good ethics down under

I have just received an update about the Iraqi interpreters that I blogged about previously.

Whilst the UK government has refused to help the Iraqi interpreters whose lives are in danger because they acted as translators for British troops in Iraq, the Australian government has offered resettlement packages in Australia to those who have worked with Australian forces in Iraq.

If you want to support the Iraqi interpreters betrayed by the British government, the petition is still open.

interpreters betrayed

I am absolutely disgusted by the betrayal of the Iraqi interpreters and other people who worked for the British in Iraq.

Safa, 28, one of the rejected interpreters who worked for the British for more than two years, received a letter from the Locally Employed Staff Assistance Office in Basra which said: “We have considered your case very carefully but we are sorry to inform you that, because your service with the British Forces was terminated for absence, you do not meet the minimum employment criteria for this scheme.”

Safa told The Times that he had never resigned but had been forced to stop working after receiving two bullets and a written death threat at his house in Basra in April. Married with one child, he said that he was advised by an army liaison officer and intelligence officials to stay at home until he felt safe.

A few months later the interpreter contacted the military to see if he could return only to be told that he was not needed but would be called if an opening arose.

Talk about faceless bureaucracy. Not to mention perfidious Albion, high-handed colonialism, and outrageous betrayal of good faith.

The government needs to help these people, and fast.

Lynne Featherstone MP has posted an entry on her blog today about how you
can help keep up the pressure on the government on this issue.

heroes

American army objectors to the Iraq War:

• Aidan Delgado
  
• Jeremy Hinzman
  
• Pablo Paredes
  
• Ehren Watada
  
• Camilo Mejía
  
• Katherine Jashinski
  
• Kevin Benderman
  
• Don Larsen
• Stephen Funk
• Darrell Anderson, Joshua Key, Ryan Johnson, Ivan Brobeck
  

UK military objectors to the Iraq War:

• Malcolm Kendall-Smith
• How to become a conscientious objector

Anyone who stands up to the might of the army and the government to say that they will not fight in an unjust and illegal war has my deepest respect. Some of these people joined the army because they thought it would be a good career, until they realised it involved killing civilians and blowing up their homes and destroying their culture.

The difficulty for a lot of these guys is that they don't actually object to war, just to the Iraq war, which makes it hard to register as a conscientious objector; though they should be allowed to present a defence under the Nuremberg Principles, the principle that soldiers should refuse to obey an illegal order.