Human Rights Week 2002
05/01/2003
- Opinión
Human Rights Week is not much of an occasion in the US, with some notable
qualifications. But it does receive considerable attention elsewhere. For me
personally, Human Rights Week 2002 was memorable and poignant. The week opened on
the eve of Human Rights Day, Dec. 10, at St. Paul's Cathedral in London, where
thousands of people gathered to celebrate -- though that may not be quite the
right word -- the tenth anniversary of the Kurdish Human Rights Project KHRP,
which has done outstanding work on some of the most serious human rights issues
of the decade: particularly, but not only, the US-backed terrorist campaigns of
the Turkish state that rank among the most terrible crimes of the grisly 1990s,
leaving tens of thousands dead and millions driven from the devastated
countryside, with every imaginable form of barbaric torture. The week ended for
me in Diyarbakir in southeastern Turkey, the semi-official capital of the Kurdish
region, teeming with refugees living in squalor, barred from returning to what is
left of their villages, even though new legislation theoretically allows that
choice.
I had been invited to Diyarbakir by the Human Rights Association, which does
courageous and impressive work under conditions of constant serious threat. The
preceding days I spent in Istanbul at the invitation of the Publishers
Association, which was holding its annual meeting and an international book fair,
dedicated to peace and freedom; and the public sector union KESK (not permitted
to function as a union under harsh laws and state practice), which was holding an
international symposium on the same themes. While in Istanbul, I was able to
visit the miserable slums where unknown numbers of Kurdish refugees seek to
survive the damp cold winter months in decaying condemned buildings: large
families may be crammed into a single room with young children virtually
imprisoned unable to venture into the dangerous alleyways outside, and older
children working in illegal factories to help keep the family alive. They too are
effectively barred from returning to the homes from which they were expelled,
despite the new legislation that lifts the state of emergency in southeastern
Turkey -- formally, at least.
The founder and director of the KHRP is also barred from returning to his
country. And just to round out the picture, the US is now refusing entry to human
rights activists recording and protesting these crimes. A few weeks ago Dr. Haluk
Gerger, a leading figure in the Turkish human rights movement, arrived with his
wife at a New York airport. INS cancelled his 10-year visa, returning him and his
wife at once after fingerprinting and photographing. Dr. Gerger has received
awards from Human Rights Watch and the American Association for the Advancement
of Science for his outstanding contributions to human rights; his punishment by
the Turkish authorities had been singled out by the State Department as an
example of Turkey's failure to protect elementary rights. In an open letter to
the US Ambassador, the spokesperson of the Freedom of Speech Initiative in
Istanbul, protesting this treatment, writes that Dr. Gerger is "a founding member
of the Human Rights Association of Turkey" and "an ardent defender of Kurdish
rights," who "has written extensively on the issue and has criticized
governmental policies," likening "the Turkish government's treatment of the Kurds
to Serbia's ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Bosnia," and suffering imprisonment
and heavy fines as well as loss of his academic position for his writings on
human rights issues.
Colin Powell's State Department has now declared him persona non grata in the
United States, adopting the stand of extremist elements in the Turkish military
and ultranationalist parties.
The Turkish state, with the hand of the military never hidden, remains harsh and
repressive, despite some encouraging changes in recent months. But even
superficial contact reveals that Turkish culture and society are free and vibrant
in ways that should be a model for the West. Particularly striking is the spirit
of resistance that one senses at once, from the caves outside the city walls of
Diyarbakir where refugees speak eloquently of their yearning to return to their
homes to the urban centers of intellectual life.
The struggle of people of Turkey for freedom and human rights is truly inspiring,
not only because of the depth of commitment but also because it seems so natural
and without pretense, just a normal part of life, despite the severe threats that
are never remote. That includes courageous writers of international renown like
Yashar Kemal; scholars who have faced and endured severe punishment for their
commitment to tell the truth, like Ismail Besikci, who has spent much of his life
in prison for his writings on state terror in Turkey; parliamentarians like Layla
Zana, still languishing in prison, serving a 15 year sentence for expressing in
her native language her hope that "Kurdish and Turkish people can live peacefully
together in a democratic framework"; and many others like them, from all walks of
life. They are of course unknown in the US, much like the Latin American
intellectuals assassinated by US proxy forces, not to speak of the hundreds of
thousands of usual victims -- "unworthy victims," in Edward Herman's phrase,
because they suffer at the wrong hands: ours.
Dr. Besikci refused a $10,000 prize from the US Fund for Free Expression in
protest against Washington's decisive contribution to terror in Turkey, primarily
in the Clinton years, when the US provided 80% of Turkey's arms and Turkey became
the leading recipient of US arms (Israel-Egypt aside) as criminal atrocities
escalated. In the single year 1997 alone, US arms flow to Turkey exceeded the
combined total for the entire Cold War period up to the onset of the state terror
campaign; or as it is called in State Department reports on terror, and in the
press, the "successful counter-terror" campaign for which Turkey is to be praised
and rewarded. That practice accords with the standard doctrine, by no means
unique to the US, that "terror" is what THEY do to US, and "counter-terror" is
what WE do to THEM, commonly much worse, and only occasionally retaliation, not
that it would be tolerable in that case.
Privileged people in the West should feel humility and shame when observing the
courage and integrity of those who live under draconian laws and brutal
repression and terror, in no small measure thanks to Western support, and not
only condemn the abuses and defend the victims but regularly carry out acts of
civil disobedience in protest, at severe risk. They should also feel shame that
the KHRP operates in London, not New York, where it belongs, given the locus of
responsibility for the crimes. The British record is not attractive, but the
primary responsibility, by far, lies here. There is in fact a major Kurdish
Center in New York, with many activities and important and highly informative
publications (Center for Research of the Kurdish Library, Brooklyn, Vera
Saaedpour, director). Its anniversary, however, would not bring together
thousands of people in New York. It is known only to those who are concerned with
human rights -- seriously concerned, that is, as shown by their attitude to their
own crimes. It is far more gratifying to wring one's hands over the crimes of
others that we can do little about, or perhaps to contemplate the strange flaw in
our character that keeps us from responding to the crimes of others in some
proper way (rarely spelled out beyond bold and often mindless declarations). In
sharp contrast, the crimes that we could easily bring to an end merely by
withdrawing our decisive participation must be buried deep in the memory hole.
Uppermost in everyone's minds from London to Diyarbakir and beyond is the
feverish determination of the Bush administration to find a pretext for what it
believes will be a cheap and politically useful war in Iraq, with Blair trailing
loyally behind. In Turkey, popular opposition to the coming war is overwhelming.
Much the same is true throughout the region, and in most of Europe and the rest
of the world as well. Poll results for the US look different, but that is
misleading. It can hardly escape notice that although Saddam Hussein is reviled
everywhere, it is only in the US that people are genuinely afraid that if we
don't stop him today, he'll kill us tomorrow.
Engendering such fears is second nature to the re-cycled Reaganites at the helm
in Washington. Throughout the 1980s they were able to ram through their
reactionary agenda, significantly harming the population, by maintaining a
constant state of fear. Twenty years ago Libyan hit-men were wandering the
streets of Washington to assassinate our leader. Then the Russians were going to
bomb us from an air base in Grenada (if they could find it on a map). Meanwhile
the awesome Sandinista army was poised only two days marching time from Harlingen
Texas, a "dagger pointed at the heart of Texas." And on through the decade. To
determine a meaningful measure of domestic support for the coming war, it would
be necessary to extricate the fear factor, unique to the US. The results would
probably show little difference from the rest of the world.
There is no historical precedent for such enormous popular opposition to a war,
and protest against it, before it is even launched (fully launched, to be more
accurate).
In the Kurdish areas the general opposition to war is heightened by concern over
the consequences for the Kurds. The neighboring countries are likely to intensify
domestic repression in the context of war. Similar concerns extend to Kurds
elsewhere, including the 4 million who, for the moment, have achieved unusual
progress in the northern enclaves of Iraq under the uneasy alliance of Masoud
Barzani and Jalal Talabani. Apart from their vulnerability to murderous Iraqi
assault in the event of war, and the anticipated Turkish reaction if there is any
hint of a move towards meaningful autonomy, more than half are reported to be
reliant for survival on the UN "Oil for Food" program, likely to be severely
disrupted in the event of war. "Free Kurdistan is like a huge refugee camp," one
Kurdish leader commented, dependent on UN-run programs for food and on Baghdad
for fuel and power. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees is planning for
possible flight of hundreds of thousands to neighboring countries, where they are
not likely to receive a warm welcome, and where the prospects for the indigenous
Kurdish populations are sufficiently grim even without what might lie ahead -- or
perhaps to camps in northern Iraq that are being constructed by the Turkish army
there, according to Turkish sources, a development with threatening portent.
I mentioned a qualification to the lack of attention to Human Right Week here:
namely, when human rights violations can be exploited as a weapon against some
official enemy, a practice that Amnesty International has bitterly deplored,
again in the past few months. Through the 1980s, Human Rights Day was the
occasion for impassioned denunciations of the Soviet Union, technically accurate
but with extreme cynicism that utterly resists exposure. Human Rights Day 2002
was the occasion for the release by the Jack Straw, British Foreign Secretary, of
a Dossier on Saddam Hussein's crimes -- accelerated by a few days, as part of the
US-UK effort to elicit some hostile Iraqi gesture prior to the crucial Dec. 8
deadline for Iraq's submission of documents on its weapons of mass destruction
(WMD). The Dossier was authentic, drawn mostly from reports of human rights
organizations on Saddam's horrendous atrocities through the 1980s. Unmentioned,
as usual, was the fact that these shocking crimes were of no concern to the US or
UK, which continued to provide their friend Saddam with aid, including means to
develop WMD at a time when he was vastly more dangerous than today.
In the US, those responsible are now again in office, and instructions are that
we are to disregard the criminal record for which they show not the slightest
contrition. The current British government was then in opposition, but as
journalist Mark Thomas revealed, parliamentary protests against Saddam's crimes
from 1988 through the 90s are missing a few names: Blair, Straw, Cook, Hoon,..,
that is, the leading figures of the governing party. Thomas also released a
letter demonstrating that Straw's discovery of Saddam Hussein's evil nature is
quite recent. In January 2001, as Home Secretary, it was his responsibility to
rule on pleas for political asylum. He rejected the appeal of an Iraqi who had
been detained and tortured in Iraq because the "wide range of information on
Iraq" that Straw had at his disposal made it clear that the Iraqi tyrant's courts
would not "convict and sentence a person" improperly, and "if there are any
charges outstanding against you and if they were to be proceeded with on your
return, you could expect to receive a fair trial under an independent and
properly constituted judiciary."
But something changed since January 2001, and the crimes that were of no account
shock our sensibilities and require war. And we are all supposed to observe this
performance with sober approval, if not awe.
I also mentioned that in 1997, US arms flow to Turkey exceeded the combined total
for the Cold War years as state terror mounted to levels far beyond anything
attributed to Milosevic in Kosovo before the NATO bombing, which was undertaken,
we were solemnly informed, because we are so high-minded that we cannot tolerate
crimes so near the borders of NATO -- only within NATO, where we must not only
tolerate but expedite them. 1997 was an important year for the human rights
movements in other ways as well. It was the year when the world's leading
newspaper informed its readers that US foreign policy had entered a "noble
phase," with a "saintly glow." It was also the year when US military aid to
Colombia skyrocketed, increasing from $50 million to $290 million by 1999, then
doubling by 2001 and still increasing. In 1999, Turkey relinquished to Colombia
its place as leading recipient of US arms. The reason is not hard to discern:
Turkish state terror was by then a success, Colombia's was not. Through the
1990s, Colombia had by far the worst human rights record in the Western
hemisphere, and was by far the leading recipient of US arms and military
training, a correlation that is well-established and would be of no slight
concern if it were known outside of scholarship and dissident circles.
Turkey and Colombia share other common features. Each has several million people
violently displaced; 2.7 million by now in Colombia, increasing at the rate of
1000 a day, according to the latest reports of the leading human rights
organization. These are the numbers internally displaced, not counting those who
have fled elsewhere. And Colombia, like Turkey, provides a model of courageous
resistance that should be observed with shame and humility by privileged
Westerners -- particularly those who labor to suppress the continuing atrocities
and terror for which we bear responsibility, to efface the disgraceful record of
the past, and to erect firm barriers against the threat of exposure of crimes
that the general population would not tolerate, were the barriers to be breached.
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