Call For Nonviolent Civil Resistance In Iraq

Global Call For Nonviolent Civil Resistance To End The U.S.-Led Military Occupation Of Iraq

This afternoon aproximately 150 people participated in a 3-hour demonstration in front of the U.S. embassy in Managua, Nicaragua, in anticipation of the fourth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq (March 20).

The demonstrators denounced the invasion as criminal, immoral, and "based on lies about weapons of mass destruction and about ties between Al Qaeda and Iraq." They called for an immediate end to the military occupation of Iraq and the closing of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo.

Convoked by the Christian Base Communities of Managua and the Solidarity Group of Arenal, demonstrators carried large placards with paintings of torture scenes from Guantanamo -- drawn according to the graphic descriptions of ex-prisoners. In a vivid street-theater presentation, two young men dressed in the orange prison suits of Guantanamo played the role of prisoners while two others in U.S. military garb represented their torturers.

The group from Arenal presented a lively and beautiful folk dance in an almost defiant display of Nicaraguan culture in the face of the U.S. embassy. Four communities presented stations of the Way of the Cross, relating the suffering of Jesus to the pain and injustice experienced by the poor and oppressed today, especially the victims of U.S. imperial aggression.

Today's activity was one of four "Global Call" actions in Latin America, the others being in Costa Rica, Honduras, and Mexico. The Global Call For Nonviolent Civil Resistance To End The U.S.-Led Military Occupation Of Iraq is posted at www.globalcalliraq.blogspot.com For the text of the Call in Spanish, please see: www.ConvocatoriaMundialIrak.blogspot.com The Global Call is signed by various Nobel Peace laureates and noted Nicaraguans such as Father Ernesto Cardenal and Father Miguel D'Escoto, M.M.

The Managua demonstrators expressed solidarity with the massive actions planned in the U.S. in the next few days. See, for example, Declaration of Peace at www.declarationofpeace.org
and Voices for Creative Nonviolence here.

Fr. Joseph Mulligan, a Jesuit from Detroit who works with the Christian Base Communities in Managua, stated: "There is an urgent need for actions around the world. In the face of an international movement against the occupation, the Bush administration continues to stonewall and indeed to escalate U.S. forces in Iraq and to raise the level of military threat against Iran. Encouragingly, Great Britain and Denmark have announced cuts in the number of their forces in Iraq; the European Parliament has condemned the U.S. for abducting people in European countries and sending them to third countries for torture and interrogation; the Democrat-controlled U.S. Congress is expressing itself against the occupation; and resistance is growing within the U.S. military and among the people of the U.S. and other countries.

"We must help these waves to become a huge world-wide tide of resistance against the militarism of the Bush administration which threatens many countries -- for example, Iran, Venezuela, Cuba."

ENDS

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