Al-Ghad

This is an English summary of the statement of the Iraqi Communist Party (CL) published in the previous post:

The statement is an urgent warning that the Occupying Forces are preparing, in the coming hours, a vast massacre of the Sadr-City people, having been defeated by the uprising of the people of Basra. The Basra uprising had ignited a series of uprisings by the Iraqi people in many cities, especially by the by the people of Sadr-City, the bastion of millions of the deprived masses. In solidarity with the people of Basra, the people of Sadr-City showered the Green Zone - the seat of the American Embassy and the Maliki puppet Government - with rockets and mortars. According to press reports, 700 projectiles were fired at the Green Zone during April, making an average of one rocket per hour.

This had made life uncomfortable if not impossible to the occupiers and their puppets, and showed the US giant to be powerless in facing a people determined to gain their freedom. The US had to appeal to Iran to find a way out of its predicament.

After gaining time through this humiliating deal the US turned its fury against the people of Sadr-City who continued their fire on the Green Zone making hiding in underground shelters a norm of life. Another Iraqi delegation was dispatched to Iran, under the pretext of confronting Iranian officials with evidence of smuggled Iranian weapons to Iraq. It includes of the same persons who negotiated the ceasefire of Basra. Their aim is to secure a cover for the imminent massacre.

The occupiers have decided to implement the Israeli style ghettos of imprisoning people in concrete walls. When this didn’t solve their problem, they came to the idea of mass slaughter of the whole of Sadr-City, using mass bombing, rockets and heavy artillery against a civil population.

The Statement said that Sadr Current has its main popular base in the harsh slums of Sadr-City, and is in some ways like phenomenon of Hezbollah in Lebanon which had its origins in the slums of Dhahia in Beirut. Both became the strong nuclei round which the poor and disposed rallied, together with those of varied patriotic inclinations. The two had developed into bastions of the mass movements.

The Statement called upon the Iraqi people to continue the struggle, and to the people of Sadr-City. It concluded that the Iraqi people are facing dire dangers which can not be faced successful in the absence of broad national unity. Victory in this great struggle is fully dependent on that unity.

(Since this was written, it does seem now that the massacre has already started. It was just announced that the only functioning hospital in Sadr-City was destroyed by heavy American bombing. 20 people were wounded and dozens of ambulances were destroyed.)