Turkey/Kurtulus Weekly: Not a natural disaster but a massacre

[ozgurluk at xs4all.nl]

Not a natural disaster but a massacre

We lost 150 of our people in an earthquake in Adana and Ceyhan which
registered a strength of 6.3 on the Richter scale. The rulers of this
land mocked the people by saying "We got off lightly", and as usual
they shifted the blame from themselves by talking of "divine
intervention". And we know from experience that in two or three days
the families of those who died will be left to their own devices to
face hunger, poverty and powerlessness. 

Are we condemned to live with this pain?

Floods, earthquakes, workplace accidents... The people who die are the
workers!

The deaths follow closely one after another. Not even a month has
passed since the disastrous flood in Bartin and the surrounding
area. Now the state is blaming two or three entrepreneurs for the
deaths in the earthquake. But have no fear, not even those
entrepreneurs will receive their merited punishment. In the flood a
month back, exactly 52 bridges were destroyed and streets were ripped
up like paper. Has a single one of the entrepreneurs who built the
bridges and streets or the officials who gave the permits perhaps been
hauled before a court and found guilty?   

Has a single one of the builders or those of the authorities who
cooperated with them perhaps been punished in the case of the Erzincan
earthquake not so long ago, when houses crumpled like cardboard boxes?
Hardly. Moreover, nobody will be punished. 

Because this system is a system of robbery. All the system parties are
candidates for power in order to win a bigger share of the loot for
themselves. The aim of their rule is to cream off state money, get
their paws on funding and give the go-ahead to every form of dirty
business and illegal building work, all in return for a bribe. None of
the mainstream parties is going to change this system.  

This state can offer the people nothing. Because all it thinks of is
its own self-interest. 

The task forces it sets up and the aid it sends are there for show,
and the show is a transitory one at that. We have witnessed this on
dozens of occasions. Since the state pays insufficient attention to
the welfare of the people, it only pretends to be concerned for as
long as the disasters are a subject the media are interested in. When
attention moves on, everything and everybody is left to
fate. Everything is like before. Normality returns. From time to time
debts are rescheduled or interest payments cancelled to appease
popular anger, but even then, they are brought back into force later,
sometimes under more onerous conditions. 

They have made injustice and oppression a part of life. 

The people of Adana and Ceyhan booed the chairmen of the system
parties when they came into the earthquake zone. They were right to do
that, but it wasn't enough. The heads of the system parties are to
blame for our problems. And what we face is not limited to disasters
like these.  

The Susurluk state continues to murder and terrorise. The terror we
live under is clear enough just by looking at the events of the last
few months. Armoured cars attacked government employees on Kizilay
Square in Ankara.  On May Day the police attacked demonstrators and
hundreds were arrested. In Bolu, Istanbul and Ankara dozens of
revolutionaries, patriots and ordinary people were attacked by civil
fascist bands and were killed and wounded as a result. Four of the
Front's people disappeared in police custody.  The attacks on
prisoners and their families or on the friends and families of the
disappeared have not ceased. 


http://www.ozgurluk.org/kurtulus

-- 
Press Agency Ozgurluk
For justice, democracy and human rights in Turkey and Kurdistan!
Website: http://www.ozgurluk.org                          
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