I haven’t heard too much about this in the media, but it seems like an interesting story that deserves some follow-up (thanks to reader S.M. for the tip).
An Iraqi doctor who made international headlines after stating that civilian deaths in the Iraq war far exceeded officially reported numbers is not being allowed to travel to North America to meet other academics.
Riyadh Lafta and his colleagues have been trying for months to get a U.S. travel visa so the doctor could speak at a medical conference at the University of Washington today.
The State Department has cited miscommunication as the reason for the visa holdup.
There’s ample reason for skepticism. When a university in Vancouver invited Lafta to instead deliver a lecture in Canada, and broadcast it to the University of Washington via video, he ran into another problem — the British government denied him a four-hour transit visa for a stopover between the Middle East and Canada.
Lafta wasn’t even scheduled to appear at UW to talk about civilian war casualties; he intended to report on a study on elevated cancer levels in southern Iraq. Apparently, it doesn’t matter.
Amy Hagopian, an acting assistant professor who is conducting research with Lafta, believes the Bush administration is purposely blocking his travel to the United States. “My hypothesis is the Bush administration was extremely threatened by The Lancet study,” she said.
You think?
Crooked Timber explored the possibilities.
Presumably the UK and US authorities have reasoned that Dr Lafta is an ex Ba’ath Party member (as he would have had to have been to hold a position in the Iraqi Health Ministry), and thus the data he is carrying is not really about child cancer at all. Perhaps he is involved in some sort of “Boys from Brazil” type plot to clone an army of super-soldiers from Saddam Hussein’s DNA, and for this reason the UK cannot be exposed to this deadly information for even four hours in the Heathrow transit lounge.
The alternative — that Dr Lafta is being intentionally prevented from traveling in order to hush up his research on post-war deaths (research which even the Foreign Office have now more or less given up on trying to pretend isn’t broadly accurate), or to hush up the news about pediatric cancer for political convenience — is too horrible to contemplate. I’d note that there isn’t an election on in the USA at present, so the denialist crowd can shove that little slur up their backsides this time too.
Look, I know the study published by The Lancet was controversial, and there have been legitimate questions raised about the methodology and results. Fine. But a) we also know the administration has been less than forthcoming when it comes to civilian casualties; b) there haven’t been any similar studies to compare it against; and c) blocking an Iraqi scientist from attending a medical seminar only leads to additional questions about the administration stifling those with competing messages.
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer also noted that the refusal to extend Lafta a visa has drawn congressional interest.
U.S. Rep. Jim McDermott, who visited Iraq in 2002, wants to know more about cancer rates in Iraq and what Lafta has found. “We end up with the State Department and God knows who putting their foot on a guy from being able to attend a medical conference,” he said.
McDermott’s staff and U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell’s staff assisted the UW in contacting the State Department about Lafta’s visa problems. […]
“You can turn something like this into a Kafka novel,” said Mike DeCesare, McDermott’s spokesman.
If I only had a nickel for every time I’ve seen that comparison over the last six years….