親子de英語！！

From　Mayumi（Jan3）

Akemashite omodeto!
A Happy New Year!
Buon Anno! e
Bonne Annee!

How are you? Did you have a good New Year celebration?

It’s been about 3 months since I returned to Italy. now I live in an
appartment in Venice. The address is，****.

On the new year’s eve，
I went to a dinner at the work of the husband of a Japanese friend，
here in Venice. He works at a centre for assylum seekers. I helped
prepare the New Year dinner there. There were Kurdish， Somali，
Ethiopians， etc.etc. They are all political refugees. I became
friends with the Iraqi Kurdish. They are from North of Iraq but
lived near Baghdad， studied in Germany， Holland and Denmark.

Their life is threatend by Saddam as they are poloitical activists
from Kurdistan. They want independence. They said Saddaam probably
has an atomic bomb but they are not sure if he will use it. Their
family are still in Irag and they told me that people in Iraq are
really afraid of the war that America is planning. They don’t want
US to invade Iraq. They think that Saddam is mad but Bush is also
mad. They are also aware that this time the US might use nuclear
weapons. I asked about the NO Fly Zone that US and UK impose in
Northern and Southern Iraq. Northern one is said to protect the
Kurdish population from Saddam and the Southern one is to protect
the Shiite population. These Kurdish said that No Fly Zones are
terrible， and US + UK are cruel against Kurdish. They have
experienced the Gulf War and they said it was absolutely terrible.

It was nice to hear the voices of the people from Iraq directly. It
is important to know that they are Kurds and are the enemies and
victims of Saddam， yet they don’t want the US + UK war in Iraq.

I hope we can let these voices heard to as many people in the world
as possible.

Ciao，
Mayumi