From aicoord at igc.apc.org Mon May 27 19:51:09 1991 From: aicoord at igc.apc.org (aicoord at igc.apc.org) Date: Mon, 27 May 1991 11:51:09 -0700 (PDT) Subject: WELCOME References: Message-ID: There are a couple of other groups you may want to be in contact with. I don't believe they have the capability to go online, but they are important. 1. Vera Saeedpour Kurdish Program 345 Park Place Brooklyn, NY 11238 718/783-7930 2. Kurdish Human Rights Watch PO Box 1354 Fairfax, VA 22030 3. Kurdish Relief Aid 2439 Birch St. #7 Palo Alto, CA 94306 415/321-2521 From csime at igc.apc.org Thu May 2 01:20:16 1991 From: csime at igc.apc.org (csime at igc.apc.org) Date: Wed, 01 May 1991 17:20:16 -0700 (PDT) Subject: KURDISH TRAGEDY: U.S. RESPONSIBLE Message-ID: Here is a statement on the Kurdish situation from the National Coalition sto Stop U.S. Intervention in the Middle East: National Coalition Against U.S. Intervention in the Middle East 36 W. 12 St., New York, NY, 10003 phone (212)777-1246 fax (212)979-1583 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, April 27, 1991 NATIONAL COALITION AGAINST U.S. INTERVENTION IN THE GULF SAYS U.S. IS RESPONSIBLE FOR SUFFERING OF KURDISH PEOPLE What is happening to the Kurdish people in Iraq, and unfolding on TV sets across the world, is a terrible tragedy. Responsibility for the dislocation and suffering of the Kurdish people lies firmly with the U.S. government and its allies. Unable to sustain a state of their own, the Kurdish nation has lived under the domination of others for many centuries. Their current plight, one of the most difficult in modern times, is due mainly to the barbarous attacks by the Pentagon against Iraq. All of Iraq faces a critical health emergency due to U.S. and allied bombings. As part of its strategy to conquer Iraq and overthrow of the Hussein government, the Bush administration utilized the difficult situation of the Kurdish people for its own ends. The CIA set up a radio station in Saudi Arabia urging their leadership to join in the attack against the Baghdad government. Then, as Washington has done with oppressed peoples so many times before, it abandoned the Kurds. This monstrous crime committed by the Pentagon against the Kurdish people has led to their displacement. Opposing even the UN, which says there is no precedent for such an action, thousands of U.S. and allied troops, including U.S. Special Forces, are carving out a military enclave in northern Iraq. Done under the name of helping the Kurds, this will surely be used for further assaults against Iraq. The Kurdish people are entitled to determine their own fate, and not to be harassed or become a dependency of the U.S. and its allies. The hypocritical and opportunistic character of U.S. "concern" for the Kurdish people is revealed by the Bush administration's policies towards Kurds in other countries. Washington supplies $800 million a year in military aid to the Turkish government, whose policies towards the 12 million Kurds in Turkey are so repressive that it is illegal for Kurds to write or speak their own language. And Washington is ignoring the plight of the Iraqi Kurds who fled to Iran. When Bush was asked why he isn't assisting these Kurds he replied, "You've got to be a realist--I mean, the Iranians have strained relations with the United States of America." (Los Angeles Times, April 18). HEALTH CATASTROPHE LOOMS IN ALL OF IRAQ The Kurdish people are not the only ones devastated by the U.S. assault. The destruction of the civilian infrastructure of Iraq by U.S. and allied bombing raids has created an emergency situation nationwide. Dr. David Levinson from Physicians Against Nuclear War, who just returned from Iraq, reports that "the entire health care system has been severely crippled," and "a health catastrophe of immense proportions" is threatened. Already UNICEF has reported cases of cholera. Many thousands could die. Bush has not said a word about the suffering of people all over Iraq. In fact, the U.S. government opposes an Iraqi request for the UN to lift sanctions so that Baghdad can purchase emergency food and medicine. Washington is threatening to keep the sanctions against Iraq until Hussein is overthrown, regardless of the many thousands who would die from lack of food, sanitation and medicine. These sanctions must be lifted immediately. Washington's systematic and continued targeting of the Iraqi civilian population of Iraq violates the Geneva and Nuremburg accords and is an international war crime. A great deal of assistance must and should be given to all the people of Iraq, including the Kurds, in order to alleviate famine and epidemic. But the U.S. government owes this money in the form of reparations for the crimes it has committed. --30-- From antennae at gn.apc.org Thu May 2 10:19:30 1991 From: antennae at gn.apc.org (antennae at gn.apc.org) Date: 02 May 1991 09:19:30 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Top ad agencies unite for Kurds Message-ID: The Kurdish Disaster Fund is to be supported by advertisement appeals running in newspapers around the world. The initiative has been made possible by the efforts of a network of top advertising agencies around the world, all of whom have volunteered their time and services free. The campaign was launched in London with two ads written and art directed by Antennae Communication and produced free of charge by Collett Dickenson Pearce & Partners, one of the world's most famous creative agencies. The worldwide campaign is being co-ordinated by CDP's London office. Countries and cities (in large countries) which have thus far agreed to participate include Turkey, India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Japan, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Holland, Italy, Portugal, Belgium, New York, Dallas, San Francisco, Johannesburg, Sydney, Melbourne, New Zealand with many positive responses coming in daily since the initiative was launched 48 hours ago. Anyone able to secure free media space in any of these places (or indeed any other places) - or for more information - please contact Alice Pope, CDP's organiser in London: Telephone: +44 71 388 2424 Fax: +44 71 383 0939 You can contact Antennae Communication via CDP's Alice Pope or fax us direct at: Fax: +44 825 890259 From antennae at gn.apc.org Thu May 2 10:22:19 1991 From: antennae at gn.apc.org (antennae at gn.apc.org) Date: 02 May 1991 09:22:19 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Text of NY ad appeal for Kurds Message-ID: In response to our call to agencies all around the world to join us in supporting the Kurdish Disaster Fund, the following text winged its way in from Ammirati & Puris in New York. Thanks to David Fowler, who wrote it at 12 hours notice. (Visual: A fax machine) THE DAY IT SCREAMED. In the electronic chatter of data being transmitted, a strange sound was heard a few days ago. It wa heard in Sydney and Paris, in Dallas, San Francisco, Singapore, New York and 39 countries. It came from a registered charity called the Kurdish Disaster Fund, a fund administered by the Kurdish Cultural Centre, in London. The sound was a scream, and this is what it said. A race of people that has been systemically hunted down using the most terrible of weapons is on the run again. A people called the Kurds, who subsist in a rocky no-man's land between Iran and Iraq are in the most desperate trouble. A race of shepherds, who do not have cars, or telephones, or money, or very much hope, need tents, medicine, food and warm clothing. These weakest of peoples have been heard by one of the strongest groups of people on the face of the earth. The people who have the power, supposedly, to make you prefer one brand of soap over another. The ones who, with a single telephone call, can be heard via this gracious publication. The people who make messages that sell things. Have we lost the sale now that you know who we are? Or will you, for a moment, reconsider, and believe that we, as people, have recognised our power and conceded to do what the Kurdish people have no choice but to do. To beg. We beg for two million people who, in the aftermath of yet another terrible war, have fled to the mountains to escape the horrors they still have reason to fear. Because, you see, on a fine spring morning in 1988, five thousands of these people watched a strange cloud of white gas float towards them, and when it arrived it entered their lungs and smothered their insides and caused a manner of death of unspeakable pain. It was Pompeii, brought about by the push of a button, and when the cloud passed, there was complete silence. Not the bleat of a goat, or the song of a bird, or the laugh of a child. Only, far away, in places these people had never visited or even heard of, a sound was carried by a network of electronic messengers. And down the line, it was picked up by people who, after all, are nothing but human messengers. Only this time, there is only sadness for sale. There is no excitement. There is no sizzle. There is a cry for tents, for food, for medicine. A cry for people who are trapped on every front by cruelty, by war, by despots, by the utter freezing hopelessness of the rocks of the mountains of Iraq. They cry along the wires that link all of us. We beg you to hear them, and help. We beg you. ----------------------------------------------------------- Donations to the Kurdish Disaster Fund may be phoned in direct if you are using a credit card. Call +44 71 820 9999. (Call 071 820 9999 if calling from within the UK.) Alternatively, please send a cheque (made payable to 'Kurdish Cultural Centre') to: Kurdish Disaster Fund Kurdish Cultural Centre 14 Stannary Street London SE11 4AA United Kingdom Or again, you can simply e-mail gn:kurds (just 'kurds' if you are a Greennet subscriber) with the following information: 1) Your credit card number 2) Expiry date 3) Type of card (eg: Access/Visa) 4) Your name and address as held by credit card company 5) The amount you wish to donate ----------------------------------------------------------- Thank you to everyone who has already helped and to the agencies around the world who have joined us in supporting this best of causes. From kurds at gn.apc.org Thu May 2 10:34:43 1991 From: kurds at gn.apc.org (kurds at gn.apc.org) Date: 02 May 1991 09:34:43 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Disaster Fund Update - 2/5/91 Message-ID: Kurdish Disaster Fund - News Update The amount raised by the fund has now topped 400,000 UK pounds and is rising steadily towards the half-million, helped by our latest advertisement appeal in the Daily Mail. The target for the UK remains 1 million pounds. We are in the process of opening an office in Piranshahr, Iran, to facilitate distribution of medical and food aid, and warm clothing and supplies. Already several Kurdish doctors are working with us on the spot to help refugees still arriving in Iran, and those still trapped in the mountains on the Iraqi side of the border. In conjunction with a major relief agency we have despatched within the last few days a large consignment of water purification and distribution equipment, portable shelters, strong plastic sheeting (for makeshift shelters from the biting cold) and blankets and warm clothing. A total of around 1 million people remains in the mountains on the Iraq-Iran border. Thus far the numbers of refugees moving back towards the cities is very small, as a proportion of the total homeless. The Allied relief operation is centred on the Iraq-Turkey border area, notably around the town of Zakho, which is now cleared of Iraqi army and security agents. But a glance at any map will show Zakho as a point virtually ON the Turkish border. To the east stretch great leagues of empty mountainsides and beyond that, the long sweep south-east where a million are still in desperate need. This week, more Kurdish doctors depart from the UK under our auspices to join the Kurdish Disaster Fund's relief operation being conducted out of Piranshahr. We have also supported the efforts of a British relief campaign based in Cornwall. (See earlier items on this conference.) They are sending a medical team to the area for three months. Any enquiries, please call Sarbast Aram at the Kurdish Cultural Centre, London, on 071 735 0918. (+44 71 735 0918 if dialling from outside the UK.) From hfrederick at igc.apc.org Thu May 2 20:26:07 1991 From: hfrederick at igc.apc.org (Howard Frederick) Date: Thu, 02 May 1991 12:26:07 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Orgs Accepting Donations for Kurds Message-ID: Subject: Orgs Accepting Donations for Kurds Reply-To: Volunteers in Technical Assistance Organizations that accept cash donations for Kurdish relief. April 21, 1991, 1:15pm Adventist Development and Relief Agency 12501 Old Columbia Pike Silver Spring, MD 20904 301/680-6380 American Friends Service Committee 1501 Cherry Street Philadelphia, PA 19102 215/241-7150 American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee Open Mailbox for Kurdish Refugees 711 Third Avenue, 10th Floor New York, NY 10017 212/687-6200 American Jewish World Service 1290 Avenue of the Americas New York, NY 10104 212/468-7380 American Red Cross Box 37243 Washington, DC 20013 800/842-2200 American Refugee Committee 2344 Nicollet Avenue Suite 350 Minneapolis, MN 55404 612/872-7060 AmeriCares 161 Cherry Street New Canaan, CT 06840 800/486-HELP Baptist World Alliance 6733 Curran Street McLean, VA 22101 703/790-8980 B'nai B'rith International 1640 Rhode Island Avenue, NW Washington, DC 20036 202/857-6582 Christian Children's Fund 203 East Cary Street Richmond, VA 23261 804/644-4654 CARE 660 First Avenue New York, NY 10016 212/686-3110 Catholic Relief Services 209 West Fayette Street Baltimore, MD 21201 301/625-2220 Church World Service Box 968 Elkhart, IN 46515 219/264-3102 Direct Relief International Box 30820 Santa Barbara, CA 93130 805/965-4771 Food for the Hungry International 7729 East Greenway Road Scottsdale, AZ 85260 602/998-3100 International Medical Corps 5933 West Century Boulevard, Suite 310 Los Angeles, CA 90045 213/670-0800 International Rescue Committee 386 Park Avenue South New York, NY 10016 212/679-0010 Lutheran World Relief 390 Park Avenue New York, NY 10016 212/532-6350 MAP International 2200 Glynco Parkway Brunswick, GA 31520 912/265-6010 Mercy Corps International 3030 S.W. First Avenue Portland, OR 97201 503/242-1032 Operation USA 7615 1/2 Melrose Avenue Los Angeles, CA 90046 213/658-8876 Oxfam America 115 Broadway Boston, MA 02116 617/482-1211 Project Concern International P.O. Box 85323 San Diego, CA 92138 619/279-9690 Presiding Bishop's Fund for World Relief/Episcopal Church 815 Second Avenue New York, NY 10017 212/867-8400 Save the Children Box 975 Westport, CT 06881 203/221-4000 Unitarian Universalist Service Committee 130 Prospect Street Cambridge, MA 02139 617/868-6600 World Concern 19303 Fremont Avenue North Seattle, Washington 98133 206/546-7201 World Relief Box WRC Wheaton, IL 60189 708/665-0235 World Vision Relief and Development Box O Pasadena, CA 91103 800/423-4200 YMCA of the USA International Division/Emergency Fund 101 North Wacker Drive Chicago, IL 60606 312/977-0031 InterAction is an independent coalition of 124 private voluntary organizations which provide humanitarian assistance abroad. Those wishing to donate goods should contact Volunteers in Technical Assistance (VITA) at 703/276-1914. VITA maintains an electronic bulletin board of offers which is accessed by relief professionals. For more information, contact Lisa Mullins, InterAction, 202/822-8429. From kurds at gn.apc.org Thu May 2 23:27:44 1991 From: kurds at gn.apc.org (kurds at gn.apc.org) Date: 02 May 1991 22:27:44 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Kurdish music comes to Sussex! Message-ID: You supported our appeal, so we'll support yours!! We're happy to announce that the Kurdish Cultural Centre Music Band will be appearing at the Spring Fayre of St Phillips Catholic School, Uckfield, Sussex, on May 18th - in support of the school's fund to repair its buildings. Anyone within a thousand miles should not miss this unique live performance!! The KCC's Music Band is also available to play other venues in support of good causes. To enquire about bookings, please call Sarbast Aram at the Kurdish Cultural Centre, London. 071-735 0918. From aldopacific at gn.apc.org Sun May 5 13:51:22 1991 From: aldopacific at gn.apc.org (aldopacific at gn.apc.org) Date: 05 May 1991 12:51:22 +0000 (GMT) Subject: GulfWatch Papers / Kurds Glasgow Message-ID: Please see mideast.forum for details of how to order hardcopy volumes of the GulfWatch Papers, and for a report on yesterday's events in Glasgow including Kurdish aspects. Alastair. From papillon at gn.apc.org Fri May 24 21:47:25 1991 From: papillon at gn.apc.org (papillon at gn.apc.org) Date: 24 May 1991 20:47:25 +0000 (GMT) Subject: The butcher birds need Kurdistan Message-ID: This item originally posted in mideast.forum. 47 Topic 47 peg:paua mideast.forum 10:29 pm May 16, 1991 The following piece has been re-written from _Australian Society_, May 1991, p.7. It was originally published in the UK newspaper _Independent on Sunday_ (undated). Neal Ascherson is a veteran British foreign correspondent, author of a number of books including _The Polish August_ (Penguin, 1981), and a regular contributor to the _New York Review of Books_. ================================================================ "Why the butcher-birds need Kurdistan." Neal Ascherson. "Strong states eat weaker nations. We all know that. Less well known is the fact that they do not always eat them at once. -- Hit for more (8% read) -- Sometimes the predator - like the butcher-bird - impales its prey alive on a spike. Slices are cut off it when other predators call round for dinner. 'Peace orders' have often been based on a common interest in suppressing a weaker nation. I am talking mostly about the Kurds. But Ireland comes into the argument too. The central Irish enigma is why England treated Ireland so relentlessly badly for a thousand years. And a concievable answer could be that Ireland (in the English system) had a special function. It functioned as a sort of larder. Mainland malcontents - feudal barons, greedy soldiers, remittance men, jobbers owed a favour, land-hungry Scots - were simply thrown the key to the larder and told to help themselves and shut up. So the survival of that ramshackle 'peace order' we call the United Kingdom depended on Ireland remaining a plunder zone rather than an equal partner. -- Hit for more (20% read) -- But the plight of the Kurds is a broader example. Ireland, after all, only held the British state together. The Kurds are a factor for international stability between a whole row of states. Well, not the poor Kurds themselves. The important factor is their subjection and partition between Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and the Soviet Union. This is the most brutal and cynical of all the patterns of international relations. It has been used in many other times and places. It amounts to a pact (usually unspoken) between carnivores. And its text says: 'Look, we may all hate each other. But we do have one common interest. We all have Kurdish minorities, and we are all threatened by Kurdish nationalism. If you (Iraq) get up my (Turkish) nose, then I can always let my Kurds stir up your Kurds - and you can do the same to me. But wouldn't it be simpler to keep all our Kurds suppressed and live in peace with one another instead ?' That is the outline of the pattern. It does not always work, -- Hit for more (33% read) -- especially in this case. Fear that the enemy would 'play the Kurdish card' did not prevent the war between Iran and Iraq, a war in which thousands of conscripted Kurds in both armies were obliged to kill one another. But - and this is the point - Iran never made a full-scale commitment to support a Kurdish national rising inside Iraq during that war. That would have endangered Iran's own security as well. So the system survives. The foul events now taking place on the Turkish border are not just about Saddam's cruelty and President Ozal's lack of funds for refugees. They are also about Saddam twisting the Kurdish knife in Turkey's guts, as revenge for Turkey's co-operation with the United States against him. He knows that, ultimately, no Turkish government dares to support the cause of an independent Kurdistan. So each state with a Kurdish minority plays a double game: bringing out the troops and poison gas against active nationalist resistance, but also maintaining a troupe of semi-tame Kurdish -- Hit for more (46% read) -- politicians and 'representatives' whose militancy can be turned up or down like a volume knob. Meanwhile spooks from countries with no Kurdish 'problem' of their own - Israel, the United States - clamber across Kurdistan distributing weapons and promises of diplomatic support if the peshmerga [Kurdish fighters] will make trouble for this or that partitioning power. But the interest of those emissaries in an independent Kurd state is, in reality, no greater than that of the governments in Baghdad, Tehran, or Ankara. If the Kurds were ever free, nobody could manipulate them any more. As with all forms of torture, the victim must not be allowed to die. That is why Saddam Hussein will not proceed to a 'final solution of the Kurdish problem' by driving all the Iraqi Kurds into gas chambers. He needs a 'Kurdish problem', now and in the future. That means that he needs Kurds of his own. They do not have to be intelligent or active. At this moment, Saddam may well be supervising the selective murder of Iraqi Kurds with higher education or command of a European language. They just have to -- Hit for more (60% read) -- look sufficiently Kurdish to reassure Iraq's neighbours that Saddam will respond if the Kurdish card is played. But the subtleties and openings for bluff go even further. And here we come to the classic example of the butcher-bird's peace: the partition of Poland 200 years ago between Russia, Austria, and Prussia. After 1871, when Germany was united, Bismarck built a European peace on top of the supression of Poland. All three carnivores had Polish minorities, Russia the biggest. All - Germany especially - were frightened of Polish rebellion and the resurrection of an independent Polish state. So the Russian, Austrian, and German emperors agreed to live at peace with one another, a peace guaranteed by the sanction that any of the three could stoke up Polish problems for the others. As with the Kurds, the torture victim had to be kept alive. The Treaty of Vienna, which ratified the partitions, insisted that Polish cultural identity must be preserved. Happy Poles ! The three empires co-operated merrily whenever one of them -- Hit for more (74% read) -- suffered a Polish insurrection, Bismarck offering the Russian troops free passages across East Prussia in 1863. When shadows fell across their co-operation, the Polish card would be waved. But the rule was never to go the full length of playing it, even in a war. In 1886, Bismarck worried that the Austrians were too stupid to grasp this rule, and would set up a 'Polish National Army' if they had a war with Russia. (Exactly that happened in the 1914-18 conflict: a mistake the Iranians did not make with the Kurds in the Iran-Iraq war). But of course statesmen do not like being vulnerable. Soon the three were looking for ways of making their own Poles less dangerous. The Russians tried the gallows, cultural genocide, and Siberia. The Austrians used charm and the appeal to snobbery and greed, which was rather effective. Bismarck tried to Germanise his bit of Poland, which was an utter flop. Here the bluff came in. The trick was to let your Poles look as dangerous as possible, while in reality rendering them as harmless as possible. In this way you became less vulnerable than the other -- Hit for more (88% read) -- two carnivores, while retaining your own power to make trouble for them. Meanwhile, decent liberal and radical opinion went on protesting. Marx wrote to Engels that 'the intensity and vitality of all revolutions since 1789 can be gauged pretty accurately by their attitude to Poland'. Polish refugees were given pensions in France; nice people in north London organised picnics for Polish independence. No doubt the Kurds will now become the same sort of good cause. They deserve it. But it took 123 years and a war which destroyed all three empires at once to bring Polish independence. The supression of Kurdistan is seen by many statesmen not as a crime but as a mechanism for maintaining the power balance. And the butcher-birds who keep the Kurds writhing on their spike now include the United States and Britain. ---------------------------| Ends |----------------------------- From papillon at gn.apc.org Fri May 24 21:57:18 1991 From: papillon at gn.apc.org (papillon at gn.apc.org) Date: 24 May 1991 20:57:18 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Kurds win hearts in Sussex Message-ID: As promised the Kurdish Cultural Centre's Music Band turned up in cold, windy Uckfield on the day of the Cup Final. They had arrived to support a building appeal for St Philips Catholic Primary School. The organisers could hardly have picked a worse day - in addition to the chilly, damp weather and the competition from the FA Cup Final, there were no less than THREE other school fetes in and around Uckfield that afternoon. Nonetheless, there was a record turn out and the May Fayre's organisers reported their highest ever takings. People had travelled from as far as Brighton and Guildford to see the KCC Band. The local paper, which covered the event, spoke of the band's offer to return good for good ('You helped our appeal so we're going to help yours') as 'a remarkable act of human kindness'. Certainly, one lady was in tears as she listened to the music of Kurdistan drifting over the softer Sussex landscape. The band, which only days earlier had played live to a worldwide audience of some 300 million from the stage of Wembley Arena, (backing Kurdish singer Shivan at the Simple Truth Concert) now found themselves playing to a mere couple of hundred at one of the most obscure venues in olde England. The crowd loved it and the Kurds have made themselves some friends down here. They've been invited back next year and all the publicity has inspired the school organisers to aim for a really big event next spring. If this conference is still up and running we'll be back then to tell you all about it. Until then, thank you to Burhan and the Band!!! You were great! From antennae at gn.apc.org Sun May 26 14:30:39 1991 From: antennae at gn.apc.org (antennae at gn.apc.org) Date: 26 May 1991 13:30:39 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Amnesty 30th anniversary message Message-ID: The following is the text of Amnesty International's 30th Anniversary message which appeared in today's 'Observer'. The double-page spread gave one page entirely to horrific photographs of human rights abuses and victims. We give descriptions of the pictures and list the captions at the end of this item. S H O U L D W E G I V E U P ? The pictures on the other page are upsetting. Normally, we wouldn't publish them. Our advertisements purposely stay away from violent and horrific pictures. When we publicised the murders of street urchins by Brazilian and Guatemalan police, we spared you the sight of children with their tongues ripped out and eyes burned from their sockets. When we wrote about Iraq's use of chemical weapons against Kurdish civilians, we deliberately did not use the photographs that made our volunteers cry. We at Amnesty have no choice but to look at these pictures. And hear the stories that go with them. THE STORY OF AGOSTINHO NETO. The African doctor's waiting room was full of people when the Portuguese secret police arrived. They dragged him from his surgery, past his terrified patients. Ignoring the screams of his wife, they began methodically to flog him in front of her and his young children. Later, he was flung in jail. There were no charges. There would never be a trial. The case of Dr Agostinho Neto was one of six which, in 1961, prompted a British lawyer, Peter Benenson to write an article in the Observer. 'Open your newspaper any day of the week and you will find a report from somewhere in the world of someone being imprisoned, tortured or executed because his opinions or religion are unacceptable to his government. There are several millions such people in prison --- and their numbers are growing. The newspaper reader feels a sickening sense of impotence. Yet if those feelings of disgust all over the world could be united into common action, something effective could be done.' With these words, he founded Amnesty. A PASSION FOR HUMAN RIGHTS. Amnesty began as a small group of lawyers, writers and publishers who shared a passionate commitment to human rights. >From a small office in London, they started gathering information about people who were in prison for their political or religious beliefs. They wrote letters of support and comfort to prisoners, and of protest to their jailers. Out of their work grew the Amnesty reports, the letter-writing groups and the urgent action network, which can muster thousands of protest telegrams within hours of a prisoner's arrest. For three decades Amnesty has campaigned against the terrible things to which the pictures opposite bear witness. We've tried to show that turning a blind eye to a government's human rights crimes is both immoral and foolish. (It took the Gulf War to demonstrate this - but we'd been issuing warnings about Saddam Hussein every year since 1980.) During the last thirty years, we have examined the human rights record of every nation on earth and, regrettably, have had cause to criticise most. (Each end of the political spectrum thinks we're biased towards the other. In fact we're non-partisan. We speak out for the rights of individuals, whatever their views, and against those who abuse them, whatever theirs.) In the last thirty years, we have been able to close the files of more than 97% of the prisoners whose cases we had taken up. No-one can deny that it's an outstanding achievement for a small, chronically underfunded, organisation. Except that it's not enough. ONE MILLION FAILURES. Among the files we closed was that of Agostinho Neto, the Angolan doctor who was one of Amnesty's first 'prisoners of conscience'. In 1975, when Angola won its independence from Portugal, Dr Neto became his country's first President. Sadly, during his Presidency, his government was accused of imprisoning without trial, torturing and unlawfully killing many of its political opponents. How could such things happen under the rule of our old friend? Were we naive to imagine we could make a difference? Since 1961 things have not got better, but worse. We believed, didn't we, that the world would never tolerate another genocide? Since then we've had Suharto, Pol Pot, Idi Amin and Saddam Hussein. We've had Emperor Bokassa who stocked his fridge with human heads. For every prisoner freed, thousands are still in prison. For every person plucked from the torturers, thousands suffer agonies beyond our imagining. For every life saved, hundreds of thousands have been lost. Between them Suharto, Pol Pot, Idi Amin and Saddam Hussein have executed or tortured to death more than one million people. For Amnesty that's one million failures. All we've done in the last thirty years is bale a few buckets from a sea of human misery. SHOULD WE GIVE UP? So we come to the crucial question. Should we give up? Please think carefully before you answer. While you make up your mind, here's a poem by Agostinho Neto. Next door someone groans his fingers edged with blood streaming from nails broken by the palmatoria He is thinking of victory and no sleep comes to his prison days or dreams to fill his solitude There are minutes when the world is summed up in the torture chamber Oh! Who will sleep when he hears his best friend go mad there in the next cell his spirit killed by torture? Who will sleep? asks Neto. Dare any of us? Left to themselves, governments will go on imprisoning, torturing and killing and other governments will go on turning a blind eye. Until they start respecting human rights there is little hope of any real political, social or environmental progress. How can we persuade certain governments to stop the killing of trees in the rainforest if we can't persuade them to stop the killing of their own street children? Name a single nation that took positive action when Saddam Hussein gassed 5,000 Kurdish civilians with chemical weapons three years before the Gulf War. War and famine are still, in 1991, devastating the Horn of Africa where, in the past two decades, millions of people have become refugees or have died because of repressive regimes with scant regard for human rights. So long as such regimes are allowed to rule unchallenged, there will be poverty and disease and famine and war. Only one power is strong enough to say to the world's governments 'I will no longer allow this to happen'. That power brought democracy to Eastern Europe. That power won women the vote. Western governments did not lift a finger to save the Kurdish people from slaughter until that power forced them to intervene. That power is public opinion. 'Pressure of opinion a hundred years ago brought about the emancipation of the slaves. It is now for man to insist upon the same freedom for his mind as he has won for his body.' (Peter Benenson, The Observer, 28th May 1961.) Think twice before saying to us 'No, don't give up'. You cannot morally ask us to continue, yet do nothing yourself to help. The strongest voice on earth belongs to you. Use it. Join us. -------------------------------------------------------------- THE PICTURES THAT ACCOMPANIED THIS MESSAGE. 1. [A jackbooted policeman kicks a demonstrator on the ground.] "Chile 1984. The United Nations Declaration of Human Rights bites the dust yet again." 2. [A close up of a prisoner's manacled hands.] "Only 13 UN member governments escaped cricitism in our 1990 review of human rights abuse. No, the British government isn't one of them". (Nor was the US government.) 3. [Government vigilantes display a severed human head.] "Philippines 1988. Poor Norberto Galines, seized and beheaded for no apparent reason by government agents while weeding his field." 4. [A heap of dead bodies piled in a tiled room.] "China 1989. The dead bodies of students stacked in piles after they had called for democracy in Tiananmen Square." 5. [A sorrowing, madonna-like woman with child holds out a photograph to passers by.] "Peru 1984. A woman holds up a picture of her 'disappeared' husband, in the cruel hopes that he is still alive." 6. [The head and shoulders of a body emerging from earth grave. The face bears grimace of painful, violent death.] "Iran 1988. The body of an executed political prisoner unearthed by relatives searching an unmarked grave." 7. [A row of bloodstained bodies of dead women, one of them pregnant, and young girls.] "El Salvador 1981. Here lie a few of the 40,000 forgotten victims of their government's campaign of terror." 8. [A boy, stripped to his underpants, bound hanging by his wrists and ankles from an iron bar. He was later killed.] "Brazil 1984. The 'parrot perch', a torture popular with governments across the world, photographed here by a police inspector." 9. [The corpses of a young woman and her baby lie in a street.] "Iraq 1988. 5,000 die when Saddam Hussein uses chemical weapons on Kurds at Halabja. Six months later, Britain doubles his trade credits." 10. [Two tiny cupboard-like solitary confinement cells.] "Nicaragua 1986. Can you imagine spending days in one of these pitch dark, airless cells which measure 1 x 2 metres?" 11. [Two policeman lounge in a room with an electric chair.] "USA 1990. In an electric chair like this one, Jesse Tafero's head caught fire. He took six more minutes to die." 12. [Close up of torture victim's feet, suspended by ropes.] "As you read this, people are being tortured or ill-treated by governments in almost 100 countries." 13. [Two guerrillas walk down a street, one with the top half, the other with the lower half, of a child's body blown apart by a bomb.] "Lebanon 1982. A child is torn apart. Until we learn to respect human rights there will be no end to poverty and disease and famine and war." From antennae at gn.apc.org Sun May 26 14:32:25 1991 From: antennae at gn.apc.org (antennae at gn.apc.org) Date: 26 May 1991 13:32:25 +0000 (GMT) Subject: How to join Amnesty Message-ID: If, having read this, you would like to join Amnesty, please use the following information to make contact. This coupon applies in Britain. In other countries you should make contact with your local groups. Please tell them you have joined as a result of seeing this message. --------------------------------------------------------------- COUPON (Download, print out, fill in and send in the normal way.) I wish to be a member of Amnesty International. I enclose my membership fee of (please tick one of the following): 15 UK pounds [ ] (individual adult membership) 20 UK pounds [ ] (family membership) 6 UK pounds [ ] (old age pensioner) 6 UK pounds [ ] (student, claimant, under 18) I wish additionally to donate (please tick as appropriate): 250 UK pounds [ ] 100 UK pounds [ ] 50 UK pounds [ ] 25 UK pounds [ ] 10 UK pounds [ ] Other [ ] Please debit my Access/Visa/Mastercard (delete as appropriate) [ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | ] Card expiry date [ | | | ] Signed____________________________________________________ Mr/Ms_____________________________________________________ Address___________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________ ______________________________Postcode____________________ (NB: If using a credit card, please give your address as held by the credit card company.) Please post completed form to: Amnesty International British Section FREEPOST London EC1B 1HE In other countries please contact your local Amnesty organisation for membership amounts and mailing address. From antennae at gn.apc.org Sun May 26 14:40:03 1991 From: antennae at gn.apc.org (antennae at gn.apc.org) Date: 26 May 1991 13:40:03 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Call for massive human rights push Message-ID: The Amnesty British Section's 30th anniversary message that you have just read was written jointly by Amnesty and by the founder directors of Antennae Communication. The rallying cry of 'I will no longer allow this to happen' was originally devised by Antennae as the theme of an Amnesty membership drive currently being carried out in Body Shops all over the world. In the aftermath of the Gulf War, we feel strongly that the time is right for a massive public awareness campaign that will send a clear message to the world's governments that we, the peoples of the planet, are determined that those who govern in our name shall act MORALLY, rather than according to the cynical dictates of realpolitik. We invite all those who are interested in helping to set up and carry out such a campaign to contact us in order to decide how we can best carry it forward. (Please refer to our earlier 'EUNOMIA' postings and to the text of our previous Amnesty ads, all posted in this conference.) We would also like to be informed of any/all similar projects already underway in order to avoid duplicating others' efforts. Antennae Communication is a small group of people in the media, law and the environmental movement who have come together in order to promote ecological progress (in environmental, human rights, developmental, ethnic and 'green business' issues) by all available means of communication. Greennet is one of those means. For more information about our work, clients and objectives, please mbx us or write to: Antennae Communication Suite 415 211 Piccadilly London W1V 9LD [To see examples of work we have done for Amnesty and the Kurdish Disaster Fund please check items 4, 8, 23, 37, 45 and 50 on this conference.] q From antennae at gn.apc.org Sun May 26 14:44:01 1991 From: antennae at gn.apc.org (antennae at gn.apc.org) Date: 26 May 1991 13:44:01 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Check in for human rights NGOs Message-ID: Any organisations or individuals interested in becoming involved in a human rights campaign as outlined above, please check in here by responding to this message and leaving your name and address. We will mail you an information pack. Or contact: Antennae Communication Suite 415 211 Piccadilly London W1V 9LD From kurds at gn.apc.org Sun May 26 14:48:01 1991 From: kurds at gn.apc.org (kurds at gn.apc.org) Date: 26 May 1991 13:48:01 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Check in for human rights NGOs References: Message-ID: Kurdish Cultural Centre 14 Stannary Street London SE11 4AA 071-735 0918 From aldopacific at gn.apc.org Tue May 28 23:51:21 1991 From: aldopacific at gn.apc.org (aldopacific at gn.apc.org) Date: 28 May 1991 22:51:21 +0000 (GMT) Subject: Check in for human rights NGOs References: Message-ID: Alastair McIntosh Centre for Human Ecology Edinburgh University 15 Buccleuch Place Edinburgh 031 650 3469 (Can't undertake anything new personally, but will display material in the Centre) From antennae at gn.apc.org Wed May 29 23:09:41 1991 From: antennae at gn.apc.org (antennae at gn.apc.org) Date: 29 May 1991 22:09:41 +0000 (GMT) Subject: ai.general now on Greennet Message-ID: Hooray, Peacenet's ai.general conference (AI stands for Amnesty International) is now available on GreenNet. Simply type ai.general at the Conf? prompt. From aicoord at igc.apc.org Thu May 30 06:06:03 1991 From: aicoord at igc.apc.org (aicoord at igc.apc.org) Date: Wed, 29 May 1991 22:06:03 -0700 (PDT) Subject: ai.general now on Greennet References: Message-ID: All of us at AI USA feel the same way - hooray! Welcome. From support at peg.pegasus.oz.au Thu May 30 05:16:01 1991 From: support at peg.pegasus.oz.au (support at peg.pegasus.oz.au) Date: 30 May 1991 14:16:01 +1000 Subject: ai.general now on Greennet References: Message-ID: What is the purpose of the ai.general conference please? We were not aware of its existence. Param Pegasus support