26
Sptember 2003
2. "CPT delegation finishes torture inquiries in Turkey", A delegation of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) finished its inquiries in Turkey and is expected to issue a report on its findings in future months, said ABhaber news portal.
3. "Ready for the truth? Iraq is getting better", The voice of Iraqis who supported war over continued tyranny has been hushed from the very beginning.
4. "Nicosia: Turkey killed UN plan", Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos yesterday blamed “longstanding Turkish intransigence” for the failure to reunify the divided island and expressed hope that the Turkish Cypriots will soon return to negotiations.
5. "Kirkuk mayor urges Iraqi Governing Council to speed up Kurds' return", The Kurdish mayor of Iraq's oil-rich city of Kirkuk called on the interim Governing Council Friday to act promptly to ensure the return of "hundreds of thousands" of Kurds displaced from the northern region under the former regime.
6. "EU reforms pave way for possible acquittal of Turkish rights activist", A Turkish prosecutor on Thursday asked for the acquittal of 13 people, most of them human rights activists, after terrorist charges levelled against them were scrapped under recent legal reforms to boost the country chances of joining the European Union.
1. - KurdishMedia - "Mahmud Osman: No entrance to Turkey in south Kurdistan":
Suleimanya (Iraq) / 26 September 2003
By Nermin Osman
On Wednesday at 5.00 pm, Dr Mahmud Osman, a member of the Iraqi Governing
Council, gave a speech at the University of Sulemani, Raparen Hall,in
South Kurdistan, about the current situation in Kurdistan and the
future prospectus.
Dr Mahmud Osman was also interviewed on Kurdistan TV, the KDP satellite
TV station.
After a short introduction, Dr Osman started his speech with the issue
of the governing council and its achievements so far as well as its
aims:
- A new law which allows every Iraqi to have his or her ID without any ethnic differences, Arab, Kurd or others.
- A new law for owning land and trying to eliminate the effect of Arabisation in Kurdistan.
- Preparing a new system for the media in Iraq which is to include a general committee for media controlling.
- Establishing a ministry for encouraging refugees and asylum seekers to come back from Europe.
- Full legal de-Baathification of Iraq.
- Re-employing people expelled from their work by the Baathists.
Regarding the Kurdish question Dr Osman said that Kurds needed to unite both the administrations of PUK and KDP when they deal with the U.S. to get better results.
Turkey not welcome
On the issue of Turkey sending peacekeepers to Iraq, Dr Osman said
that they as the Iraqi Governing Council are trying to make a decision
to prevent countries neighbouring Iraq from sending peacekeeping forces
and that they have told both U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell
and U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Dr Osman added that if it is necessary to bring Turkish troops into
Iraq, the U.S. can airlift them from Kuwait to Ramadi in Iraq, never
via Kurdistan.
On the issue of Turkey sending peacekeepers to Iraq, in his Kurdistan
TV interview, Dr Osman was highly critical of a Turkish role in Iraq
and said that they made it clear to the Americans that the Turkish
army was not wanted in Kurdistan. He said that except
for the Iraqi Turkmen Front, no Turkmen organisation wanted the Turkish
army in Kurdistan.
Dr Osman added that the Turkmen population are very well aware that
the Turkish army will come to Kurdistan to steer problems between
Kurds and Turkmen. When they leave, he said, the Turkmens understand
that they leave them behind to face the consequences.
Dr Osman said that Turkey tries to impose several conditions for a
troop deployment in Iraq in its negotiations with the U.S, among them
attacking the Kurdish party Kurdistan Freedom and Democracy Congress,
adding that this would not be acceptable.
Dr Osman said in the Kurdistan TV interview that the Iraqi Governing
Council will issue a statement banning the presence of armies of neighbouring
countries in Iraq.
2. - Turkish Daily News - "CPT delegation finishes torture inquiries in Turkey":
ANKARA / 26 September 2003
A delegation of the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture (CPT) finished its inquiries in Turkey and is expected to issue a report on its findings in future months, said ABhaber news portal.
The CPT delegation visited prisons and police stations in Diyarbakir, Bismil, Cinar, Mersin, Adana between September 7-15 and inquired about torture and ill-treatment cases.
Head of the CPT Silvia Casale, Austrian Renate Kicker, Swiss Jean-Pierre Restelline, Brit Derrick Pounder and CPT Executive Secretary Trever Stevens were in the delegation, which held meetings with Human Rights Association representatives and health association officials in Diyarbakir and Adana.
The delegation made unexpected visits to some prisons and police stations in Turkey during nine days.
They also met Adana Prosecutor Cemal Sahir Gurcay, State Security
Court Prosecutor Fevzi Elmas, Diyarbakir Prosecutor Huseyin Canan
and Diyarbakir State Security Court Prosecutor Saban Erturk.
3. - The Daily Star (Lebanon) - "Ready for the truth? Iraq is getting better":
26 September 2003
Half a century ago, in a blistering denunciation of the Korean War,
the British war correspondent Reginald Thompson wrote: “It was
clear that there was something profoundly disturbing about this campaign
and something profoundly disturbing about its commander in chief.”
Thompson’s words could equally well apply to the US-led campaign
in Iraq a campaign marked by overblown claims, disingenuous
climbdowns and an embarrassing absence of weapons of mass destruction.
They could also refer to its commander in chief, US President George
W. Bush, the head of a cabal that seeks to install a client regime
in Iraq as a first step to extending American-Israeli control across
the region. Disturbing, indeed.
But there is something disturbing, too, about the way opponents of
the war have portrayed events in Iraq. Visceral distrust of Bush and
his sidekick, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, has brought with
it a disregard both for facts and for the victims of the Iraqi tyrant,
Saddam Hussein. Arab commentators have had no shame in urging their
Iraqi brothers, exhausted by three major wars and more than a decade
of sanctions, to start a new war “of liberation” against
their liberators. Western commentators critical of the war have luxuriated
in the failures of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA)
failures that condemn Iraqis to protracted hardship.
Disaster has been prophesied, self-servingly, at every turn: The war
would be protracted (it wasn’t, and most Iraqis had no direct
experience of it); tens of thousands would die in the battle for Baghdad
(they didn’t); and now, in the words of a British Arabist, “even
the most optimistic and moderate Iraqis fear the very real prospect
of civil war.”
Not those I know. Not yet. Nor those polled in August by the American
research company Zogby International, which found that 70 percent
of Iraqis believe their country will be better not worse
in five years’ time.
The voice of Iraqis who supported war over continued tyranny has been
hushed from the very beginning. Organizers of the great anti-war demonstrations
in Britain confiscated banners saying “Freedom for Iraq”
and seized photographs of the victims of Halabja, the Kurdish town
where Saddam’s army gassed 5,000 civilians. No space was given
to people like Freshta Raper, who lost 21 relatives in Halabja and
wanted to ask: “How many protestors have asked an Iraqi mother
how she felt when she was forced to watch her son being executed?
How many know that these mothers had to applaud as their sons died
or be executed themselves? What is more moral? Freeing an oppressed,
brutalized people from a vicious tyrant or allowing millions to continue
suffering indefinitely?”
In mid-summer, I spent over a month in Iraq. What I found there did
not correspond to what was being reported most crucially, that
the liberators were widely perceived as occupiers. That simply wasn’t
true. In Baghdad, where US forces had permitted widespread looting
(although not as much as reported) and where security and services
were virtually nonexistent, attitudes toward the Americans were mixed.
But even in Baghdad, even with Saddam and his sons still lurking in
the shadows, the sense of relief at the toppling of the regime was
palpable.
A university lecturer showed me the bakery below her apartment where
educators who fell foul of the ousted dictator were burned alive and
said: “We could smell it. Iraq was a prison above ground and
a mass grave beneath it. I feel as if I have been born again.”
Outside Baghdad, in the Shiite south, the mood was overwhelmingly
upbeat. In Basra, ordinary people gave the thumbs-up at the mere sight
of a Briton. In Najaf, a waiter blew kisses (from behind the backs
of visiting Iranian mullahs). In Amara, streets were buzzing well
after midnight.
Today, the line being peddled is that there is growing popular support
for a war of resistance against the CPA and Iraqis working with it.
It is said that Iraq is a security-free zone threatened with “Lebanonization.”
Bad news sells; good news doesn’t. But there is still, if only
just, good news in Iraq: Unemployment remains a huge problem, but
despite the slow reconstruction effort more people have jobs and some
salaries have risen, particularly for qualified people seeking work
in the private sector. Shops are overflowing with imported goods;
food prices are lower than they were during Saddam’s last years.
Approximately 85 percent of primary and secondary schools have reopened.
Some 55,000 Iraqis have enrolled in law-enforcement services and an
increasing number of Iraqi policemen are on the streets, directing
traffic, guarding buildings and occasionally enforcing the law.
Many Iraqis welcomed with enthusiasm the Cabinet appointed earlier
this month by the Governing Council. “These are people who have
been to Harvard, Oxford and MIT … educated people,” said
an Iraqi opponent of the war on a visit to Beirut. “Some of Saddam
Husseins’s ministers hadn’t got beyond primary school.”
At the neighborhood level, the nine District Councils of Baghdad that
form the City Council meet regularly and appear to be working harmoniously.
“To the credit of the CPA civilians who work with the City Council,
the degree of transparency and cooperation in the work of the council
is impressive,” says Rend Rahim Francke of the Iraq Foundation,
a nongovernmental organization (NGO) working for democracy and human
rights.
Outside Baghdad, despite the explosion that killed Ayatollah Mohammed
Baqer al-Hakim last month, there is greater security than in the capital,
crime is lower and services, including electricity, are more available.
All Iraqi cities and 85 percent of its smaller towns have fully functioning
municipalities. “Self-government, long advocated for Iraq, appears
to be working well when put into practice,” says Francke.
It is worth stating the obvious, so momentous is it: For the first
time in almost half a century, Iraq has no executions, no political
prisoners, no torture and no limits on freedom of expression. Having
a satellite dish no longer means going to jail or being executed.
There are over 167 newspapers and magazines that need no police permit
and suffer no censorship, over 70 political parties and dozens of
NGOs. Old professional associations have held elections and new associations
have sprung up. People can demonstrate freely and do.
The occupying forces got off to a wretched start. The first US proconsul,
retired General Jay Garner, was an unmitigated disaster, stepping
jovially through Iraq’s ruins, old and new, like a child in an
adventure playground. His successor, Paul Bremer, began badly, disbanding
the Iraqi Army and making immediate enemies of half a million serving
and retired officers and NCOs. He has yet to announce a timetable
for restoring sovereignty to the Iraqi people. However, he has accepted
the need for greater reliance on Iraqis albeit in a slow and
incremental manner that will not control the escalating violence
and has set about transforming a bankrupt economy burdened with a
Stalinist industrial structure and three decades of mismanagement.
The concern now is that the Iraqis who stand to benefit from American
contracts are a handful of war profiteers nearly all of them
Sunnis whose capital came from cooperating with the old regime.
Former business associates of Saddam’s late, unlamented son Odai
have already won big reconstruction contracts. Iraqis know who these
people are. The Iraqi National Congress had been working on de-Baathification
of the economy since before the former dictator disappeared, and is
still doing so. Bremer should worry less about Al-Qaeda and more about
bankrolling those who, for as long as Saddam remains alive, will be
hedging their bets on the future.
Julie Flint is a veteran journalist based in Beirut and London. She
wrote this commentary for THE DAILY STAR
4. - Kathimerini (Greece) - "Nicosia: Turkey killed UN plan":
UNITED NATIONS / 26 September 2003
Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos yesterday blamed “longstanding Turkish intransigence” for the failure to reunify the divided island and expressed hope that the Turkish Cypriots will soon return to negotiations.
[Meanwhile, Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou met with his Turkish counterpart, Abdullah Gul, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. Both stressed the need for a peace deal on Cyprus before next December, when European Union officials are to discuss Turkey’s request for a date for the initiation of its EU accession talks. The two ministers also agreed on the need to boost bilateral confidence-boosting measures.]
Papadopoulos told the General Assembly that the lack of a settlement on Cyprus by the May 1, 2004 date for it to join the EU would create “practical problems” which, nevertheless, can be dealt with. “We understand and share the bitterness of all involved for the failure,” he said, adding that “we should not give up.”
“We hope that soon it will be possible for the other side to realize that they have to return to the negotiating table, cooperate constructively with the (UN) secretary-general and demonstrate the necessary political will to yield a settlement,” Papadopoulos said.
He blamed Turkey for the impasse, saying “longstanding Turkish intransigence has a few months ago thwarted what was probably the strongest ever initiative of the United Nations for finding a solution in Cyprus.”
Papadopoulos said his government continues to count on UN support and involvement to reach a settlement.
[Papadopoulos and Papandreou were due to meet UN Secretary-General
Kofi Annan on the sidelines of the assembly.]
5.
- AFP - "Kirkuk mayor urges Iraqi Governing Council to speed
up Kurds' return":
KIRKUK (Iraq) / September 26, 2003
The Kurdish mayor of Iraq's oil-rich city of Kirkuk called on the
interim Governing Council Friday to act promptly to ensure the return
of "hundreds of thousands" of Kurds displaced from the northern
region under the former regime.
The US-installed council should quickly take a decision that would
enable "hundreds of thousands of evicted Kurds to return in a
fair manner that would not undermine the unity" of the multi-ethnic
city, Abdul Rahman Mustafa told AFP.
Police on Thursday night arrested 15 Kurds who built homes on public
land after returning to Kirkuk, from which they were displaced by
the regime of ousted president Saddam Hussein.
Kurds accused the deposed regime of pursuing an active policy of settling
Arabs from central and southern Iraq in and around Kirkuk in order
to change its emographic character.
Tensions have been on the rise in the multi-ethnic province of 800,000
to 850,000 inhabitants, who include Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen and Assyrian
Christians, since Saddam's regime was ousted by US-led forces in April.
Kurds have been trying to recover homes occupied by Arabs, while many
others had their homes destroyed under the former regime. Some Kurds
have been camping in the city's sports stadium.
The mayor also invited various ethnic groups to work on designing
a new flag for the city.
6. - EUbusiness - "EU reforms pave way for possible acquittal of Turkish rights activist"
25 September 2003
A Turkish prosecutor on Thursday asked for the acquittal of 13 people, most of them human rights activists, after terrorist charges levelled against them were scrapped under recent legal reforms to boost the country chances of joining the European Union.
In the trial which began in 2001, the prosecution had been intially demanding jail terms of between 4.5 and 7.5 years for the defendants from the Turkish Human Rights Association (IHD) over their opposition to controversial high security jails.
The indictment argued that IHD-organized protests and press statements against the new jails amounted to "aiding and abetting illegal organizations" and also demanded that the IHD's Ankara office be closed.
But at Thursday's hearing before a state security court here, the prosecution asked that all the defendants be acquitted because the penal code article under which they were charged was amended in their favour by parliament in July.
However, the prosecutor argued against returning a computer and several folders and computer disquettes seized by police in a raid on the organization's Ankara office.
One defence lawyer suggested this amounted to continuing pressure against human rights activists.
"In Turkey, the judiciary is used as a tool of political pressure against dissidents and human rights activists...Calling IHD members 'terrorists' and prosecuting them does not benefit Turkey," Yusuf Alatas told the court.
The judge adjourned the case until October 21.
The IHD has come under heavy criticism for its forefront role in the campaign against the new prisons in which one to three-person cells replaced large dormitories for dozens of inmates.
Hundreds of left-wing inmates, linked to outlawed underground groups, went on a long-running hunger strike to protest the new jails, which they said left them socially isolated and more vulnerable to maltreatment.
Sixty-six people, both inmates and relatives fasting in support, have died in a hunger strike to protest the jails.
Improving its poor human rights record is one the conditions Turkey has to fulfill to realize its aspiration to become and EU member.
EU leaders are set to assess Turkey's progress in December 2004 before
deciding whether to open accession talks with the mainly Muslim country.