Tuesday, April 01, 2003

Ah yes, 'peace'. A good way to show your good intentions is by desecrating a graveyard full of Britsh soldiers who helped ensure your freedom. Ingrates.

Vandals have defaced one of the biggest British war cemeteries in northern France with graffiti condemning the US-British invasion of Iraq, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) said.

Insults aimed at British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George W Bush were sprayed in red paint over a monument to Britain's dead from World War I and discovered by a gardener last Thursday.

"It was removed by the afternoon but not before a couple of coach loads [of visitors] had been through and seen it - we are pretty hacked off and I am pleased to say the French authorities are too," Tim Reeves said, the CWGC's representative in France.

The words "Rosbifs [British] go home! Saddam Hussein will win and spill your blood" were painted in French over the base of the cemetery's main monument - an obelisk topped by a cross.

On one side was a swastika and the words "death to the Yankees".

Also daubed were the words "dig up your garbage, it is fouling our soil," and "Bush, Blair to the TPI (International Court of Justice)".

Some 11,000 British dead are buried at Etaples, which lies on the Channel coast around 24 kilometres south of Boulogne.

"This violation of a burial place, scandalous in itself, is an attack on the memory of the sacrifice made by the British and American soldiers who contributed to the liberation of our soil," local member of parliament, former Socialist arts minister Jack Lang said.

"Our disagreement with the British and American governments [on Iraq] can in no way justify any assault on the memory of men who sacrificed themselves for our country," he said.

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