Parliament should hold specific debate next week to adopt unanimous all-party motion to call for an immediate halt to the US-led “war of terror” in Afghanistan and to urge similar calls by other  Parliaments in world


Media Statement
by Lim Kit Siang
 

(Petaling Jaya, Saturday): The United States admission that its warplanes have on late Thursday and early Friday  mistakenly bombed Red Cross warehouses and a nearby residential area in Kabul for the second time in a month is the latest in a  growing  catalogue of US bombing blunders in Afghanistan and  illustrates how the US “war against terrorism” by  Osama bin Laden and the al-Qaeda network has degenerated into   a “war of terror” for the innocent Afghan civilians.

The Talibans have claimed  over 1,000 innocent Afghan  civilians killed in the three weeks of  US bombing raids and although this had not been verified and its veracity  challenged by the Americans, the incontrovertible fact is the mounting toll of  innocent civilian casualties.

The Afhan refugees in their thousands are fleeing not the Talibans but the bombs and missiles from the US-led airstrikes.

Those who perpetrated the September 11 terrorist mass murders have committed heinous crimes against humanity and must be brought to justice, but the United Nations is not setting up any tribunal to try those responsible, whether Osama bin Laden or his al Qaeda network.

While the over 5,500  September 11 victims comprising 81 nationalities is an awesome figure, the mounting toll of Afghan civilian casualties from the sustained US bombings and the stark prospect of  tens or  hundreds of thousands of Afghans dying from  starvation with the onset of winter must force the question to the fore of international consciousness - whether a retaliation causing 5,500, 12,000 or more dead Afghans who have nothing to do with Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda or the Talibans could be morally justifiable?

The Malaysian Parliament should hold a specific debate next week to adopt an unanimous all-party motion to call for an immediate halt to the US-led “war of terror” in Afghanistan and to urge similar calls by other Parliaments in the world, to generate a  sense of common humanity and international pressure to demand  that in seeking justice for the September 11 terror attacks, new injustices and equally heinous terror should not be perpetrated on the innocent Afghan civilians.

(27/10/2001)



*Lim Kit Siang - DAP National Chairman