Pre-emptive images of war

By Brian Wheeler February 2003
Images by Takashi Morizumi

A nine-year old Vietnamese girl, Kim Phuc, runs down a road screaming. Her clothes have been vaporised by napalm and she has burns to 65 per cent of her body as she flees her village of Trang Bang. This image is widely credited as helping to bring an end to the Vietnam War.

Apart from aiding efforts to end war, images of war and its aftermath can also educate people about the long-term consequences of armed conflict. According to the supporters of a touring exhibition displaying photographs of people in Iraq, images of war can serve as a powerful case against it.

Several Australian peace and nuclear disarmament organisations are sponsoring Children of the Gulf War, a series of photographs by Japanese photojournalist Takashi Morizumi. The photographs show the long-term consequences of the 1991 Gulf War, including malnutrition, environmental contamination and, as Takashi Morizumi believes, chemical and radiation-related disease due to the use of U-238 (depleted uranium) weapons.

Tonica van Heumen, President of the United Nations Association of Australia hopes Takashi Morizumi’s images will make people think about the current situation of Iraq.

She believes media war coverage excludes the victims of conflict. “We see images of planes bombing, but we never see the people who bear the brunt of the war.”

Freelance photographer and RMIT lecturer Jerry Galea, who has worked in war zones, believes that newspapers generally avoid using graphic confronting images. “They just don’t think it sells newspapers,” he says.

After having exhibited his photographs of Cambodian landmine victims, Jerry Galea says it is much harder to get images of the aftermath of war published. “There’s a glory time with every story,” he says, and then it’s over.

Baby born with anencephaly (without a skull). His shocked mother disappeared from the hospital.

The aftermath of the Gulf War depicted in Takashi Morizumi’s photographs often relate to the effects of U-238 weapons used by the Allied forces.

U-238, commonly known as depleted uranium, was used in armour-piercing shells. On impact with a solid object, a depleted uranium shell bursts into a cloud of radioactive dust. A United Nations sub-commission passed a resolution in 1996 condemning the use of depleted uranium weapons and placed them in the same category as napalm and cluster bombs as ‘weapons of indiscriminate effect’.

Takashi Morizumi’s most disturbing images - of children with birth defects or other conditions believed to be caused by radiation from U-238 weapons - prompted the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) to purchase the exhibition. The WILPF believe their move is a first for a peace organization.

“I call them weapons of future destruction because they hang around and they affect people into the future,” says Melody Kemp, of WILPF. She hopes the exhibition will raise the debate about U-238 (depleted uranium) weapons, which she says the Pentagon is considering using again in Iraq.

Aside from considering the effectiveness of depleted uranium weapons in war, it seems that the Pentagon and the United States administration are also considering the effectiveness of war images as they prosecute their war on terrorism.

Juwad has lost 550g in four months since his birth. His parents were unable to buy milk for him. He suffered from heavy diarrhea due to malnutrition. The hospital had almost no antibiotics available. Babies with low resistance are highly susceptible to infectious disease. Many fail to escape death.

In October 2001, when the United States commenced its bombing of Afghanistan, the government bought the exclusive rights to the only commercially produced satellite images of the bombings by Space Imaging taken by its satellite Ikonos.

The U.S. government’s action blocked the media from buying images of the bombing for publication. While some people defended the move, claiming it prevented the enemy from using the images of devastation as propaganda, some media organisations and freedom of the press advocates believe it was censorship of the reality of war.

8-year old Safaa at the entrance to Mansool Children's Hospital. She was leaving because they had run out of medicine. As a side effect of the anti-cancer medication she was taking to treat her leukemia, she had lost all of her hair.

Joan Shears, of the Rally for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament, believes that some of Takashi Morizumi’s most compelling images demonstrating the case against war are the joyful images of Iraqi people.

"There are beautiful pictures of small children playing in degraded circumstances. Their faces are beautiful, their eyes, their smiles. That’s worth seeing. It gives people hope,” she says.

Melody Kemp agrees. “There are a lot of shots of people just being normal. We’re trying to put a human face to the so-called enemy to say, “They’re just people like us’,” she says.

Takashi Morizumi images courtesy of WILPF.

For more information:
http://www.wilpf.org.au/exhibitPictures.html