2005-05-10

Truth Warrior

Thanks to Ann for passing this on. Truth Warrior (Osam Altaee) is an Iraqi refugee living in Lebanon. He has a fascinating, and horrifying, story to tell; he is also severely critical of the UNHCR.

From his website:
I'm an Iraqi. I was born in the south of Iraq in a small town called ‘Al Khodor’ which is nearly 250 kilometers south of Baghdad in the Almothana province. When I was ten years old, I met an old Kurdish woman from Kurdistan, where people were fighting against the Iraqi regime for freedom and democracy. This old woman told me the stories of how our army murdered all the men gender of her family and destroyed her village. This fact built in my heart a blind haters for the army. And when I was thirteen years old, my father did not join the party al-ba'ath. To punish him, someone of the aforementioned party submitted a false report against him in which, he accused my father of dealing into politics against the Iraqi regime, which was a forbidden issue. Subsequently, my father has been jailed for four years in Abu Ghraib prison.
These were the two main reasons that drove me to hate the Iraqi regime and to believe so deeply in long lasting peace and endeavor to handle problems in a good manner. I became against the policies of Saddam, which aim to use the force and arms against the Kurdish and Iran; I had lot of troubles. They pursued me to the college and hindered me from pursuing my studies. Then I was obliged to join the army during the war between Iraq and Iran. Since the war was originally against my believes, I decided to react. I did in no way want to join the army. I choose to physically harm my body. Desperately, I have decided to cut my left foot and arrange it to look like as I had an accident. I used two thinks to accomplish the mission: A fuse of a hand grenade and a motorbike. At night I attached the fuse to my foot when riding the motorbike and enlightened the fuse, when it exploded, I capsized the motor and opened the tank of petrol to put some on my foot and fire started on it and the motor. I was sure my plan looks like an accident because the fire will hide the traces of the explosive powder. I was then taken to a hospital; the doctor discovered the traces of the explosion and did a report indicating that what happened was not an accident but a premeditated act, which will cost me a military trial. I had deserted the army after one year when I finished my treatment.

After years of living in fear and terror (the details in my ebook THE TRUTH WARRIOR), I found I could not continue to live under the tyrannical rule of Saddam and fled to Lebanon seeking refugee status. I thought I would find a community of people there that provided protection and support for people in need. What I found, instead, was the UNHCR ...

From an e-mail:
I am SAM, an Iraqi refugee living in Lebanon at the moment; I have spent the last 10 years of my life as a refugee registered with the UNHCR in Beirut. The last 4 years, I have spent as an activist for peace and human rights (especially refugees and asylum seekers) on the Internet; I'm also books author and ebooks publisher. I have launched many campaigns to improve our situation as refugees in Lebanon and hopefully bring more understanding to our problems worldwide. I helped make many changes and improvements at the UNHCR office in Beirut; I used the Internet as the field for my activities (you can read more about that in my free ebook 'MY CAMPAIGNS'). All my ebooks could be download from my websites, all my ebooks are free.

This is my newest campaign, it's about the illegal and humiliating actions of the UNHCR, who using photos of refugees as banners and human-buttons to collect money. ...


Once again, that website:
Truth Warrior.

Truth Warrior is also linked at The Iraqi Holocaust.