Vegans, Iraq & Human Sheilds
Way back in February 2007, I attended a meeting of Birmingham Vegetarians and Vegans. The guest speaker was a lady called Helen Asea, who, in 2004 had travelled to Iraq to become a ‘human shield’.
Thinking that this could be an interesting talk, I recorded it on my second-hand (ebay bargain) minidisc recorder and have finally got round to editing it and uploading it for everyone to enjoy as a PodCast!
The talk has some funny moments, but mostly conveys the sheer horror and terror of being in Iraq after the USA invaded and the subsequent insurgency that took place.
What strikes me is the calmness that someone can talk about the bombs, death, loosing friends etc in an ‘everyday’ fashion – it’s just so hard to comprehend, but I guess you had to be there to have the slightest idea of what it was really like. I think most westerners just haven’t got a clue what’s going on or the conditions that people were living under. What emotional problems are these people going to have to deal with in the future?
Amongst all the death and devastation though she found love. She met and fell in love with an Iranian guy – Wegdy, whose day job was at a hotel (he spoke English), but the rest of time was spent helping local kids get off drugs (tranquilisers, glue etc) – not something I expected to hear about in Iraq.
The audio recording is just over 35 minutes long – Helen showed some video clips too, but the sound was very poor so I had to cut that section out.
There are some photo’s of Helen’s photos (sorry about the quality). The one of the kids with the US soldier is interesting – the soldier had written a message on the card which he made the kids hold – it reads “Lcpl Boudreaux killed my dad and he knocked up my sister”
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