London, Sept 2, IRNA — A book of condolences has been opened in Ireland for the victims of military actions and foreign policies in Iraq, Afghanistan and Palestine ahead of former British prime minister Tony Blair’s visit to Dublin this weekend.
The commiserations are being gathered as part of the preparations for a major demonstration against the Irish launch of Blair’s memoirs on Saturday.
The protest, organised by the Irish Anti-War Movement (IAWM), is due to assemble at Dublin’s Garden of Remembrance, before marching to Eason’s bookshop where Blair is due to hold the book-signing event.
‘Tony Blair is a war criminal, if the term has any meaning at all. He played a key role in fabricating the lies and bogus justifications for an illegal and murderous war in Iraq and the equally immoral war in Afghanistan. He has the blood of hundreds of thousands on his hands,” said IAWM chair Richard Boyd Barrett.
“Blair has also done absolutely nothing to restrain or sanction Israel for its deliberate murder of thousands of Palestinians and systematic denial of their most elementary human and civil rights,” Boyd Barrett said.
“As Prime Minister and now as EU envoy, Blair has given moral support to Israel in its criminal siege of Gaza by refusing to recognise the democratically elected representatives of the Palestinian people. The refusal by Britain and other major western powers gave the Israel the green light to besiege and assault Gaza, with terrible human consequences,” he said.
Other groups such as the Peace & Neutrality Alliance and Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign have already pledged their support for the demonstration and the book of condolences and to also highlight the continued complicity of the Irish government with the wars.
Britain’s largest peace network group, Stop the War Coalition has already announced that it will lead protests when Blair holds a book-signing at Waterstone’s in central London to formally launch his autobiography on September 8.
Among others, novelists, journalists, artists and former soldiers have also written to Waterstone’s urging the bookshop to cancel the signing ceremony, saying the event will be “deeply offensive to most people in Britain.”
In his book, Blair still offers no apology for the Iraq war. Critics have suggested that the memoirs aim to push “his self-serving justification” for the series of wars and that the donations of proceeds for injured soldiers are to “whitewash the blood on his hands.”