SARBARZ, HELP ME FIND MY CHILDREN

[kurds at gn.apc.org]

This is the text of our full page advertisement due to run in the
Daily Mail on Monday 29th April.  Only the names of the two
people involved in the telephone call from Iran have been
changed.  Hawzhar's children - a seven year old boy and a five
year old girl - are still missing.  While the press talks of
British Marines leading Kurdish families back into Zakho, 200
miles away on the Iranian border, the people's plight is
desperate and getting worse.  Even when Hawzhar, his wife and his
remaining three year old child reached Sardasht, they found no
shelter, no food.  He says to tell you this: 'Our lives are
ruined, but don't waste too much pity on us.  Thousands of
families have been visited by the same tragedy.  Save the ones
who can be saved, while there is still time.'

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SARBARZ, HELP ME FIND MY CHILDREN.


This morning, one of our volunteers here at the Kurdish Cultural
Centre got a phone call from the town of Sardasht, on the
Iran-Iraq border.

His cousin Hawzhar was on the line, in tears.

With his wife and young children, he'd fled their home in the
Kurdish city of Sulemaniyeh at 3am as the Iraqi army launched a
scud and artillery attack.

For seven days, they'd walked on dangerous paths across steep,
snow-covered mountainsides.  It was bitterly cold.  They had
nothing to eat or drink.

As they neared Iran the trail became choked with fleeing people.
Families were split up and separated.

He'd lost his children in the crush.


LOST: A LITTLE BOY OF SEVEN, A SMALL GIRL OF FIVE.

Somewhere up there in the snows the children are wandering,
frightened and alone.  Hawzhar knows he'll probably never see
them again.

His desperate hope is that help will arrive in time.  'I've heard
that the British and Americans are dropping supplies,' he said. 
'When will they get here?'

We had to tell him that the Allied troops were operating 200
miles away on the Iraq-Turkey border.

There are a million people trapped in the mountains along Iraq's
border with Iran.  At this time of writing, they had received no
aid of any kind.

But with your help, we can reach them.


WE KNOW OUR MOUNTAINS.

We know the people, the language, the mountains.

Most of us working here in the Kurdish Cultural Centre were born
and brought up in those mountains.

The people dying up there are our families, our friends, our
children.

We don't need telling how desperate things are.  So there's no
bureaucracy, no red tape.


A DIRECT LINE TO THE REFUGEES.

Every day we receive dozens of phone calls from refugees who have
managed to cross into Turkey or Iran.

Their stories help us build a picture of what's happening, so we
know what's needed where.

Our relief organisation of local Kurds is working flat out to get
help straight to where it's needed most.

We are sending Kurdish doctors directly into remote valleys.

We have a flight leaving England later this morning with #60,000
worth of water purification and distribution equipment, emergency
shelters, strong plastic sheeting, clothing and blankets.

We're also working with major relief agenices.

This work is financed by our national appeal, the Kurdish
Disaster Fund.  To date we've raised about #400,000, bringing
help to people that the main relief operation has not reached.

We need to raise at least 1 million (pounds sterling).  Please
help us help our people.


WE'RE BRITAIN'S MAJOR KURDISH CHARITY.

The Kurdish Cultural Centre was set up in 1985 to help Kurdish
refugees in Britain and abroad.

We have worked with Kurdish refugees in Britain and in camps in
Turkey.  (These are families who fled from Iraq's chemical
attacks on Kurdish villages in 1988.)

In February we appealed for money to help children in these camps
who were suffering from illness, hunger and cold.  (Putting
people in camps is not the answer: these children had little
food, no warm clothing and their tents were torn and useless in
temperatures of minus 10 degrees C.)


YOUR SUPPORT KEEPS US GOING.

After a phone call like this morning's, we can find ourselves
close to despair.  Then we hear about something someone has done
to help.

We would like to say thank you.

To the young man who apologised that he could only send #5 as he
was living on supplementary benefit.  Thank you, Martin.

To the eighty year old pensioner, herself blind, who sent us her
entire life savings because, she said, there was no better cause
in the world.  Thank you, Mrs Fairburn.

To the university teacher who highlighted our people's plight by
walking barefoot through Edinburgh for 5 days wearing a placard
that said 'Kurds.  Barefoot.  Starving'.  Thank you, Alastair
McIntosh.

To the many, many others who have already helped, thank you for
your generosity and your warm letters of sympathy and support.


MORE MONEY IS URGENTLY NEEDED

We're also grateful to the governments and relief organisations
who are working to help our people.

But despite everyone's best efforts, 500 people are still dying
every day.  Many of them are children.

It's going to take weeks to prepare the 'safe havens'.  Even then
they will accomodate only 350,000 people.  More than two million
are homeless.

Meanwhile on the mountainsides, the graveyards are getting
bigger.

We also received a call today from someone who had travelled with
a group of 25 Kurdish women and children from the city of Erbil. 
There were no menfolk.  They had been taken by the regime in 1982
and had not been seen since.

The women and children were barefoot, not properly clothed for
the mountains.  They were suffering dreadfully from hunger and
cold.

At night, when the temperature plummeted, the mothers tried to
keep the children warm in their arms.

On the way to the Iranian border, five of the women and eight of
the children died.

We know you will help.  Thank you.


	*		*		*		*


If you want to make a donation to the KURDISH DISASTER FUND you
can do so by one of the following methods:

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Call our Credit Card Hotline 071-820 9999.
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Send a cheque, made out to 'Kurdish Cultural Centre' to: 
KURDISH DISASTER FUND
Kurdish Cultural Centre
14 Stannary Street
London SE11 4AA

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Or e-mail us with the following information:

1) Your name and address (as known to the credit card co)
2) The amount you wish to give
3) The type of credit card you want to use
4) The card number
5) Its expiry date

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