Posted on 03/03/2003 5:53:51 AM PST by kattracks
London (CNSNews.com) - More than a quarter of the "human shields" who traveled to Baghdad along with a former U.S. Marine have decided to leave because of safety concerns, a spokesman for the Truth Justice Peace Human Shield Action campaign said Monday.
John Freeman, the group's U.K. spokesman, said that Iraqi authorities had told the shields to set up camp at power plants, oil refineries and water purification plants, while many volunteers preferred to be placed at schools and hospitals.
Around 70 shields out of approximately 200 to 250 in Baghdad have decided to leave, Freeman said.
"We've always had the position that each human shield must make up their own mind, according to their own philosophy and assessment of risk," he said.
Freeman said that around 50 people from various countries are planning to travel to Baghdad to replace the volunteers that dropped out.
Reports from Iraq said that the protesters were told to either move to sites selected by Iraqi authorities or leave the country. Freeman said he couldn't confirm the exact reasons behind the mass exodus but said the situation in the Iraqi capital was "very fluid."
"It's very difficult to get hold of information coming out of Baghdad, a lot of what we're hearing is coming from volunteers on their way out," he said. "We're very much in the dark."
A spokesman for the Truth Justice Peace Human Shield Action in Amman, Jordan, said Monday that he had also lost contact with the shields and declined to comment further until communication was re-established.
The human shields set off from London in late January led by Ken Nichols O'Keefe, a former serviceman who fought in the first Gulf War and who later called enlisting in the Marine Corps "the most ignorant act of my life."
O'Keefe said he wanted 10,000 volunteers to travel to Iraq, a number that he claimed would make military action impossible.
"The only way this will work is if we get enough bodies down there," he told CNSNews.com shortly before the convoy of buses and taxis left Britain. Most of the volunteers were Britons, other Europeans and Middle Easterners.
The group was beset by difficulties including mechanical failures, extreme weather and visa troubles along the 3,000-mile route. O'Keefe, who has renounced his U.S. citizenship and travels with a "citizen of the world" passport, was stopped at several border crossings.
Shortly after the volunteers arrived in Baghdad, the British Foreign Office advised all U.K. nationals to leave Iraq.
'Terrible dictator'
During the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam forcibly held Western hostages as human shields after invading Kuwait. U.S. officials have said that the use of human shields by Iraq would be considered a war crime.
On Friday, the head of Sweden's largest peace organization urged the shields to leave Iraq.
The Associated Press reported that Maria Ermanno, chairwoman of the Swedish Peace and Arbitration Society, criticized the volunteers for accepting financial support from Saddam Hussein.
"To go down to Iraq and live and act there on the regime's expense, then you're supporting a terrible dictator. I think that method is entirely wrong," Ermanno said.
See previous story:
Ex-US Marine Organizes 'Human Shields' In Iraq (24 Jan. 2003)
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No one is playing games here, if you stay you may die.
In other words, you can take it one of two ways....either they have an incredible lack of dedication, or the bombs are going to start to fall.
No one really expected them to risk their lives, did they? After all, liberalism is about symbolism over substance......
This is one of the most surreal things I've ever read.
The strains of "Kumbaya" go so much better at schools and hospitals, though...
Years later talking to an old school chum this teachers name came up, turned out today he was an ardent anti communist.
What happend I asked oh he went to China.
From what I have read a lot of those coming home werew horrified by what they saw and heard.
The way I see it a good object lesson, sometimes you do need to see to believe.
Tony
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