First report on the Anti-imperialist Camp in Assisi 2003
While the Italian right wing press had been campaigning day by day against the Anti-imperialist Camp taking place in Assisi defaming it to be a meeting of terrorists, the left liberal media took the decision to keep silent on the event. Both approaches show that the unity of the anti-imperialist forces from around the world constitute a considerably threat to the imperialists and their world order led by the US.
The proceeding focused on the growing Iraqi resistance. The forces composing the Anti-imperialist Camp regard Iraq as their main battle ground against the imperialist world order. As Awni Al Kalemji, spokesman of the Iraqi Patriotic Coalition which is striving to build a “National Resistance and Liberation Front”, put it: “The struggle against the Anglo-American invaders and occupants does not only regard the Iraqi people. In order to inflict a defeat on the imperialist tyranny we need the political support and solidarity of the democratic and anti-imperialist movement of the world. If we are able to beat the military machine of the US it will mark the start of the liberation struggle of all oppressed people of the world to bring down the imperialist system all together.” Jehad Hussein, an Palestinian Fedayin who fought in Baghdad against the US mercenaries and had been interned by in a US prisons for about 50 days under violation of international law, added: “The Arab volunteers in Iraq come from the most divers backgrounds. Some are Islamic, some nationalist, some communists like myself. But we all converge in liberating the Arab-Islamic homeland from the imperialist and Zionist joke. The current resistance movement is a popular one and enjoys the support of the vast majority of the Iraqi people regardless of their religious allegiance as well as it can count on the sympathy of the Arab popular masses as a whole.” Addressing the crowd and the delegates gathered in Assisi he could upon the world´s peoples to overcome the anti Islamic prejudices and to support and join the Iraqi popular resistance.
Pater Benjamin who had been organising the visit of Tarek Aziz to the pope right before the Anglo-American aggression and had been opposing the embargo all through the 80ies said in a forum in Assisi that considering the human misery the US and the UN had been inflicting on the Iraqi people nobody could be surprised about the strength the Iraqi resistance. Resistance is a legal right stipulated by international law. Finally Pater Benjamin endorsed the call for a demonstration “for the Iraqi people who resists” scheduled for December 6 in Rome.
In the works of the Anti-imperialist Camp the situation on the Indian sub-continent, in the Middle East and especially in Palestine, the destruction of elementary democratic rights in the course of the US terror war, the crusade against Islam and the, the black list of “terrorist organisations”, the defence of Slobodan Milosevic, the current struggles in Latin America and the attempts in Europe to form a broad Anti-American movement. To mention only some delegations form the Philippines, Nepal, India, Iraq, Palestine, Morocco, Turkey, Greece, Serbia, Hungary, Venezuela, Brazil and many other European countries were present.
