Text of Amnesty ad about Kurds
kurds at gn.apc.org
kurds at gn.apc.org
Sat Apr 6 21:24:57 BST 1991
=YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE KURDISH - JUST HUMAN!=
The following is the text of an advertisement
which we helped to create for Amnesty International.
It ran in British newspapers during the last
months of 1990 and was successful in recruiting
members and raising money for Amnesty.
As reproduced here, it is not intended as an appeal
for money. But if after having read it, anyone
feels moved to help either Amnesty or ourselves, we
shall not object. The Kurdish Cultural Centre is a
registered charity, No 800883.
The text is as originally published. Eagle-eyed
readers may note that at one point, Margaret Thatcher
is mentioned. At the time of first publication, she
was still Prime Minister of the UK.
=================================================================
"WHEN OUR CHILDREN WERE DYING, YOU DID NOTHING TO HELP.
NOW GOD HELP YOUR CHILDREN." [Iraqi Kurdish refugee]
The Kurdish district of Garmiyan in the mountains of north-
eastern Iraq used to be a pretty place.
There were wheat fields and apricot orchards. The gardens grew
melons and pomegranates and grapes. Most houses had a cow
tethered outside.
One April morning in 1988, the mountainsides echoed to the drone
of Iraqi bombers and the flat thud of chemical bombs.
A white cloud drifted among the apricot blossom. Whoever
breathed it, died.
Later that day, a group of Kurdish guerillas came across dozens
of people, blistered and burned, stumbling silently from a
stricken village.
Azad Abdulla was one of the guerillas. "Can you imagine," he
asks, "what it's like to die this way? If it's cyanide you get
dizzy and choke. If it's mustard gas your skin blisters and your
lungs begin to bleed and you drown in your own blood."
Abdulla laughed when we showed him a leaflet telling Americans in
Saudi Arabia how to survive a chemical attack. (We will reproduce
the leaflet in a future topic.)
It advises turning off the air-conditioning and standing under a
running shower. But the Kurdish villagers had no such luxuries.
Instead, they had to evolve their own crude methods of coping
with poison gas attacks. They would retreat into a cave after
lighting a fire at its mouth. They would climb to the tops of
mountains. They would wet turbans and wrap them round their
faces.
On that April morning there had been no time to take even these
crude measures.
Azad Abdulla and his companions found a small boy and girl
clinging to each other. While running away through a wheat field
they had come under attack from an Iraqi helicopter and become
separated from their parents. The parents had died but the
children did not know this. They kept saying that when it grew
light they would go and look for them. They thought it was
night. They did not realise that they were blind.
Almost to the day (on April 12th 1988), a British Foreign Office
Minister was forecasting that British industry would soon find "a
large market in Iraq".
Was he unaware that Saddam Hussein was systematically gassing
Iraq's Kurdish minority? Surely not.
Only three weeks earlier, more than 5,000 men, women and children
had died horribly in an Iraqi chemical attack on the Kurdish town
of Halabja. The atrocity received worldwide TV and newspaper
coverage.
"Bodies lie in the dirt streets or sprawled in rooms and
courtyards of the deserted villas, preserved at the moment of
death in a modern version of the disaster that struck Pompeii. A
father died in the dust trying to protect his child from the
white clouds of cyanide vapour. A mother lies cradling her baby
alongside a minibus that lies sideways across the road, hit while
trying to flee. Yards away, a mother, father and daughter lie
side by side. In a cellar a family crouches together."
(Washington Times, March 23rd 1988).
The world was shocked. But not shocked enough to do anything
effective. While the USA condemned Iraq's use of chemical
weapons, calls for sterner action were resisted.
According to James Adams, Defence Correspondent of the Sunday
Times, such western impotence must have acted as an incentive to
President Saddam Hussein.
The world's inaction is a subject about which we at Amnesty
International can no longer remain polite.
For years we have been exposing atrocities committed by the Iraqi
government. Nothing effective has ever been done.
On 8th September 1988, five months after Halabja, Amnesty
appealed directly to the United Nations Security Council to stop
the massacre of Kurdish civilians by Iraq. Nothing effective was
done.
A year after Halabja, we published a report detailing how a baby
was seized as a hostage and deliberately deprived of milk to
force its parents to divulge information. How children as young
as 5 years old had been tortured in front of their families. We
revealed that that at least 30 different forms of torture were in
use in Iraqi prisons, ranging from beatings to burning, electric
shocks and mutilation. Torturers had gouged out the eyes of
their victims, cut off their noses, ears, breasts and penises,
and axed limbs. Objects were inserted into the vaginas of young
women, causing the hymen to break. Some of these methods had
been used on children.
The report failed to move the United Nations Human Rights
Commission which, days after its publication, voted not to
investigate human rights violations in Iraq.
Saddam Hussein's annexation of Kuwait seems to have taken many
people by surprise. Why?
Why be surprised by the savagery of the Iraqi regime that daily
tortures and kills Kuwaiti citizens? Why be surprised that
westerners trapped by the invasion are now helpless hostages?
Why be surprised that young Britons and Americans now face the
chemical weapons that wiped out thousands of defenceless Kurdish
villagers?
Yes, we told you so. In '80, '81, '82, '83, '84, '85, '86, '87,
'88 and '89. And you did nothing effective to help.
You, Margaret Thatcher, did nothing effective. You, George Bush,
did nothing effective. You -- yes you -- reading this
advertisement, did nothing effective.
Right now you have a choice. Get offended, or get involved.
This advertisement is an appeal for more members and more money.
But we must tell you frankly that there is now little Amnesty can
do for the people trapped in Iraq and Kuwait, be they Kuwaitis,
Westerners, Asians, or the 4 million Iraqi Kurds who are also in
effect trapped.
So why should you join us?
BECAUSE we failed with Iraq. Failed to make any impact on Saddam
Hussein. Failed to stir the United Nations into doing anything
effective. Failed to reach enough ordinary people, like you, who
were willing to channel their outrage into constructive action.
God knows how many lives this failure will yet cost.
We have got to make it impossible in future for governments to
ignore the genocide of helpless women and children. It must
become morally unacceptable for governments to look at
photographs of dead children from places like Halabja and then
carry on 'business as usual' with the murderers.
That's why you should join us and, if you can afford it, make a
donation to our campaign funds. (Small donations gratefully
received, businessmen please think big.)
"We were screaming till we could not speak." says Azad Abdulla,
"and yet no-one listened." It's you he's talking to. Can you
hear what he's saying?
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
X X
X Joining Amnesty International costs 15 UK pounds. X
X Students, pensioners, unwaged: 6 UK pounds. X
X For more details, please write or telephone: X
X X
X Amnesty International British Section X
X 99 Rosebery Avenue X
X London EC1R 4RE X
X Tel: 071 278 6000 X
X X
X Amnesty also welcome donations. X
X X
X The Kurdish Cultural Centre urges all who value X
X human rights and wish to do something practical X
X and effective to help suffering people, to join X
X Amnesty International. X
X X
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
X X
X If you'd like to join the Kurdish Cultural Centre X
X ---- YOU DON'T HAVE TO BE KURDISH, JUST HUMAN ---- X
X please send a cheque for 12 UK pounds made out to: X
X X
X Kurdish Cultural Centre X
X 14 Stannary Street X
X London SE11 4AA X
X Tel: 071-735 0918 X
X X
X Students, unwaged and pensioners: 5 UK pounds X
X X
X We too welcome donations. No Iraqi dinars please. X
X X
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Would you like to know more about the Kurds? Please respond now,
for a Kurdish conference.
This topic posted by:
The Kurdish Cultural Centre
14 Stannary Street
London SE11 4AA, UK
Telephone: (+44) 71 735 0918
Fax: (+44) 71 582 8894
Greennet User ID: Kurds
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