Bill Wilson MSP

Bill Wilson, MSP for the West of Scotland region, today lodged a Parliamentary Motion drawing attention to the suffering of the Iraqi people over the past sixteen years.  This follows the release earlier this month of the latest post-invasion Iraq death toll estimate of 1.2 million.  Dr Wilson’s motion implies that the term “genocide” is not officially applied to Iraqi deaths resulting from UN sanctions and the 2003 invasion because the major agents behind these were the US and UK governments.

Speaking afterwards, Dr Wilson said, “The latest estimate, released by ORB this month, suggests that possibly 1.2 million people have died in Iraq as a consequence of the US- and UK-led invasion of 2003.  This is the equivalent of the population of the entire so-called ‘GreaterGlasgow’ region, which even takes in far-flung towns with proud non-Glaswegian identities such as Paisley and Renfrew.  This carnage follows years of suffering under UN sanctions, which UNICEF suggested contributed to an estimated half a million deaths of children under the age of five.  If you add the probable sanctions-related deaths amongst the elderly and infirm it seems likely that sanctions and the invasion together may have killed some two million Iraqis —  this, out of a population of 27 million, which is less than half that of the UK.

“Contrast this with the ethnic cleansing of Albanians in Kosovo, which some estimates controversially put as high as ten thousand.  This was appalling, but it was possibly only a twentieth of the toll in Iraq, an order of magnitude smaller.  Even the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, when some 800,000 people were murdered, is more than matched but what has happened — is happening — in Iraq.

“Add to the deaths the mass displacement and emigration that followed the 2003 invasion and you begin to comprehend the suffering of the Iraqi people.  Are our governments admitting to the consequences of their actions?  Are our media adequately covering it?”

Dr Wilson concluded his remarks by saying, “It is said that it is the victor who writes — or re-writes — history.  It’s hard to see who will emerge victor in the miserable war of attrition currently underway in Iraq, but the US and UK governments are trying to make us believe that what has happened and is happening in Iraq is not genocide. Well, if it is not genocide then it is incompetence on a colossal scale.  In either case I suspect one doesn’t have to look much beyond the Oil Law they are currently trying to force through to find the motivation.”

NOTES

1. Text of the motion

S3M-00534 Bill Wilson (West of Scotland) (Scottish National Party): Iraq - Genocide— That the Parliament notes that excess mortality in Iraq subsequent to the 2003 invasion was estimated, as detailed in The Lancet of 21 October 2006, to be of the order of 654,965 deaths (or within the range of 392,979 to 942,636, with a confidence interval of 95%); notes that a survey released earlier this month by British polling organisation, Opinion Research Business, now estimates post-invasion excess mortality at 1,220,580 (within the range of 733,158 to 1,446,063); further notes the half a million estimated excess deaths of children under five alone, between 1991 and 1998, that the executive director of Unicef suggested was attributable in some measure to sanctions; notes that it is possible that Iraq, a nation of some 27 million people, has lost a tenth of its population due to the combined effects of sanctions and the 2003 invasion, and further believes that, had mortality of this scale been attributable to the actions of governments hostile to the United Kingdom and United States of America, the term used to describe it would be genocide.