CHICAGO—(ENEWSPF)—October 6, 2015. On Tuesday, October 6th at 3 p.m. in front of Stroger Hospital (Ogden & Damen in Chicago), Voices for Creative Nonviolence and Coalition of Peace Groups will hold an emergency protest regarding the airstrike on the Doctors Without Borders Afghanistan Hospital.

During the 2003 Shock and Awe bombing on Iraq, and afterwards, anti-war campaigners with Voices for Creative Nonviolence (VCNV) would encourage people around the country to go in front of hospitals with signs and banners saying, “To bomb this site would be a war crime!”

Now U.S./NATO forces have carried out an airstrike on a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan. Medical staff immediately phoned NATO headquarters to report the strike on its facility, and yet strikes continued on at 15 minute intervals for nearly an hour. At least 12 medical staff were killed and ten patients including three children. 

Catherine Buntin, of Chicago Area Peace Action: “Our humanity drives us to demand a rigorous and independent investigation and full accountability for this immoral and unconscionable military bombing.” 

Much media coverage has focused on whether the U.S. actually bombed the hospital. This fact is not controversial: Taliban forces do not have air power, and the Afghan Air Force fleet is subordinate to the U.S., so it is clear that the U.S. committed a war crime.

Voices activist Buddy Bell: “We want to affirm the Afghans’ right to medical care and safety, and we want the Afghanistan war to actually end. Only Afghans themselves can engineer their own society to fit their aspirations. If the U.S. has any role to play at all, it is only to provide reconstruction funds for Afghan-led projects that can actually build up civil institutions instead of destroying them.”

VCNV is mobilizing activists to gather in front of hospitals around the U.S. and beyond, under the message, “Dropping Bombs Here would be a War Crime!” and “The same is true in Afghanistan.”

Source: www.vcnv.org