URGENT APPEAL BY KURDS

[kurds at gn.apc.org]

"ARE WE NOT HUMAN?"


As you read this, millions of Kurdish women, children and old
people are trapped without food or shelter in the icy heights of
the Zagros mountains.

Without your help, they're going to die.

In their haste to escape a massacre, families fled their homes in
the middle of the night.

They took only what they could carry, in many cases just a small
child.

They're wandering the mountains in thin night garments.

In the Zagros tonight, the temperature will once again plunge to
ten degrees below zero.

The Kurdish children up there have no warm coats, no blankets. 
Many of them are barefoot in the snow.

The only warmth they will find is in the arms of their mothers,
until the women freeze or starve to death.

What will become of the woman whom journalists found crouching
among the rocks, her face contorted in the final pangs of
childbirth?

How will her bewildered family look after her?

They have no medicines.  No tent for shelter.  Not even a blanket
to wrap the newborn child in.

Even if they survive the sub-zero cold, they have nothing to live
on except melted snow.

It will be a miracle if that child survives.

Please be our miracle.

We need to get food, blankets, tents and medicines out to the
refugees immediately.

We have no money to pay for them.  (Whatever we had went last
year to help Kurdish children in refugee camps in Turkey.  They
fled the massacres of 1988.)

We've even had to borrow the money to pay for the cost of running
this advertisement appeal.

Please give as much as you humanly can.  (The money promised by
governments is still not nearly enough and may be too late.  Any
money you give us will go straight to Kurdistan immediately.)

You can donate either by cheque or by credit card by using the
coupon at the bottom of this page.


KILL ANY HUMAN OR ANIMAL

Right now, the most important part of this message is what you've
just read.

But behind the tragedy is a story that ought to be told.

Despite media interest over the last few months, no-one has yet
grasped the scale or horror of what has been happening in
Kurdistan.

Let us attempt, however inadequately, to give you some idea of
what it is that the Kurdish families are fleeing.

In June 1987 orders were issued from the office of Ali Hassan
al-Majid, Military Governor of Kurdistan.  (The same man whom
Saddam Hussein recently elevated to the post of Interior
Minister.)

The orders referred to thousands of small Kurdish villages and
farms spread out across an area of valley and mountainside the
size of Yorkshire and Northumberland.

The orders said: 

"Human presence is totally banned in those areas in which the
forbidden villages are situated.  Grazing is also taboo in these
areas.  The military force within any of the districts in
question are instructed to kill any human or animal found."

(Order of the Bureau of the Organisation of the North (marked
Strictly confidential and Personal) 28/2650 dated 3rd June 1987)

"Your commands shall prepare special attacks from time to time
using artillery, helicopters and jets against as many of those
possible existing in these prohibited areas during all times,
days and nights."

(Order from Ali Hassan Majid dated 20th June 1987.)

What these orders left unsaid was that the weapons used in the
'special attacks' would be chemicals.


THE HORRORS OF SPRING

They had started using chemicals early in 1987.

One of the first Kurdish villages to be hit was Sheikh Wasanen,
in the Balisan Valley.  It was a small place of some 60 mud
houses and about 300 people. 

A Kurdish guerilla, or peshmerga, who saw the attack, tells how
the people, who had never known chemical bombing, died.

"I was stationed along the valley, not far from Sheikh
(Wasanen.  I saw the jets diving again and again to bomb
(the village.  After the bombs fell, people ran outside
(celebrating because they thought they had escaped injury.
(But they ran the chemical and died."

- Testimony of Khalil Hamad Hassan to Kurdish Cultural
(Centre, London

A day later, 34 Soviet-made Iraqi Sukhoi jets bombed the Kurdish
villages of Haledin and Balisan.

	"We entered Balisan not all that long after the
	bombs had fallen.  Bodies were lying in the street.
	The bodies had gone blue, but there was no other
	sign of injury.  My friend Abdullah Habib went to
	where a woman lay dead, with arms round her small
	children.  As he bent down over their bodies he
	collapsed and died.  Another friend rushed to help
	him also died.  Where I was standing, just ten
	feet away, the air was breathable."

	- Testimony of Khalil Hamad Hassan, ibid


A FATE WORSE THAN DEATH

On a fine spring morning in 1988, a peshmerga called Azad
Abdullah came across dozens of people, blistered and burned,
stumbling silently from a stricken village in the Garmiyan region
of Kurdistan.

"Among them were 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."

- Testimony of Azad Abdullah to Kurdish Cultural Centre,
(London.

This is when we learned to flee. 

When chemical shells are dropping in and all around a village,
the only hope is to get right away of the area as quickly as
possible.

"People were running wildly in all directions.  There was
(no time to stop and think.  I saw one family with five
(small children.  The parents picked up two children each.
(They were crying.  They kissed the fifth child tenderly
(all over his face.  Then they simply ran.  The last child
(had to be left to his fate."

	- Testimony of Haji Ahmed to Kurdish Cultural Centre,
        London.


MASSACRE AT HALABJA

The worst horror had yet to come.

Deep inside Kurdistan lies the town of Halabja.  On 16th March
1988, more than 5,000 of its men, women and children died in a
massive chemical attack.

Eyewitnesses described how Iraqi warplanes flew overhead in more
than 20 separate raids and dropped clusters of bombs on the town.

Explosions spread huge clouds of white gas.  A deadly white smog
enfolded Halabja.

	"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.


ARE WE NOT HUMAN?

Now you know why the Kurds are fleeing Saddam Hussein's army.

Why old people crippled with arthritis are willing to drag their
limbs up steep mountain paths.

Why women would rather take their little children hungry into a
wilderness of ice than trust the promises of Saddam Hussein.

But can you explain why, at the time of writing, neighbouring
countries have closed the international border?  Threatened to
use force to turn the refugees back?

Why Saddam Hussein's artillery and helicopter gunships, which
hardly fired a shot against the Allied armies, are freely
permitted to go on slaughtering defenceless Kurdish women and
children?

Our people celebrated the victory of the Allied armies over
Saddam Hussein.

They are asking what kind of law it is that protects Saddam's
mounstrous regime against 'interference in internal affairs',
while refusing even to acknowledge their basic human rights.

The old Kurdish man quoted on BBC TV news put it at its simplest.

'Are we not human?' he asked.


PLEASE GIVE GENEROUSLY

As a registered charity we are not permitted to make political
comments in a public appeal.

But there's no need.  Just ask yourself the following questions.

Were you ever aware in 1988 that Saddam's government was using
chemical weapons against the Kurds?  If not, why not?

Did you hear of a single official protest or attempt at
intervention by any nation?

Are you aware of a single positive action that was taken to help?

Did any nation suspend its economic and military aid to Iraq
while these massacres were going on?

Did the UN Security Council even acknowledge a single letter or
memorandum sent to them in 1988 appealling for help?

After the ceasefire in the Gulf War, did any government lift a
finger to save the Kurds from destruction?

We Kurds have a saying, that we have no friends in the world
except our mountains.

Please prove us wrong.

-----------------------------------------------------------
COUPON

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#500 [ ]   #1,000 [ ]   #10,000 [ ]  #100,000 [ ]  Please tick
appropriate box.

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THIS IS NOT JUST FOR YOUR INFORMATION BUT FOR YOUR ACTION!


PLEASE GET THIS APPEAL IN FRONT OF AS MANY PEOPLE AS YOU CAN.
DOWNLOAD IT, PRINT IT OUT, FILL IN THOSE COUPONS.

THE KURDISH PEOPLE NEED A MIRACLE.  PLEASE BE OUR MIRACLE.