AKIN Urges UNHCR To Support Kurdish

[kurd-l at burn.ucsd.edu]

From: Arm The Spirit <ats at locust.cic.net>
Subject: AKIN Urges UNHCR To Support Kurdish Refugees

From: AKIN <akin at kurdish.org>
Subject: AKIN urges UNHCR to Support Kurdish Refugees


                                Press Release # 17
                                December 21, 1996


UNHCR Must Support The Refugees At Atrush Camp

(The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has decided to close
down the Atrush Camp in southern Kurdistan, northern Iraq.  The American
Kurdish Information Network in a letter to Ms. Sadako Ogata, the High
Commissioner for Refugees, urges her to desist from such a course of
action.  The text of the letter follows.)

        We write to express our indignation and dismay over your office's
decision to close down the Atrush Camp in northern Iraq.  As you know, the
residents of this camp are Kurds of Turkey.  They first moved into the camp
in March of 1994.  Since then, others have joined them; today, they number
some 15 thousand frail people.
        On May 16, 1994, a group of Kurdish parliamentarians from Turkey
visited this camp to prepare a report as to why these Kurds had decided to
go below the "border" as opposed to leaving for large Turkish cities as
their predecessors had done because of the Turkish war that has devastated
the rural Kurdistan.  Interviews conducted with one villager after the
other revealed that they all had been harassed, sometimes attacked and in
several instances subjected to torture and aerial bombardment for alleged
ties to the members of the Kurdish armed opposition, the PKK.  A 70 year
old refugee was quoted as saying, "Our village was shelled for days.  My
house was destroyed."
        On October 1, 1996, Amnesty International undertook a world-wide
campaign to highlight torture, killings and the acts of disappearance in
Turkey.  The European Committee for the Prevention of Torture in its report
describes the practice of torture in Turkey as "widespread."  The UN
Committee on Torture uses the term "systematic."
        The Turkish government was unhappy to have its own Kurds flee from
persecution lest they would be revealed in the press the to the world at
large.  For years, they called for the camp's closure so that these
refugees, mostly children and elderly people, would not tarnish their
"protected" image. Now it appears that the United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees has decided to do the Turkish government a favor.  The Atrush
camp is slated for closure.
        We wish to register our indignation and urge you to reconsider your
decision.  Sending these people back to Turkey will only provide new names
to the list of Kurdish "activists" hunted in broad daylight by members of
the shadowy death squads linked with the Turkish security forces.  In a
report released today and noted by Reuter, the respected Turkish Human
Rights Association spokesman Avni Kalkan notes that, "Only comparing
figures of November 1995 and November 1996 one can see rights violations
have not fallen, but increased."
        Turkey, clearly, can not provide security and safety to these
Kurdish refugees.  We urge your office to continue to supervise the Atrush
Camp or assist these refugees to find asylum in a third country.  We would
be most appreciative of a timely response to this humanitarian crisis as
the inhospitable Kurdish winter is setting in.


----
American Kurdish Information Network (AKIN)
2623 Connecticut Avenue NW #1
Washington, DC 20008-1522

Tel: (202) 483-6444
Fax: (202) 483-6476
E-mail: akin at kurdish.org
Home Page: http://www.kurdistan.org
----

The American Kurdish Information Network (AKIN) provides a public service
to foster Kurdish-American understanding and friendship


-----------------------------------------------------------------
Arm The Spirit is an autonomist/anti-imperialist information
collective based in Toronto, Canada. Our focus includes a wide 
variety of material, including political prisoners, national 
liberation struggles, armed communist resistance, anti-fascism, 
the fight against patriarchy, and more. We regularly publish our 
writings, research, and translation materials in our magazine and
bulletins called Arm The Spirit. For more information, contact:

Arm The Spirit
P.O. Box 6326, Stn. A
Toronto, Ontario
M5W 1P7 Canada

E-mail: ats at etext.org
WWW: http://burn.ucsd.edu/~ats
FTP: ftp.etext.org --> /pub/Politics/Arm.The.Spirit
ATS-L Archives: http://burn.ucsd.edu/~archive/ats-l
-----------------------------------------------------------------

 ++++ stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal ++++
   ++++ if you agree copy these lines to your sig ++++
     ++++ see http://www.xs4all.nl/~tank/spg-l/sigaction.htm ++++