A delegation of Iraqi women who lost family members during the invasion want to visit the U.S. The State Department says no way. Who Will Tell Our Stories?By Medea Benjamin, AlterNet
Posted on March 2, 2006, Printed on March 2, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/story/32870/- snip -
"I saw the bullets enter my children's heads," she said. "My son was sitting right next to me when the bullet went through his forehead. One minute I was a mother, a wife with a family; the next minute my family was gone."
The soldiers ordered Vivian to leave, and to leave her family's bullet-ridden bodies behind. "After a week of pleading with the Americans, they finally gave the bodies back to us. We took them to the church where we washed them, prayed for them, and then buried them." Vivian Salim now lives with her elderly parents.
The U.S. military never acknowledged their terrible mistake, never apologized to Salim for her loss, and never offered her any financial help. Now, nearly three years later, Salim and six other Iraqi women have been invited by the women's peace group CODEPINK to come to the United States to tell their stories and push for an end to the occupation of their country. The other delegates are doctors, engineers, journalists and humanitarian aid workers. One delegate, Anwar kadhim Jwad, is also a widow whose husband and children were killed by U.S. soldiers at an unmarked roadblock.
But when Vivian Salim traveled across the long and dangerous desert road from Baghdad to Amman, Jordan on February 2 to solicit a two-week visa from the U.S. Embassy, her visa application was rejected. The Consular officer told her that she failed to show convincing evidence that she would return to Iraq. When the CODEPINK staff called the State Department to object, they were told that Salim did not have "sufficient family ties that would compel her to return." Anwar Kadhim Jawad, the other delegate whose family was killed by U.S. soldiers, was also rejected for lack of sufficient family ties.
"It's outrageous," said activist Cindy Sheehan...
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