One of the saddest things a person will ever see is a cemetery full of baby graves, according to Springwood’s Donna Mulhearn.
The 44-year-old humanitarian worker has just returned from her fifth trip to Iraq where the baby section in Fallujah cemetery is only getting larger.
“This is a toxic legacy and it is a legacy that will not go away. . . There is a dramatic increase in stillborn babies, miscarriages and babies born with severe deformities,” she said of the city west of Baghdad.
Ms Mulhearn believes the high rate of infant mortality and birth defects is due to contamination from toxic and depleted uranium weapons used in both Iraq wars, a legacy that continues to have a devastating impact on Iraqi women today.
“At the moment the medical advice to the women of Fallujah of child-bearing age is just to stop — don’t fall pregnant — because it’s unlikely you will give birth to a healthy child,” said Ms Mulhearn.
“The women protest this because they want to be mothers. The doctors say to wait until there’s a solution but the most heartbreaking thing about that comment is there isn’t a solution. If this is uranium [causing the deaths and deformities], their DNA has been altered and it is a long-term death sentence on this community.”
Ms Mulhearn spent weeks in Fallujah Hospital during her last visit, “watching babies dying from wounds of a war they never saw”. She completed her Masters thesis on Fallujah which she said risks becoming a victim of urbicide — “the killing of a city”.
“It’s long-term damage that is being done, long after the bombs and guns [from the last Iraq war] have been packed up and gone.”
Ms Mulhearn will share her insights about Iraq at Springwood Sports Club on Monday, June 3 when she will be the guest speaker of the Lower Blue Mountains Amnesty International Action Group.
She admits her message is often a difficult one to receive.
“One thing I find when I do talks is that people are in shock,” she said. “They say ‘why don’t we know anything about this?’. They feel angry and a little bit ripped off because they don’t hear about it and they feel like they have a right to know.”
Ms Mulhearn has been doing her best to keep the plight of Iraqis in the public eye since her first visit to the war-torn country as a human shield in 2003.
“Each trip that I’ve gone things have been worse, and on the last trip I went things were significantly worse.”
Most Australians would be shocked to discover Iraq only has about three to four hours of electricity each day, she said.
“They are starting to make the comparison to their previous life and they are saying things like ‘well at least Saddam [Hussein] could keep the lights on’. That’s a pretty shocking thing to say, that they are comparing their lives under a dictator more favourably to their lives now,” she said.
But the situation isn’t entirely bleak.
Ms Mulhearn said Iraq’s university students “are smart and passionate about their country” and willing to take matters into their own hands to improve its future. Students have started planting hundreds of palm trees after becoming fed up with the lack of action from any other authority.
It is small actions like this that give the Springwood resident hope.
Donna Mulhearn’s talk will begin at 7.15pm. For more details call Marie McInnes on 4751-2076 or email marie.mcinnes@sydney.edu.au
