Talks and tanks - Delivering Raed's Iraqi Road Map
AUDIO OF RAED'S VOICE:
The day after the 20,000 plus Hikoi took over Wellington streets a very much smaller, but still significant protest
took place in Thorndon.
Constantly photographed by security guards, and under the eyes of at least eight policemen ,seven members of Peace
Action Wellington stood for an hour outside the American Embassy. The activists held up large coloured photos of recent
US atrocities in Iraq, while inside, US Ambassador Charles Swindells hosted a public videoconference to discuss the war
on Iraq with author Michael O’Hanlon.
A small trickle of diplomats, journalists and grim looking ladies and gentlemen in suits presented themselves at the
Embassy's locked gate to enter the function.
Four embassy security and 2 policemen checked the photo ID and credentials of every visitor before they were admitted
through the eight foot high spike topped steel fence. One woman's papers were not sufficiently in order and she was
turned away. Another member of the public previously denied a seat at the public videoconference was peace activist
Valerie Morse.
US Embassy staff member William J. Millman claimed Morse had " clearly demonstrated antipathy toward freedom of speech
and the decencies of rational debate". These comments are in reference to a speech to be delivered by US Ambassador
Charles Swindells at VUW last year which was shouted down by a number of concerned citizens. Welcomed in after
obediently showing their photos, turning off their cell phones and refusing antiwar leaflets were National's Lockwood
Smith and wannabe ACT leader Ken Shirley.
Peace activists outside the embassy gate offered guest and passers by leaflets demanding "US out of Iraq now" "New
Zealand government - end all support for the destructive path that Howard, Blair and Bush have chose."
Also distributed was the "Iraqi Roadmap for Peace" written by Raed Jarrar, an Iraqi based in Amman, Jordan. The plan
calls an apology and compensation for the victims of the war as a starting point. Raed’s plan can be found at http://raedinthemiddle.blogspot.com/
As the protesters protested and the guards guarded, construction workers toiled in the wind on the huge new
fortifications presently going up all around the embassy. Veteran activist and retired builder Mike Scott caused the
police a nervous moment went he went and had a yarn to one of the workers about the job. The worker told Mike that the
giant earth filled concrete blocks being laboriously embedded around the perimeter of the site were "an anti tank
design" Somewhere inside the horrid edifice, a boffin is probably struggling to come up with an effective "anti people's
anger design", which will be more needed by the embassy and much harder to create.
Don
AUDIO OF RAED'S VOICE: