The leaders of the United States and Britain were today branded "fascist war criminals" at a conference in Malaysia that featured gruesome exhibits of their alleged crimes.
Former Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohamad, who hosted the conference in Kuala Lumpur, won a standing ovation after opening the event with a call for George W. Bush and Tony Blair to be tried by an unofficial tribunal for war crimes in Iraq.
|
Malaysia's former prime minister, Mahathir Mohamad, delivers his address against the backdrop of the image "Man in the Hood" |
"We shouldn't hang Blair if the tribunal finds him guilty," said Mr Mahathir, referring to the hanging last month of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
Mr Mahathir was particularly critical of the British prime minister in an hour-long speech illustrated by pictures of wounded children, deformed babies and tortured men.
"He should always carry the label war criminal, killer of children and liar," said Mr Mahathir, a controversial figure whose government was accused of human rights abuses.
He has been leading a campaign to highlight what he calls the human-rights abuses and hypocrisy of US-led forces in the Middle East.
The campaign reached new heights of graphic intensity with an exhibit of alleged war crimes by US forces and their allies over the decades, from Hiroshima to Iraq.
As Mr Mahathir spoke in the main conference room, tape-recorded screams of tortured men and orphaned babies echoed around the War Crimes Exhibition, staged on the fringe of the conference.
Visitors walking through a mock spray of white phosphorus, a chemical agent that burns flesh, before entering a torture chamber labelled "Torture methods used here were used on prisoners of Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib".
The exhibit also took visitors through the Vietnam War, including the My Lai massacre of civilians by US troops, then along a trail of mock blood through a scene representing the civilian casualties of Israel's offensive in Lebanon last year.
Speakers at the conference include former US legislator Cynthia McKinney, a Democrat who has branded the US-led war in Iraq as illegal, and former UN assistant secretary-general Hans von Sponeck.