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Music Used as Protest Against Sanctions
Courtesy of Agence France-Presse
20 December 2002
BAGHDAD - A group of North American activists delivered a consignment of violin strings and other musical supplies to Iraq's National Philharmonic Orchestra yesterday, highlighting the impact of 12 years of UN sanctions.
The equipment had been donated by members of Canada's Vancouver Opera Orchestra to British-US group Voices in the Wilderness as part of its campaign against the sanctions imposed after Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait.
'Music cannot be besieged, it's been our universal language for 7,000 years,' said Ms Cynthia Banas, 73, a retired librarian from Vernon, New York.
The Iraqi orchestra's conductor, Mr Abdel Razzak al-Azzawi, welcomed the 'expression of sympathy from an orchestra at the other end of the world'.
Iraq charges that more than 1.7 million people have died as a result of the UN embargo.
Two heads of the UN humanitarian programme in Iraq have resigned to protest against the continuing sanctions. --AFP
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