NEWS STORY: More than 50 Roman Catholic bishops urge end to Iraq sanctions

c. 1998 Religion News Service WASHINGTON _ A group of 54 Roman Catholic bishops, including two dozen heads of dioceses, called Tuesday (Jan. 20) on the Clinton administration to take steps to end the United Nations-imposed sanctions against Iraq. And three of the bishops _ Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit, Auxiliary Bishop Peter Rosazza […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ A group of 54 Roman Catholic bishops, including two dozen heads of dioceses, called Tuesday (Jan. 20) on the Clinton administration to take steps to end the United Nations-imposed sanctions against Iraq.

And three of the bishops _ Auxiliary Bishop Thomas Gumbleton of Detroit, Auxiliary Bishop Peter Rosazza of Hartford, Conn., and retired Bishop Albert Ottenweller, former bishop of Steubenville, Ohio _ said they were embarking on a fast to show solidarity with the Iraqi people and to protest U.S. policy toward the Middle East country.”Leaders of the church in Iraq tell us that sanctions must end,”the 54 bishops said in a letter to be delivered to the White House.


At a Washington news conference, Gumbleton called the seven years of economic sanctions leveled against Iraq a”weapon of mass destruction”that violates the moral criteria for just war.

Gumbleton cited statistics from U.N. relief organizations showing that between 1990 and 1995, 567,000 Iraqi children died as a result of the sanctions and some 27.5 percent of Iraqi children are at risk of acute malnutrition.”Sanctions have taken the lives of well over 1 million persons, 60 percent of whom are children under 5 years of age,”the letter to Clinton said.”The 1991 bombing campaign (during the war in the Persian Gulf) destroyed electric, water and sewage plants as well as agricultural, food and medical production facilities.”All of these structures continue to be inoperative, or function at sub-minimal levels, because the sanctions have made it impossible to buy spare parts for their repair.” The bishops’ call comes as the U.N.-U.S. policy toward Iraq enters another critical phase. On Saturday (Jan. 17), Iraqi President Saddam Hussein threatened to throw out U.N. inspectors searching for signs of Iraqi capability to build weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological weapons.

On Monday, Richard Butler, the head of the U.N. inspection effort, arrived in Baghdad for talks with Iraqi government officials. As he arrived, the government held a funeral for 70 children it said had died as a result of the sanctions.

Gumbleton, noting that Pope John Paul II has also condemned the sanctions, said they were immoral because they violated a number of guidelines drawn from classic just-war theology, including the requirement that sanctions should”avoid grave and irreversible harm to the civilian population”and must”make provisions for the fundamental human needs of the civilian population.”Any harm caused by sanctions”should be proportionate to the good likely to be achieved,”according to the theory.”Mr. President, whatever the intent of these sanctions, we are compelled by this assessment to judge them to be a violation of moral teaching, specifically as articulated within the Catholic tradition.”In fact, the sanctions are not only in violation of the teaching of the Catholic Church, but they violate the human rights of the Iraqi people, because they deprive innocent people from food and medicine, basic elements of normal life,”the letter said.

MJP END ANDERSON

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