. The director general of Iran 's largest biggest pharmaceutical firm told the Guardian , "There are patients for whom a medicine is the different between life and death. What is the world doing about this? Are Britain , Germany , and France thinking about what they are doing? If you have cancer and you can't find your chemotherapy drug, your death will come soon. It is as simple as that." His firm can no longer buy medical equipment including sterilizing machines essential for making many drugs, and some of the biggest western pharmaceutical companies refuse to have anything to do with Iran . "The west lies when it says it hasn't imposed sanctions on our medical sector. Many medical firms have sanctioned us," he said.
An estimated 23,000 Iranians with HIV/Aids have had their access to the drugs they need to keep them alive severely restricted. 8,000 Iranians suffering from thalassaemia, an inherited blood disorder, has said its members are beginning to die because of a lack of an essential drug, deferoxamine, used to control the iron content in the blood. The head of Iran 's Hemophilia Society said, "This is a blatant hostage-taking of the most vulnerable people by countries which claim they care about human rights." Iran 's Hemophilia Society told the World Federation of Hemophilia that tens of thousands of children's lives were being threatened by shortages of medicines. Sanctions are killing innocent people.
The Washington Post reported, "The Obama administration sees economic sanctions against Iran as building public discontent that will help compel the government to abandon an alleged nuclear weapons program, according to a senior U.S. intelligence official." The Wall Street Journal wrote that sanctions were a “tool to precipitate the regime's collapse.” Did sanctions depose Saddam and prevent war? Or did sanctions make it easier to justify going to war - "We have tried sanctions but now need to resort to war," was a common claim. Are sanctions simply employed to soften up the enemy?
Socialists don't accept that it is either sanctions or war, either a slow death or fast death.
Adapted from here and here
"And what of the charge that it’s the government of Iran that’s either not managing problems resulting from sanctions properly or is intentionally not distributing goods in ways that take care of the needs of the Iranian population? Of course these charges are correct. The Iranian government is responsible both for its refusal to back down on its nuclear program as well as its incompetent and/or horrid distribution of resources. Indeed, many of us who have opposed sanctions do so precisely because we look at the sanctions regime as a US policy that is mediated by the Iranian government and other powerful networks that have a vested interest and the means to transfer the costs of sanctions to the less powerful."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.ips.org/blog/ips/who-is-responsible-for-medicine-shortages-in-iran/