100,000 Rings

Anti-War Campaigners arrested for holding Bell-Ringing Ceremony Outside Parliament

voices — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 13:07:22 -0600

Excerpt

November 25, 2005

100,000 Rings: In Remembrance of the Iraqi Civilian and Military Dead

Two women were arrested on Friday 25th November while holding a bell-ringing ceremony outside Parliament as part of an international peace event to mark the anniversary of the release of the Lancet study on 29th October 2004 which estimated 100,000 people had died since the beginning of the war in Iraq.

One of the women, Giulia, stated: “I am here today to remember the terrible loss of life that has occurred throughout the illegal war and occupation of Iraq, to commemorate the slaughter that took place in Fallujah a year ago and in solidarity with all the courageous people who have been arrested since the introduction of the new laws preventing demonstrations in the vicinity of the Houses of Parliament.”

Body

November 25, 2005

100,000 Rings: In Remembrance of the Iraqi Civilian and Military Dead

Anna-Linnéa, the other bell-ringer, said:”The fact that two women, unarmed and totally open, accountable and nonviolent, get arrested for ringing a bell in a remembrance ceremony outside Parliament proves how much the authorities fear the truth. What we have to say is clearly important since the government clamps down on us in this way.”

The women were arrested for being ‘participants in an unauthorised demonstration’. The police were very reluctant to arrest and briefly authorised the protest but then banned it again when the women refused to give their details on the grounds that if the demonstration was now ‘authorised’ they should not be obliged to give their names.

The police also helpfully suggested that the two women join Brian Haw on the opposite pavement as he is the only person exempt from the laws ironically introduced to prevent his permanent anti-war display. However, as Brian’s side of the pavement is now practically devoid of passers-by, this option was also turned down.

One policeman was heard saying ‘I wish I could join you. I wish I could do what you’re doing. This is filthy. This is very hard for all of us’.

The women were taken to Charing Cross police station but later released without charges. As well as being reluctant to arrest, the Police also seemed concerned at the possibility of two more people challenging the new laws.

19 people are currently facing charges under the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act (2005) which outlaws protests without police permission within 1km of Parliament. Let’s hope that more will challenge this absurd and immoral law.

For more information please contact Giulia on 02380550159 or Anna-Linnéa on 07788503761

Notes:

The ceremony was a response to a call from Voices for Creative Nonviolence (US) and Justice Not Vengeance (UK). See www.iraqmortality.org. The organisers are hoping for one hundred communities to each ring a bell 100 or 1000 times amounting to 100,000 rings.
In April 2004, 52 former senior British Diplomats wrote that “it is a disgrace that the coalition forces themselves appear to have no estimate of the Iraqi deaths due to the invasion and occupation. In contrast, lives lost by US and coalition soldiers are carefully recorded and mourned”
On 25th October Milan Rai and Maya Evans of Justice Not Vengeance were arrested for holding a similar ceremony outside Downing Street. The two womens’ action that took place outside Parliament on 25th November was undertaken in solidarity with Milan, Maya and all the other protesters arrested under the new legislation preventing demonstrations within 1 km of Parliament.

For Whom They Toll

Kathy Kelly — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 02:38:21 -0600

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October 26, 2005

Today, in cities and towns throughout the U.S. and beyond, activists will gather to grieve and protest the carnage wrought by the unlawful and immoral war in Iraq. Thousands will gather to commemorate the 2,000 lives of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq and call upon U.S. people to stop funding the war. Others will focus chiefly upon the well over 100,000 Iraqi lives lost, and, in a campaign launched some months ago, will ring bells 100,000 times –1,000 chimes each in 100 different locations - as names of Iraqi civilians killed since the start of Shock and Awe are read aloud.

Body

October 26, 2005

October 25th marked the 2,000th American service-member death in the Iraq war: October 29th will mark one year since The British Lancet, perhaps the world’s foremost medical journal, estimated from careful research that tens of thousands of Iraqi people had died due to this same horrific war. The demonstrations will overlap, but for once we can claim that separate demonstrations, held, simultaneously, can actually raise awareness and hopefully affect change. These protests are after all the same: One life, two thousand lives, one hundred thousand lives, or many, many more - are all too much to pay for the imperial ambitions of the few.

Let me tell you about something I just learned. Eager to help promote the “100,000 Rings” campaign, I recently accepted an invitation - from a literature class at a Baltimore community college - to bring some experiences of injustice and war to the students’ literary pursuit – in this case, the ancient Greek drama, Antigone. It was a surprisingly good fit. Sophocles’ heroine dies utterly forsaken and alone in punishment for standing against Creon, her king, who decrees that her slain brother, declared an enemy of state, will rot, unburied, above ground. Antigone defies the king and adheres to her conscience. In front of witnesses, she pours dirt upon her brother’s corpse, and when the King’s guards undo her work, she returns openly to the scene of her “crime’ to repeat her act once again.

After the King sentences her to be buried alive, the blind seer, Tiresias, denounces the unjust King, saying: “Thou hast thrust children of the sunlight to the shades, …but keepest in this world … a corpse unburied, unhonoured, all unhallowed,” entombing the living and refusing to honor the dead. When Creon relents, of course it is too late. Tiresias had warned him of his madness and as the Greeks and others echoing have said: “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.”

The lesson for our time is painful.

All over the world, people can see that the U.S. went to war against Iraq because the ruling elites in this country knew Iraq couldn’t fight back. Enough madness. We are mired in a war that could last ten years or more, one that is already intensifying other, perhaps even more dangerous conflicts. Now, whatever security we might establish, as U.S. people or as people of the world, rests in seeking fair trade relations and raising vigorous opposition to the warmongers who run this country. Any other behavior would be madness.

We must not show Creon’s callous disregard to those slain by war. A few months ago, our friend Scott Blackburn went to downtown Chicago, alone, and rang a bell, once a minute, in memory of each U.S. soldier who had been killed in Iraq. The dreadful total then was still “only” 1594, and it kept him there for over 24 hours, ringing his bell once a minute. People who stopped to talk with him learned that honoring the other dead of this war would take months. A local reporter came by, and although Scott’s story of our troops made the paper, nothing he had told the reporter about the Iraqi casualties was considered news. For Scott, the 100,000 rings project was immediately apparent as a burning obligation.

Like all war, this rotten folly creates victims on all sides. What it has done to our safety in this most precarious of times, by destroying most of what was left of our good faith with the world, by further fracturing international solidarity and understandings of rights and law, by escalating conflicts of both grave terror and war-making, has prevented U.S. people from seeing the greatest terrors we face, the disasters generated by our own degradation of the world’s resources and our planetary environment. And let us each consider also the small but real tragedy of not being able to look at ourselves in the mirror each day without wondering how much longer we’ll continue to make war against people for the sake of gluttonously controlling their precious and irreplaceable energy resources.

Which is to say: if you see people gathered in your neighborhood this week, in anger or grief or guilt, with their bells or their candles, perhaps it’s best not to ask if it’s an observance for 2,000 Americans or for the well-over 100,000 Iraqi tragedies our government has not yet even seen fit to count. A life is a life, and the full tragedies of this cruel war are yet to be told. Advice I read in sixth grade remains true today: “send not to know for whom the bell tolls.”

It tolls for thee.

Kathy Kelly () co-coordinates Voices for Creative Nonviolence (www.vcnv.org), a Chicago-based campaign to challenge U.S. military and economic warfare against Iraq. She’s grateful to her friend and co-worker Sean Reynolds for elements contributed to this article. For more information on the 100,000 Rings campaign, visit www.iraqmortality.org.

VCNV Author

Kathy Kelly

Arrested

voices — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 00:24:25 -0600

Excerpt

December 17, 2005

by Milan Rai Justice Not Vengeance

Yesterday morning we rang out the names of the dead on the barriers in front of Downing Street.

The police around us, the Prime Minister’s office in front of us, a friend of ours being harassed and searched across the road for filming us, under the threat of arrest, we read out the names of Iraqi civilians and of British soldiers.

Somehow, reading each name felt more painful than it had in Brighton or in Northwood. Somehow, the ceremony of remembrance had become more moving in these strange circumstances.

Body

December 17, 2005

by Milan Rai
Justice Not Vengeance

Yesterday morning we rang out the names of the dead on the barriers in front of Downing Street.

Somehow, reading each name felt more painful than it had in Brighton or in Northwood. Somehow, the ceremony of remembrance had become more moving in these strange circumstances.

There is some deep human need not to be forgotten. We want to be remembered by those who come after us; we want to be remembered and respected.

Those who have died in this war, Iraq and Western, will be forgotten, and their memory not respected, if the leaders of this war have their way.

Reading the names of the dead, marking their passing with each ring of a bell, has been a meditation on the reason why we campaign about Iraq.

It has been a way of insisting that these people matter, that they have not blown away in the wind, that they deserve and will receive respect from those of us who come after.

These hours spent remembering, by the side of a busy city road, outside a military base, opposite the centre of government, have been immensely energising, much to my surprise.

Beforehand, despite being an enthusiastic supporter of the project in principle, I had quailed at the monotony of hours of reading and bell-ringing in practice.

I was a doubter.

As it turned out, this has been one of the finest experiences of my activist career, and one that I would not trade for anything.

Being arrested for organising the ceremony in London was the culmination and the resolution of a powerful experience.

I’d rung up the Metropolitan Police Events Office, which handles demonstrations outside Downing Street, to book a slot for our bell-ringing ceremony. They said there was no problem about the event, and no clash with anything else, but there was a new form to fill in.

I knew there was new legislation about demonstrations in the vicinity of Parliament, but it hadn’t struck me as a particularly big issue for our bell-ringing.

The important thing was to ring the bell 1,000 times outside Downing Street, and to read the names of the dead.

After the form was sent to me, however, and I was faced with the physical reality of cooperating with this new law. I consulted others more involved, and found no strong guidance.

One of the groups leading the campaign against the new laws had itself complied with the legislation in order to hold a demonstration in the same spot.

Ringing up the Events Office to my mind was like booking a slot, not asking for permission. It was better to avoid a situation where there was another demonstration happening there at the same time.

Filling in the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act form, however, was cooperation with repression. It was asking for permission to mourn the dead.

Ringing the bell was important. Reading the names was also important. But not at the cost of cooperating with the erosion of freedom in this country.

In the end, I rang the Events Office and explained that we would be going ahead with the event but that I would not be submitting the form. I was told that I would be arrested and faced up to 51 weeks in prison if convicted.

Maya, as a participant in the demonstration, faced a maximum penalty of £1000 in fines.

After we were arrested, the police revealed that they’d been sure we wouldn’t turn up.

Maya has been charged with participation in an unauthorised demonstration, and has her first hearing on Tuesday. She has a conference with her lawyer, who is defending other ‘participants’ from other events on Monday.

I have yet to discover whether or not I am to be charged with being an organiser of an unauthorised demonstration. This is the first time someone has been arrested on this charge, and the procedure didn’t seem to be entirely clear to the police. It has been referred to the Crown Prosecution Service for a decision by 10 November.

Simultaneously, I’ve been informed that my £2000 compensation/fine from last year, protesting against the impending attack on Fallujah, is to come to my local court on 19 November.

I’ve refused to pay this sum, because I think that marking the Foreign Office with anti-war messages was a legally and morally justifiable response to the threatened assault on Fallujah.

I understand that the maximum penalty for non-payment is a 45 day sentence, or three weeks with time off for good behaviour.

(Meanwhile, in the US Kathy Kelly of Voices for Creative Non-Violence is being pursued for non-payment of a sum almost half the size, for which the maximum penalty is six months in prison. British law vs US law.)

The police yesterday were gentle, restrained and as helpful as they could be under the circumstances. I heard one say that this wasn’t the best piece of legislation ever passed.

This isn’t the best anniversary that’s ever been held either.

Yesterday morning we rang out the names of the dead.

Chicago Press Release -- 100,000 Rings: In Remembrance of the Iraqi Dead

voices — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 00:19:41 -0600

Excerpt

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE October 26, 2005

Contacts: Kathy Kelly or Joel Gulledge
773-878-3815 or 773-619-2418 (cell)

CHICAGO - On Thursday and Friday, October 27 and 28, 2005, at Dearborn and Adams, from 11:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m., Chicago activists will join with groups across the U.S. and the UK to toll bells in remembrance of the more than 100,000 Iraqis who have died as a consequence of the U.S. led invasion and occupation of Iraq. In 100 locations listed at www.iraqmortality.org, participants in the “100,000 Rings” campaign will ring a bell once a minute, for 1,000 minutes, to express grief and condolence for every life lost as a result of the U.S. bombing, invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Body

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE October 26, 2005

Contacts: Kathy Kelly or Joel Gulledge
773-878-3815 or 773-619-2418 (cell)

“We reject the fantasies President Bush and Prime Minister Blair are constructing, claiming to increase security through military adventurism”, said Kathy Kelly, co-founder of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. “When silence surrounds the suffering and death of the Iraqi people, caught on a battlefield without borders in the crossfire of a war they didn’t start or invite, poet John Donne’s words come to mind: ‘Do not ask for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee.’ True security lies in forming friendly and fair relationships with other people and in expressing our sorrow over suffering caused by U.S. economic and military warfare. We likewise mourn the deaths of U.S. people killed in Iraq.”

“As people opposed to the US/UK war and occupation of Iraq, we act to end the silence about the suffering and death in Iraq and to publicly unlock the grief that it has caused in our communities,” says Scott Blackburn, co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. “To mark the anniversary of the release of the Lancet Study on 29 October 2004, we will gather in public places, over a four day span, for a simple and solemn ‘Bell Ringing’ ceremony. We will ring a bell every minute, 1,000 times, each solitary ring symbolizing the death of an Iraqi person as a result of the war and occupation. One hundred communities ringing a bell 1,000 times would equal 100,000 rings”.

One year ago on October 29, 2004 the British medical journal “The Lancet” published an epidemiological study estimating that upwards of 100,000 Iraqis died as a consequence of the U.S. occupation of Iraq.

Voices for Creative Nonviolence seeks to build and strengthen active nonviolent resistance to the U.S. war against Iraq’s people; to foster international peace teams; and to challenge the United States’ “Global War on Terror”, which is a war OF terror far more than it is a “war ON terror”. Several members have lived in Iraq before, during, and after the U.S. invasion in 2003.

Iraq Mortality

voices — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 23:40:47 -0600

Excerpt

October 2005

In an exclusive for IraqMortality.org, Milan Rai, Author of War Plan Iraq, Regime Unchanged, and Chomsky’s Politics gives indepth analysis of the three major mortality studies conducted in Iraq; Iraq Body Count, The Lancet, and The UNDP Report. This document is presented to help activists more fully understand the differences and similarities between these studies.

For five days, begining on October 24th, almost 100 grassroots groups and individual activists in the US, UK, and Switzerland will toll a bell in their communities for Iraqis who have lost their lives in this war and for the families and loved ones they have left behind. This tolling of bells will also usher in the one year anniversary of the publishing of The Lancet Study on October 29th which estimates 100,000 Iraqi deaths due to the war and occupation.

Read the Iraq Mortality document

Body

October 2005

Read the Iraq Mortality document

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Bell Tolls Mourn for 100,000+ Iraqi Dead

voices — Sat, 16 Dec 2006 23:27:18 -0600

Excerpt

Voices for Creative Nonviolence and Justice Not Vengeance call for bell ringing ceremonies to grieve and protest the deaths of Iraqis in the US/UK war and occupation.

October 24th – 28th

Body

Voices for Creative Nonviolence and Justice Not Vengeance call for bell ringing ceremonies to grieve and protest the deaths of Iraqis in the US/UK war and occupation.

October 24th – 28th

As people opposed to the US/UK war and occupation of Iraq, we act to end the silence about the suffering and death in Iraq and to publicly unlock the grief that it has caused in our communities. On October 24th – 28th, to mark the anniversary of the release of the Lancet Study on 29 October 2004, each sponsoring group will act out our grief by gathering in a public place for a simple and solemn “Bell Ringing” ceremony. We will ring a bell—one ring per minute—1,000 times, each ring symbolizing the death of an Iraqi person as a result of the war and occupation.

We call upon other communities to organize similar bell ringing ceremonies on these days. One hundred communities ringing a bell 1,000 times would equal 100,000 rings, the estimate of the Lancet study.

For complete information about this project visit IraqMortality.org

IRAQ MORTALITY WEBSITE
CALL FROM VOICES FOR CREATIVE NONVIOLENCE AND JUSTICE NOT VENGEANCE
PRACTICAL GUIDE FOR THE 100,000 RINGS PROJECT
SIGN UP FORM
POSTCARD
Also on the wesite, ARTICLES AND ANALYSIS pertaining to the Iraq mortality studies that have been published.