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20,000 march for peace
LEVON SEVUNTS -
lsevunts@thegazette.southam.ca Thousands of Montrealers from all walks of life braved the cold yesterday to protest against what they saw as an impending U.S. invasion of Iraq. The Montreal protest was part of a co-ordinated worldwide anti-war campaign that saw demonstrations take place from Tokyo to Washington, D.C., yesterday. The Montreal turnout exceeded all expectations as an estimated 20,000 people marched through downtown, according to organizers. It was the largest peace demonstration in the city since the Vietnam War, they said. "Thousands of people have come out today because they realize that the stakes are too high to be left to politicians only," said Amir Khadir, one of the protest organizers. Khadir, a Montreal doctor who returned from a mission in Iraq for Médecins du monde last month, called on Ottawa to oppose a unilateral U.S. attack on Iraq: "It's for our own sake, because if they can do this to Iraq, what's going to prevent them from doing the same to us?" The protest march, which was organized by the Collectif échec à la guerre, an umbrella group of 70 organizations, including Quebec's largest unions and several human-rights groups, started at the corner of Guy St. and de Maisonneuve Blvd. It slowly moved west on Ste. Catherine St., then south past the U.S. consulate on St. Alexandre St. It ended at the intersection of St. Urbain St. and René Lévesque Blvd. Raffi Niziblian, who had come out with his 6-month-old daughter, said the U.S. desire to invade Iraq is driven by economic concerns, not by concerns over Baghdad's alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. Niziblian said he feared the war would have unpredictable consequences not only in the Middle East but also in North America. "The war won't solve anything. It will change things, but it won't solve them." Niziblian said he feared U.S. actions in Iraq would create a fertile ground for terrorism. Khadir said he calculated that during his four-week stay in Iraq about 4,200 Iraqi children under age 5 died as a direct result of the UN sanctions. "It's one Twin Tower disaster every month, for 12 years now," Khadir said. Many protesters accused the successive U.S. administrations of hypocrisy when it comes to disarmament. "Americans somehow always forget that to this day they are the only ones who have used nuclear weapons," said a protester who didn't want his name used. "For us in the Middle East, it's no consolation that the U.S. is a democracy or that Israel is a democracy, because if they drop a bomb on us, we are going to die - democracy or no democracy." As far as he is concerned, the United States is now the biggest rogue state, the protester said. "They are the biggest threat to world peace."
© Copyright 2003 Montreal Gazette Source: http://www.canada.com/montreal/story.asp?id=E82CB954-B92D-4B53-ACF4-3E42610F60B7 |
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