14
March 2005
2. "Turkish PM under fire for blaming media over controversial demo clampdown", Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stood accused of infringing press freedom on Friday after he blamed the country's media for triggering condemnation from the European Union with their coverage of a heavy-handed police clampdown against a women's rally.
3. "Turk police probe demo violence but defend tactics", Turkey's police said on Friday they were investigating pictures of policemen beating and kicking protesters that shocked the European Union, but defended using violence to scatter the women's rights rally.
4. "Turkey's Army Warns over Rising Numbers of PKK Militants", the Turkish Land Force commander Yasar Büyükanit said that large numbers of rebels based in northern Iraq had crossed into Turkey.
5. "Kurdish popular songs banned in Turkey", the Turkish government does not even tolerate animals with Kurdish or Armenian names. Press Release by the Kurdistan National Congress.
6. "Analysis: Kurds and Shiites agree - for now", the democratic process in Iraq edged another step forward Thursday when the Shiite Muslim alliance reached agreement with the Kurds over the appointment of a prime minister.
7. "Kurds remember “Red Security” hell", fourteen years on from the Kurdish uprising, one of the Baath regime’s most notorious torture centres is open to the public.
8. "Syrian society begins to crack under international pressure", with the country feeling under siege over the Lebanon issue, voices of domestic dissent are being silenced.
1. - Sunday Herhald (UK) - "Tortured minds":
13 March 2005/ by Jean Rafferty
ThE fluidity in Beyoglu No 2 criminal court in Istanbul
borders on chaos. The judge is away training for the introduction of
the Turkish penal code, his deputy is sick, and it seems nobody wants
to take on the case of dissident writer and publisher, Ragip Zarakolu.
Why would they? There is the Turkish government to answer to if you
come up with the wrong verdict, and world opinion to contend with, in
the shape of eight international observers, a chap from the British
Consulate, two German cameramen and assorted supporters and reporters
clogging up the corridors. Not to mention the wider opinion they represent.
For a government which desperately wants to join the European Union,
the Turks have an unfortunate penchant for arresting their political
opponents. It doesn’t take much to put you on the wrong side of
the law here. One of the charges against Ragip Zarakolu is of insulting
the memory of Kemal Ataturk, founder of the modern Turkish state, who
died in 1938. In mature democracies such as our own, where Blair-baiting
and royalty-ribbing are the media’s favourite bloodsports, half
the nation’s press would be in Pentonville if such a charge existed.
“Can you imagine if there was a law like that about Churchill?”
asks Alexis Krikorian of the International Publishers Association (IPA).
We are in Istanbul to see Zarakolu tried for instigating racial hatred “in a way dangerous for public security”. He has dared to suggest that the Kurdish people in Iraq might have the right to determine their own fate.
On this same day in the Turkish capital, Ankara, Professor Fikret Baskaya is also standing trial for accusing Turkey of being a “torture state” in a book written initially in the early 1990s and reprinted in 2003. A team of international observers is watching his trial too.
Zarakolu’s article in a radical daily newspaper criticised the Turkish government for suggesting that the Iraqi Kurds’ desire to form a state was justification for the war. In the end the government refused to support the war, which makes this whole process somewhat surreal. Zarakolu is now in court for a political position that the government itself supports.
A brave judge is eventually prevailed upon to hear the case and those who can squash into the small courtroom. Its wood veneer-panelled walls are reminscent of council houses in Glasgow’s east end, and there is none of the pomp of a British court – nor any of the jury. Judge and prosecutor sit together under a portrait of Ataturk . They wear cheap-looking duster coats with red stand-up collars; the defence lawyer’s collar is green and maroon. They could be janitors from opposing high schools.
But for all their utilitarian appearance, the Turkish courts are far more deadly in approach than our own. There are currently 60 writers facing trial there, including Austrian journalist, Sandra Bakutz, who simply went to Turkey in February to cover the trial of 100 left-wing activists. She is charged with membership of a banned organisation and could face up to 15 years in prison. Other “criminals” include cartoonist Musa Kart, whose caricature of the Turkish prime minister with a cat’s head earned him a 5000 lira fine.
It is hard not to see the proceedings in Beyoglu’s court as a caricature of the law. The judge clearly knows nothing about the case and has to be given all the details. Ragip Zarakolu stands alone in the dock and reads a prepared speech. “Being against a war can never be classed as a crime. Criticising genocide can never be a crime ... I demand acquittal.”
Instead, he is offered postponement until May, even though his defence lawyer points out that under the new penal code such a charge could no longer be brought then. As the code comes in on April Fools’ Day, perhaps the judge is wise not to accept that argument. It turns out that Zarakolu’s co-defendant, the newspaper’s editor, should have been in the dock with him, but with 300 charges outstanding against him he’s had the good sense to abscond to Switzerland.
“It’s Kafkaesque,” says Zarakolu. “Just harassment. It’s like our story of the wolf and the lamb at the riverside. The wolf says, ‘I will eat you. You are making my water dirty.’ The lamb replies, ‘That’s impossible. You are upstream of me. It is only you who could dirty my water.’ The wolf says, ‘It's not important. I want to eat you’.”
Ragip Zarakolu has spent a total of two years in prison, some of it in isolation. His publishing house has been firebombed; he has had constant financial struggles, but still he carries on, not just writing his own articles but publishing and distributing radical literature by others.
He was born in 1948 into the family of a high-ranking bureaucrat, an intellectual whose liberal-mindedness – and membership of the democratic party – led to his being sent away from Istanbul and into the wilds of Anatolia. It was a form of banishment, a probationary period to ensure his loyalty. The state-owned mansions that the family lived in clearly provided only limited security.
In 1968, Turkey followed the student protest movement of most of the Western world. Ragip too listened to Joan Baez and Bob Dylan and took part in sit-ins, but unlike many of his European and American contemporaries, he never settled for Coca-Cola consumerism. In 1977, he and his wife Ayse set up a publishing house to print the works of independent thinkers. Their range included classic political theorists such as Tom Paine and John Stuart Mill. They often used foreign writers to say the things Turkish writers could not.
In the 1980s, after the military coup by General Kenan Evren, the couple began publishing works by people who had been in prison. “They were writing their poetry on little pieces of paper, which they sent secretly, sewn into shirts and other things. Nearly half a million were imprisoned in five years. A generation of university students stayed there a long time. My wife and I thought it was very important to get their voices to the outside. The military authorities thought all the younger generation were terrorists but we wanted to show their culture. We published poetry, novels, stories, reportage. Some of them won awards.”
And some of them were sentenced to death. Turkey takes the written word very seriously. Zarakolu and his wife were watched the whole time, their phones tapped. Many other publishers couldn’t take the pressure. They themselves closed their own publishing houses and bookshops. Some people even burned books in their own homes. In the first half of 2004 alone, 15 books were banned.
The Zarakolus did everything openly. Ragip was arrested in 1982; Ayse two years later. She was tortured. During Ragip’s first prison term, in 1973, he had learned what that meant through the stories of fellow-prisoners. “They were hanging people by their hands, using electric shocks, beating people on the soles of their feet. They also tied people to the bed, making them stay there a week without going to the toilet .”
During that period, Ragip Zarakolu collated the information he received into a book, which was published in Belgium. This time around he could only support his wife. Ayse was a remarkable woman who was tried many times and won many humanitarian awards . In 1984, she was arrested because she had given a job to a student who was wanted by the police. They tortured her to find out where he was. She refused to tell them – he was hiding in her mother’s house. “She was a very courageous woman,” says Ragip. “She always managed not to go into depression or helplessness. She felt good because she could do something against power. She felt solidarity with suffering people.”
In 2002, Ayse died of cancer. Her husband was devastated, unable to speak at her funeral. “I lost half of my existence,” he says. “We shared everything.” Ayse’s coffin was carried by a group of Kurdish women, who approached Zarakolu and asked if they could do so.
The “Kurdish question” is one of the country’s most contentious issues. State repression of the 12 million-strong Kurdish population’s language and culture resulted in bloody civil war during the 1980s and 1990s . Both Zarakolus had spoken out openly about human rights abuses, and about the genocide of a million Armenians from 1915 till the establishment of the Turkish state in 1923. “Everywhere men carry the coffins,” says Ragip. “But the women said, ‘She gave a very important struggle for us.’ The Kurdish women carried her coffin a long way. It was a very hard burden.”
Moved by their gesture, the Zarakolus’ older son, Deniz, made an emotional speech at the graveside. “I think Kurdish women will be free some day,” he said. “And they will not forget my mother.”
In Turkey, 40 days is the traditional period of mourning. The anti-terror team waited 40 days after Deniz spoke out; then they came to the family home and took him away for interrogation. H e had said the unforgivable: that Kurdish people might one day be free.
Deniz Zarakolu was acquitted only after legal reforms were introduced. In recent years, in its bid to make itself acceptable to Europe, Turkey has been making piecemeal amendments to its laws. These do not impress the international observers who came to Istanbul.
“What good is a law if it’s not implemented?” asks Alexis Krikorian of IPA. “In December Ragip Zarakolu was acquitted before the State Security Court. As soon as he was acquitted he was charged again. That’s why we’re back again.”
“Turkey keeps saying, ‘We’re a young nation. We need time.’ But they’ve had a lot of time,” says Eugene Schoulgin of International PEN, the worldwide writers’ organisation.
The irony is that many observers believe human rights are just an excuse for the major European nations to keep Turkey out of the European Union . “They can’t let Turkey in,” insists Professor Hasan Unal of Ankara’s Bilkent University. “It’s too big, too alien. Once you let Turkey in you’ll be moving your borders to Iran and Iraq. They should keep Turkey as a buffer state.”
By the year 2020, Turkey’s population, now 72 million and growing at a rate of one million a year, would be the biggest in Europe, giving the country unprecedented influence. Would France and Germany countenance this? Behind closed doors the diplomatic minuet goes on. Last Sunday there were alarming scenes of police brutality in Istanbul during a demonstration for International Women’s Day. Masked police arrested 57 people but it was thei r behaviour that was questioned in the world’s press.
When Europe’s ministers met the Turkish foreign minister in Ankara on Monday he assured them that the police would be investigated. They assured him they were sure that they would. It was cosy, stately if not statesmanlike, and utterly impenetrable. “They’re melting all the criticisms into some kind of diplomatic mish-mash,” says Eugene Schoulgin of International PEN. “It makes it impossible to know what goes on behind the curtains. The public will never know. That’s what worries writers and publishers.”
While in Istanbul, Schoulgin attended a dinner for the European Ambassador, Hansjoerg Kretschmer, thrown by the Marmara group, a Turkish association including 200 important politicians, academics, businessmen, generals, journalists. There were speeches and compliments and empty formalities . Only at the end, did Schoulgin ask how it was possible for the EU to accept a country with so many taboos, a country which will accept no criticism of its policies on Armenians, Kurds, the military, Cyprus or even its founder, Kemal Ataturk.
He got no real answers. Afterwards, many people said that he shouldn’t ask such questions. “I said, ‘I have a feeling I stepped on everyone’s toes at once.’ I laughed and they laughed too, but they didn’t like it.”
In Ankara, Professor Fikret Baskaya was acquitted. Many observers thought the verdict had been decided before a word was said. But in Istanbul Ragip Zarakolu has a further trial pending, on Wednesday, and another book on the Armenian genocide coming out shortly. As it coincides with the 90th anniversary, he does not expect publication to go unnoticed.
Zarakolu is a generous-hearted man, a man who loves people, music, laughter and travel. A man of inexplicable, ineradicable optimism. But on one issue he is as rigid and inflexible as his opponents: “Whether it’s a member of the European Community or not, Turkey must reform. The citizens of Turkey demand their rights.”
* Jean Rafferty went to Istanbul as a representative
of Scottish PEN, in conjunction with English PEN 
2. - AFP - "Turkish PM under fire for blaming media over controversial demo clampdown":
ANKARA / 11 March 2005 / by by Hande Culpan
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan stood accused of infringing press freedom on Friday after he blamed the country's media for triggering condemnation from the European Union with their coverage of a heavy-handed police clampdown against a women's rally.
"The era of the three monkeys is over, Mr prime minister," blared the popular Vatan daily on its front page.
EU membership "looks difficult with this mindset," said the liberal Radikal daily.
In comments that have outraged critics, Erdogan acknowledged that police used excessive force in breaking up Sunday's demonstration, but also lashed out that the media should not have broadcast images of the police response to keep foreign criticism at bay.
"All television channels heaped criticism on the police. Our media basically denounced Turkey to Europe and the world," Erdogan said in a television interview late Wednesday.
Both Turkish and international media gave extensive coverage of the protest in Istanbul to mark International Women's Day on March 8 during which officers hit demonstrators with batons, kicked women who had fallen to the ground and detained more than 60 people.
The outcome was harsh criticism from EU officials at a time when Ankara is readying to begin accession talks with the 25-member bloc on October 3.
Newspaper commentators retaliated by accusing the prime minister -- who once served jailtime for sedition -- of violating freedom of expression and questioned the sincerity of his stated desire to improve rights and liberties in Turkey in order to ease EU accession.
"The prime minister has again uttered unfortunate words. His basic mistake was to suggest that we censor Turkey's mistakes," Vatan said in its editorial.
"It seems that what he wants, even though police may use excessive force, is for the media to play the three monkeys -- not to see, not to hear and not to raise objections -- 'in order not to play into the hands of foreign enemies'," it said.
The liberal Milliyet daily, on the other hand, cautioned Erdogan that his attitude could prove harmful to his country's drive to join the EU.
"It is impossible to understand how Mr Erdogan is undoing his strongest argument in the EU accession process -- that of expanding rights and liberties -- by narrowing freedom of expression," the newspaper said in a commentary.
"The prime minister has described EU membership as the modernisation project for Turkish society. He should start the modernisation in his head," it added.
Erdogan's onslaught over the Istanbul protest was the latest in a growing series of swipes he has taken at the media over a range of subjects, accusing them of exaggeration and even of fabricating stories.
He notably accused the media of writing baseless stories on recent coolness in ties between Turkey and its chief ally the United States, and lashed out over images of thousands of patients waiting in line at state hospitals following a major government reform intended to ease the situation in the overburdened health sector.
Most recently, Erdogan won a court battle against a political cartoonist, who was fined 5,000 lira (nearly 3,000 euros, 4,000 dollars) for depicting him as a cat entangled in a ball of wool over the government's failed efforts to adopt a bill easing conditions for religious school graduates to pursue higher education in fields other than theology.
"It is not right for the government to act emotionally" in the face of press criticism," Omer Faruk Genckaya, a political sciences doctor from Bilkent university, said.
"The government would only harm its own position
and become self-destructive if it loses its calm and clams up,"
he added.
3. - Reuters - "Turk police probe demo violence but defend tactics":
ANKARA / 11 March 2005
Turkey's police said on Friday they were investigating pictures of policemen beating and kicking protesters that shocked the European Union, but defended using violence to scatter the women's rights rally.
EU lawmakers slammed Turkey on Thursday over widely aired television images of police using pepper gas, batons and boots to quell Sunday's demonstration in Istanbul, on the eve of a visit by senior EU officials to discuss Ankara's EU entry bid.
"Police inspectors are conducting intense investigations. The TV records are being examined to detect policemen who used excessive force," Turkish national police spokesman Ramazan Er said in a regular weekly news briefing.
But he added: "Turkish police have the right to use violence like every country's police force."
The violence rattled the EU, which is due to open accession talks with Ankara in October. EU officials said it dented Turkey's image with Europeans already sceptical on whether the large, relatively poor Muslim country belongs in the bloc.
Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul has pledged a full investigation but Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan went on the offensive, saying protesters provoked the police and accusing Turkish media of pandering to the EU by blowing up the incident.
Er said police were restrained in the face of provocation, including chants against the Turkish Republic, and let the protest go ahead even though it had no official clearance. He said at least two policemen were injured and vehicles damaged.
"Despite all these illegal acts, the police allowed the demonstrators to exercise their constitutional right to express their thoughts," Er said.
Turkish newspapers fought back against Erdogan's criticisms.
"Joining Europe will be tough with this mentality," read Friday's banner headline in the Radikal daily. "Erdogan says the problem is not the beatings, but reporting the beatings!"
Vatan carried a picture of three chimpanzees on its front page, labelled "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil".
"The era of the three monkeys is over, Mr Prime Minister,"
the paper said, praising the role of Western media in exposing scandals
such as U.S. soldiers' abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib jail.
4. - NTV / MSNBC - "Army Warns over Rising Numbers of PKK Militants":
The Land Force commander Yasar Büyükanit said that large numbers of rebels based in northern Iraq had crossed into Turkey.
11 March 2005
The commander of Turkey’s Land Forces has warned that the outlawed PKK is again building its strength.
Speaking at a reception for an international defence and aviation fair in Ankara late Thursday, General Yasar Büyükanit said that the developments regarding the rebel group were grave.
The numbers of the PKK militants in Turkey had reached the same levels they had been when PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan was captured in 1999, the General said.
He added that PKK militants based in northern Iraq were
relocating to areas close to the border with Turkey.
5. - KNK - "Kurdish popular songs banned in Turkey":
The Turkish government does not even tolerate animals with Kurdish or Armenian names
BRUSSELS / 13 March 2005
The Court of Diyarbakir (6° Court) has recently prohibited the distribution of Kurdish cassettes of songs by famous Kurdish singers, Xeyro ABBAS, Aynur DOGAN, Ozan KAWA, DIYAR, and AYDIN. This proscription was made in defiance of the fact that the songs had already been authorised by the Ministry of Culture. So 81 government prefects requested, and received, the power to ban the release of these poplar cassettes on the grounds that they “constituted propaganda for a terrorist organisation” under Article 7/2 and 3713.
It is said that the song "keca kurda" (the Kurdish girl), interpreted by one of the most popular Kurdish singer, Aynur DOGAN, was prohibited for using words which encourage girls "to go to the mountains and join the movement of resistance”.
17 December, 2004 was a very important date for Turkey and all the those forces who promote the democratization of Turkey; on 17 December, 2004 the European Council, and its Ministers, decided to give a date for the process of EU membership talks with Turkey which is scheduled to start on 3 October 2005.
Unfortuantely 17 December 2004, did not change anything for the Kurds. The Turkish government still persists in denying the step taken by Kurds for peace and still does not recognize the Kurdish identity, which is makes nonsense of the negotiation process.
The restrictions and prohibitions of the Kurdish language and culture continue, in complete violation of even the elementary rules regarding freedom of expression.
The Turkish government does not even tolerate animals with Kurdish or Armenian names. The Minister of Forestry changed the names on the pretext that animals who carry the name "Kurdistan" or "Armenian" violate the unitary nature of the state and constitution and threaten the security of the State. Therefore "Vulpes Vulpes Kurdistanica" will be changed to "Vulpes Vulpes" (the red fox), "Ovis Armeniana" to "Ovis Orien Anatolicus" (the wild sheep), and "Capreolus Capreolus Armenis" to "Capreolus Capreolus".
Such practises are in total contradiction to statements
made by Abdullah Gul, Minister of Foreign Affairs, during a press conference
with Mr. Olli Rehn, the EU’s new Enlargement Commissioner, that
unconditional freedom of expression exists in Turkey.
6. - UPI - "Analysis: Kurds and Shiites agree - for now":
WASHINGTON / 10 March 2005 / by Roland Flamini
The democratic process in Iraq edged another step forward Thursday when the Shiite Muslim alliance reached agreement with the Kurds over the appointment of a prime minister. The emergence of Ibrahim al Jaafari, the 57-year-old London doctor, to head Iraq's first democratic government in modern times was the successful result of a complex deal between the United Iraq Alliance, the Shiite political coalition, and the Iraqi Kurds.The question was, would it last? Though the clergy-backed Shiite ticket won 140 of the 275 seats in the Iraqi parliament in the Jan 30 election their victory fell short of the two-thirds majority required to elect a new president and to secure the Shiite choice to lead the government.For that they needed the backing of the Kurds, who came in second in the election, winning 75 seats.After days of negotiations, the two groups cobbled up a political deal in which the Kurds exacted a stiff price.
Under the agreement Kurdish leader Jalal Talabani becomes president of Iraq, a largely ceremonial role, and the Kurds get one ministry in the Iraqi cabinet.Over 100,000 Kurds who had been deported from the oil-rich northern city of Kirkuk will have the right to return, and -- most important -- once the government is installed talks will begin on redrawing the lines of the Kurdish enclave in northern Iraq so as to include Kirkuk and its oil wealth.By the last decade of Saddam Hussein's regime the Kurdish north was functioning as a quasi-separate state protected by its own 80,000-strong peshmerga militia.Joint U.S.-British round-the-clock air cover created a no-fly zone that was out of bounds to Iraq's air force.The Kurds want to maintain their autonomy within a federal Iraq, and to receive a larger share of the country's oil revenues."We agreed with the Kurds that these two issues are to be solved through the government and they agreed on this," Ali al Dabagh, a senior Shiite politician was quoted as saying Thursday."We told them that the issues would be discussed as soon as the central government was formed."The redrawing of the regions will be incorporated into Iraq's constitution, which the Iraqis hope to have written by the end of the year.Still unresolved is the future of the peshmerga -- the word means "freedom fighters"-- which Massoud Barzani, Talabani's rival in the Kurdish leadership, wants to keep for local security.It remains to be seen how far the Shiites will be prepared to go in the discussions, with many Iraqis concerned about a de facto partition, and neighboring Turkey ever watchful of the Kurds becoming too independent.The United Iraqi Alliance groups together several Shiite political parties ranging from the secular party led by the outgoing interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi to al Jaafari's conservative Dawa party which has strong religious beliefs.The widespread insurgent violence that scared a number of Iraqis from going to the polls, and the boycott of the election organized by the Sunni Muslims skewered the result.The Shiites, who make up more than 60 percent of the population gained only twice as many seats as the Kurdish minority, which does not exceed 20 percent, but which, protected by its militia, had an almost 90 percent voter turnout.The resulting dependence on Kurdish support has forced the Shiites to accept demands they find hard to stomach.Still, the constant attacks on Kirkuk and the northern oil installations by Sunni insurgents makes the area a hot potato which the new government is probably not unhappy to pass on to the tough-minded Kurds.Oil production is sabotaged by almost daily attacks.On a single day -- Feb 16 -- five separate attacks were reported in the area, including four on the oil pipeline from Kirkuk.The fifth was the murder by unidentified gunmen of Iraqi Army Col. Ibrahim Ahmed who was in charge of pipeline security.Another persuasive argument in favor of reaching a political accommodation with the Kurds were the reports published Thursday that the joint Barzani-Talabani Kurdish leadership was said to be considering a proposal from Iraq's Turkoman minority to form an alliance that would create a protective buffer zone between the Kurds and other parts of Iraq.
The Turkomen -- for the most part Muslims of Turkish descent,
and under the protective eye of Ankara -- occupy an area contiguous
to the Kurdish region starting from near the Syrian border in the west
and extending northward.Its population of 2 million accounts for 2 percent
of the Iraqi total.The reports say they are proposing that the Kurds
back Turkoman self rule in return for Turkoman support of Kurdish autonomy.An
independent Turkoman with an army trained and equipped by Turkey would
form a protective barrier against any Arab military threat from the
south and east.Having thus established a Turkish military presence inside
Iraq, Ankara would then no longer raise objections to Kurdish autonomy
-- or so the argument goes.Talabani and Barzani are said to be so keen
on the idea that they are offering the Turkomen a 25 percent share in
the oil revenues from Kirkuk -- with the Kurds keeping 75 percent.But
a Turkish source in Washington expressed skepticism about the report
Thursday, but he said its publication would "certainly have helped
concentrate the minds of the Shiites" on the question of giving
the Kurds what they want.Speaking on condition of anonymity he argued
that (1) Ankara was less interested in an independent Turkoman than
in blocking an oil-rich, independent Kurdistan; 2) such an attempt to
fragment Iraq would be strongly opposed by both the Shiites and the
Sunnis, and could have serious repercussions; (3) Washington wouldn't
allow it.
7. - IWPR - "Kurds remember “Red Security”
hell":
Fourteen years on from the Kurdish uprising, one of the Baath regime’s
most notorious torture centres is open to the public.
SULAIMANIYAH / 11 March 2005 / by Rebaz Mahmood*
Hiwa Jamal and five of his friends are on a T-55 tank – but they are holding flowers, not weapons of war. Smiling, the students hold the narcissus blooms up to the foreground of a photograph that is being taken.
The tank is part of an exhibition at the site once known as Amna Surak, or Red Security, because its external walls were painted red - a macabre reflection of the suffering inside, where Kurds were being tortured and murdered in their thousands.
In commemoration of the March 7, 1991 Kurdish uprising against Saddam Hussein’s regime, the Red Security building in the northern city of Sulaimaniyah is now a museum where visitors can learn about the history of this region’s fight for autonomy.
Fourteen years ago, nobody would have dared come close to this building, and it was said that even the birds didn’t dare land here. But now Saddam’s regime is gone and students are on the front terrace, singing their national anthem, waving the Kurdish flag and distributing bouquets of flowers.
Red Security consists of six buildings. One of them was the administrative block and the others hold cells – the average size of which was just under two metres square.
In the office of the security manager who would issue orders for the arrest and torture of Kurds, there now hang large cages containing around 70 doves. "These birds are symbols of the peace that the Kurds wanted," said Sarwar Abdullah, a museum guide.
The total number of those arrested, tortured and killed is unknown, but Abdullah estimates that 700 Kurds were executed here in 1989 and 1990 alone. Those who spent their last days in these cells were targeted because of their involvement with the Kurdish opposition party or the peshmerga militia.
For the students, a tour of the torture rooms, cells and morgue of Red Security brings shock and sadness.
This week, the young people got an added sense of immediacy as survivors of this dreaded prison joined the anniversary commemoration to share stories of their time spent as captives here.
"In a four by seven metre room, there could be a hundred people at any one time. We sometimes slept standing up," said Tariq Ghafoor, who was held there for nearly a year before being exchanged for Baatht intelligence officers held by the Kurds in January 1991.
Women had a separate jail block, measuring seven by five metres and designed to house 50 inmates. But by 1988 it held more than 200.
"I’ll never forget when my aunt Gule, an older woman, was shot dead with her son on the terrace of this building," Ghafoor told the young people around him.
Kamran Aziz, who was held here from January to October 1990, told the students, "Although I was released 15 years ago, I visit this building once a month." As he spoke of the first day of his imprisonment, some of the students began to cry quietly.
Hansa Jamal, a secondary school student, said, "I was born after the uprising. But I am now crying for those men, women, boys and girls who were tortured, shot and executed here."
The museum also includes a section dedicated to the Anfal campaign, an ethnic cleansing campaign which the Baath regime waged against the Kurds from 1987 to the autumn of 1988, in which 182,000 Kurds were killed and around 5,000 villages were destroyed. To represent the loss of life, the walls of a large hall are covered in 182,000 pieces of mirror glass, lit with thousands of tiny lights.
There are many grisly reminders of the horrors perpetrated in Kurdistan. One photo on display shows two people in military uniform carrying a headless body. They smile as they make victory signs to the camera. "These are intelligence agents and the body is a peshmerga who was beheaded," said Abdullah, the museum guide.
Exhibits also remember the chemical bombardments of towns like Halabja, in which up to 5,000 civilians, mostly women and children, died.
"This is a fragment of one of the chemical projectiles that was used in Halabja. And this is also an unexploded napalm bomb that was used against another Kurdish area," said Abdullah. These are just some of the many weapons in the arsenal used against the Kurds on display.
Visiting this museum now you can still feel the fear and misery that must have filled it years ago, especially in the torture centre where ceiling hooks remain. A statue shows visitors how detainees’ hands were tied behind their backs and then attached to the hooks. They remained this way, naked, for hours at a time.
Karwan Qadir, a students’ union activist who helped organise the visit to the Red Security museum, told IWPR, "We are constantly bringing students and the new generation here, so they will understand their past and know what we have achieved today."
* Rebaz Mahmood is an IWPR trainee in Sulaimaniyah.
8. - Sunday Herald (UK) - "Syrian society begins to crack under international pressure":
With the country feeling under siege over the Lebanon issue, voices of domestic dissent are being silenced.
DAMASCUS / 13 March 2005 / by Hugh Macleod
AS thousands of Syrian troops leave Lebanon, how do the foreign pressures and rising nationalism in the country affect the domestic scene?
The violent breakup of human rights demonstration in Damascus may appear like a dictatorship cracking down on internal dissent. It may, in fact, be Syrian nationalism on the march.
It began when pro-government students arrived pledging allegiance to their God, their country and their president, to chase away the men and women who had gathered to protest the laws of the ruling Ba'ath party.
“Allah, Syria, Bashar [al-Assad] only,” shouted the hundreds of students who flooded into Martyr's Square in the centre of Damascus to break up a demonstration by lawyers, writers and Kurds on the 42nd anniversary of the introduction of Syria's emergency laws.
The Thursday demonstration, which also coincided with the first anniversary of Kurdish riots in the north eastern city of Qamishli, demanded an end to laws that allow extra-judicial courts to lock up Syrians who “oppose the goals of the revolution”.
It was under just such laws that last week two university students began a three-year jail sentence for refusing to sign a commitment not to take part in any activities except those organised by the pro-state student organisation.
So were those who attacked the activists with placards bearing the image of the Syrian President, Bashar Assad – leaving several bloodied – acting out of dedication to the Ba'ath party and the goals of the revolution?
Amid the monotone of mass rallying calls, some clues; individual voices, carrying a very different message.
“It is not the time for this now,” shouted one of the young men to an activist. “Shame, shame, traitor,” shouted others, chasing Yassin Haj-Saleh, an opposition figure.
“You are a liar,” screamed Mohammed Faisal, a youth group leader, to my translator as we spoke to one of the activists.
“We are here under the leadership of President Assad and against 1559. We must join all our people together,” said Faisal, referring to the UN resolution that has seen huge pressure mount on Syria to withdraw its 14,000 soldiers and unknown number of intelligence officers from Lebanon.
So if the activists were traitors in the eyes of the students, they were traitors not for opposing the laws of the Ba'ath party, but for adding further tensions to a country where the atmosphere is of living under siege.
Late on Friday night the pressure appeared to lift a little, as a convoy of Syrian troops withdrawn from northern Lebanon crossed the border back into Syria.
Lebanese defence minister Abdul Rahim Mrad said that some 7000 troops were evacuating from positions around Tripoli and that most of them were moving back to Syria. However, nine Syrian intelligence offices remain open in northern Lebanon.
Washington remained unimpressed, reiterating its call for a complete Syrian withdrawal.
The question being asked by some observers in Damascus, however, is what effect the external pressures on Syria have on the domestic scene.
“Some Syrians believe protests over human rights and democracy play into the hands of the US and its interests, including Israel,” said Andrew Tabler, a fellow with the Institute of Current World Affairs, and consulting editor with Syria Today magazine.
“I think we will see more of the same kind of thing as the attack on the activists as long as external pressures go on.”
The momentum that carried the students into their attack on the activists had begun the previous day when tens of thousands of Syrians marched through Damascus in a show of national pride.
Time after time the same answer came back. “We are here to support President Assad and his decision to withdraw Syrian troops from Lebanon. We are not interested in internal divisions,” said Lama Daghistani, a worker at the ministry of economy and trade.
But as a celebration on the anniversary of the “Glorious Revolution” that brought the Ba'ath party to power, though, the rally was very unusual. In a sea of Syrian national flags, it was almost impossible to make out a single Ba'ath party flag.
“I liked the atmosphere. It was very natural. People were there because they believe in their identity and were not forced to go. We did not see the Ba'ath party flags out so much so there was not so much control,” said Dalia Haider after the rally.
The atmosphere may have seemed natural but the mechanics of the rally were less so. Its sponsor – who produced the flags to wave and the T-shirts to wear – was the president's first cousin, Rami Makhlouf, one of the most powerful economic figures in Syria.
The principle catalyst for the rising nationalism in Syria, though, has been the crisis over its military presence in Lebanon, which remains an issue full of pitfalls.
After talks with the Assad yesterday the UN's special envoy, Terje Roed-Larsen, said he was encouraged by the Syrian leader's commitment to implementing 1559 and said he would present UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan with further details of the timetable for a complete Syrian pullout “early next week”.
Walid Mualem, the deputy foreign minister, said this week a timetable would only be decided by the joint military Syrian-Lebanese committee.
The reinstatement of the pro-Syrian Lebanese Prime Minister Omar Karami also suggested Damascus is far from losing its grip in Lebanon, as did the huge Hizbollah rally in Beirut in support of Syria.
One thing is sure though. The recent isolation Damascus has felt from its erstwhile Arab allies has driven a further nail into the coffin of the pan- Arabism that was the principle founding ideology of the ruling Ba'ath party. The nation's interests rather than the party's interests are now at the forefront of the domestic agenda.
“No more people talk about Arab unity in any serious way nowadays. The external pressures are forging Syria together in one vision,” said Dr Georges Jabbour, a member of the Ba'ath party and professor of political philosophy at Aleppo university.
“Now Syria, as a nation, rather than a one-party
state has become a political necessity,” he added.