Kurdish Youth stand trial in Turkey for singing a song

As the world turns, injustice continues. And as injustice continues, the Kurds continue to be without a voice...

Last year, a group by the name of The Children’s Voices of Diyarbakir that consists of Kurdish youth aged 8 to 16 years of age, many who are orphaned, received a rare opportunity to participate in a World Music Festival in California. The kids put on a wonderful performance that could - and perhaps did - even put tears of joy to the eyes of non-Kurdish attendees as much as they did for Kurdish attendees.

This Kurdish youth group is composed of mostly orphans and was put together through a program initiated by Kurds in Turkey to help get the youth off the streets by engaging them in positive activities. At the festival in California, the kids sang a wide range of traditional Kurdish folk songs, played instruments, and even danced for the audience.



Now, back in Turkey, a few of them are facing charges by Turkish prosecutors for singing these songs in California...

3 Kurdish teenagers could stand trial for singing rebel song in US

The Associated Press

ANKARA, Turkey: A lawyer says three Kurdish teenagers could stand trial for allegedly singing a Kurdish rebel song under rebel flags during a music festival in the United States in October.

Defense lawyer Baran Pamuk says the teenagers were part of a 15-member chorus that allegedly sang a song called “Enemy” during a tour of San Diego, Los Angeles and San Francisco. He says an indictment demands their prosecution on charges of spreading the separatist propaganda of the rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which is fighting the Turkish state.

Pamuk said Tuesday a court will decide whether to hear the case. The three are aged between 16 and 17.

Well, the song that was actually sung by these children is entitled, “Ey Reqîb”, which is translated to “Hey Guard”. The song comes from a poem written by a late Kurdish political prisoner from Iraqi Kurdistan named Dildar (1917-1948) who wrote the poem in prison, hence the name.

Nowadays, people tend to translate the title of the song to “Hey Enemy”, as the prosecution did. The song is familiar to Kurds all over the world and has become known as the Kurdish national anthem.

Apparently singing this old piece from 1938 is considered a crime in Turkey, as are the so-called rebel flags that these kids were singing in front of. (The “rebel flags” were actually the Kurdish flag, and not exactly the flag of any particular rebel group or party.) The flag has become the official flag of the Kurdistan region in Iraq, as has the anthem.

News of these children appeared in the Turkish media first in order to rile up the Turkish public by claiming the children were spreading “separatist propaganda” like the AP article states above. Now the Turkish prosecution is working hard to put these children in prison… sadly, we all know what happens to Kurdish children in the custody of officers. (See the video of the Turkish officer breaking a 15-year-old’s arm in front of the camera here.)

By the way, in case you are wondering what happened to the 15-year-old in that video, Progressive Historians summed up a sequence of events on their site about his situation... he is in jail. For a few days, his father had been worried sick about his whereabouts until he saw the video of his son’s arm being broken on Kurdish TV. It was then his father, who can hardly afford it, set out to hire lawyers to defend his son from charges that Turkish prosecutors are planning on pressing against him. (Shouldn’t the officers torturing him be the ones on trial?)

According to the Hakkari Bar Association in Turkey, his arm was indeed broken (despite denials by the Turkish police) and lawyers who were able to visit the boy said his arm is wrapped in bandages.

There is no news as to whether he will be released.

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The Ramblings of Mr.Viglen

Hello all, I am Mr.Viglen

I am quite glad that I was invited to join this blog...I am slightly surprised considering I never thought of myself as a writer. I always imagined being a "Writer" would involve a big typewriter and funky glasses. I do find myself occasionaly tapping the keyboard to the right to recreate that feel of a typewriter.

All silliness aside, I am Mr.Viglen and these are my ramblings.



Although I much rather preferred to start my first post with my own thoughts...But I did recently come across an article that has indeed captured my attention and I am currently trying my best to spread this brilliant writing by a brilliant man.

The article in question comes from Dr.Rashid Karadaghi (You will recognize the name of the man , he wrote the very well written Azadi English-Kurdish dictionary) and is titled "Are we angry enough" published in kurdmedia

The amount of awesomness written so coherently and beautifully in a single article exceeds the imagination...Obviously the whole article together makes this an awesomtastic endaveour by Dr.Rashid, however these are my favourite quotes and through my multiple read throughs have begun to memorize these lines :

It is time that we Kurds stopped living, thinking, acting, reacting, and speaking in a way that perpetuates the tyrannical rule of the occupier and demeans us as a people. It is high time that we freed ourselves from the ridiculous notion, which some of the defeatists among us have brain-washed us with, that we were dealt an unfair hand by history and fate and there is no escaping it. We must stop behaving like victims and, instead, become masters of our destiny. We must free ourselves from the mindset created by the occupiers that is plaguing us and preventing us from thinking and behaving like a free people. We must take down the prison walls in our mind before we can take them down in the world without."

As the world has become aware of the injustice Kurds have gone through, have us Kurds done anything to correct this? We know that the occupiers seperated us, but have we fought them psychologically as much as we have physically? By this I mean rejecting the notion that we are meant to be relegated to a second ethnicity in a country dominated by an alien ethnicity? Is our victory simply a country recognizing our language? This right can be easily taken away, but a defined border can not.

Through my time debating with people who belong to the colonial nations where Kurdistan resides, the term "blood borders" has been thrown about many a time to legitimize the current sitation. And I do find myslef agreeing with them, to their surprise I do believe that they are indeed blood borders it is because of these borders that we have lost our culture, it is because of these man made borders that we have lost our unity, it is because of these borders that we have become the oppressed.

It is high time we lose the mentality of the defeated who can not arise victorious, we must become the masters of our own destiny as Dr.Rashid calls upon us to do. We are no different and no less human than the nations who occupy us, if anything we have shown that we are a compassionate people despite the massive injustices. However compassion should not become naiivety.

I shall conclude my first post with the words of Ibrahim Ahmed in his well known anthem "Har Kurd Ebin"

Dawaya Wilatee Kas Nakam
Pinja Komafee Kas Nabam
Bo Mafee Gel u Xakam
Hata Mawim...Xabatakam !

I am not asking for anyone's Land
I am not trespassing on Anyone's territory
For the Rights of My Land and its People
Until I am Alive....I will fight"

Har Bijit Kak Karadaghi and Har Bijit Geli Kurd.

Cheers for listening to my ramblings,

Mr.Viglen

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Anfal campaign: a genocidal policy

With regard to the atrocities that have been committed against the Kurds in North-Iraq in the late 1980s, this paper will attempt to apply the theory of the well-known social-scientist, Herbert Kelman, to the Anfal campaign. The Anfal campaign has taken place against the Kurds in 1987-1989, through which more than 182 000 Kurds were the victims of this cruel campaign. In this respect, it is important to ask an important question, which is; under which conditions do the perpetrators go through in order to implement the process of Anfal against the Kurds?

In his article ‘Violence without Moral Restraint’ Herbert Kelman explains the psychological conditions, which the perpetrators are influenced through in order to commit gross human rights violations. For these psychological conditions, Kelman outlines three interrelated processes that are needed in order to restrain the moral obligations by the perpetrators during a genocidal policy. These processes are respectively Authorization, Routinization and Dehumanization. In this paper these processes are briefly explained and applied to the Anfal case in order to answer the above mentioned question.

Authorization
According to Kelman, the genocidal policies occur in the context of an authority situation. The instructions and orders are given from the highest authority organizations and through a process of bureaucracy these orders will be accomplished. The perpetrators of a genocidal policy view these orders as obligations and they appeal to higher authority when the genocidal crimes have taken place.
During the Anfal campaign this process of Authorization is recognizable in a way that in each steps of the Anfal campaign orders and instructions were given from the government (authority situation) and due to the very strict steps these orders were accomplished. First of all, from the highest formal authority in Iraq, the Revolutionary Command Council, this was headed by the former dictator Saddam Hussein, from this highest authority thus Ali Hassan al-Majid was authorized to become the Northern Bureau’s Secretary General between 1987-1989 and to operate the Anfal campaign. From a meeting with the members of the Northern Bureau in May 26, 1987, al-Majid declares his plans to conduct the Anfal campaign ‘This is my intention, and I want you to take serious note of it. As soon as we complete the deportations, we will start attacking them (he means by attacking probably also the Peshmerga forces) everywhere according to a systematic military plan’.
Secondly, each step during the Anfal campaign was conducted according to the commands that were given by the Northern Bureau of the Ba’athy regime, this in assistance with different ministries. For instance, from the Ministry of Defense, the Iraqi Army and Air Forces, the General Military Intelligence (Istikhbarat) and the General Security Directorate (Amn) were leading the special units in order to report day by day reports of the Anfal process. Also, the lower militant bodies such as; Jaysh Al-Sha’abi, Emergency Forces and Jash (pro-government Kurdish militant), they were included in the Anfal process. Thus, from these mentioned governmental agencies that were included in the process of Anfal, one may conclude that the aspect of Authorization was conducted with care during the Anfal campaign.

Routinization
During this process, the criminal actions are transformed into routine, mechanical and highly programmed operations. The individual perpetrators become more in the position of willing to continue with the atrocities in order to justify their actions and to avoid the sanctions for disobedience. For the psychological reasons this process of Routinization is needed to enforce the perpetrators to continue with a genocidal policy.
With regard to the Anfal campaign, if the different phases and steps during the Anfal campaign were not transformed into routines, it wasn’t possible for the Ba’athy regime to enforce the different governmental forces to carry out the orders of the higher authority. From the above mentioned authorization situation and included different government’s agencies during the implementation of Anfal, it can be argued that without routine, bureaucracy and normalization of the official orders, it wasn’t possible to finish the Anfal campaign.

Dehumanization
In a genocidal policy, next to the very strict orders and routinization process, it is also very crucial to view the victims as subjects that are deserved to be killed. This psychological instrument is very common phenomenon when it comes to the dehumanization of the enemy or the victim. Kelman argues that, since the genocidal policies are the most extreme crimes against humanity, in such crimes it is thus necessary to identify the target group as a separate category, which does not belong to the population; therefore, it is also justifiable to destroy this target group. Moreover, the dynamics of the genocide or massacre process itself further increase the perpetrator’s tendency to dehumanize their victims.
This process of dehumanization was also present during the Anfal campaign. From the different documented tapes of Ali Hassan al-Majid with his officers, it becomes clear how he and other officers looked at the Kurds and dehumanized the Kurdish civilians in the so called ‘prohibited’ areas, where the Anfal campaigns have taken place. For instance, in many different meetings, al-Majid called the Kurdish civilians of the ‘prohibited areas as ‘saboteurs’ that are deserved to be punished and to be killed. Also, these people were not deserved to live properly, so it appears from one meeting with the members of the Northern Bureau in April 15, 1988, where al-Majid said; ‘From now on I won’t give the villagers flour, sugar, kerosene, water or electricity as long as they continue living there. Let them come closer to me to hear me, so that I can tell them the things I believe and want in ideology, education and common sense…’. He also didn’t show any respect for the Kurds. From a meeting with unnamed officials in August 1, 1988, al-Majid said; ‘…every Kurd who lives there (in the prohibited areas thus), send them to the mountains to live like goats…’. From these documented tapes, it becomes clear how the Ba’athy officials, including al-Majid have viewed the Kurds and have targeted the Kurds to be their victims, who were defined as ‘saboteurs’ and deserved to be killed. This kind of Ba’athy policy can be labeled as Kelman’s concept of Dehumanization of the victims.

Thus, Kelman’s three processes and at least those of Authorization and Dehumanization were effectively used by the Ba’athy regime as psychological tools to eliminate individual perpetrators’ morals and to incite to commit crimes.
Application of this theory affirms that the Anfal campaign entailed a well-organized strategy and policy intended to destroy the ethnic or national minority of Kurds in Northern Iraq. In other words, the campaign involved the commission of the ‘crimes of crimes’: Genocide. To prevent the future commission of genocide, wherever in the world, it is of the utmost importance to study past genocides and to understand how those responsible for them thought, planned and acted.


This paper is a short part of the original paper ‘Understanding the Process of the Anfal Campaign’, which has been presented by Chalank Yahya during the International Conference on Genocide in Kurdistan in Hawler, January 2008



Reference:
Kelman, H.C. (1973). Violence without Moral Restraint: Reflections on the Dehumanization of Victims and Victimizers; Journal of Social Issues, vol. 29, no. 4, 25-61

Kelman, H.C. & Hamilton, V.L. (1989). Crimes of Obedience. New Haven: Yale University Press

Middle East Watch (1993). Genocide in Iraq; The Anfal Campaign Against the Kurds. New York/Washington/Los Angeles/London: Human Rights Watch

Salih, K. (1995). Anfal: The Kurdish Genocide in Iraq; Digest of Middle East Studies, vol. 4, no. 2, 24-39

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Turkey, Kurds and a World of Silence

They say that silence can be deafening. This week the atrocities continued against the Kurds in Turkey and despite the footage to prove it, hardly anyone flinched. The international community remained largely silent, the media didn’t bother doing anything with the pictures or videos, and the headlines continued reporting everything else happening in this world from California to Tibet…

Earlier in the week, I had reported about the Turkish forces’ brutality against Kurds who were trying to celebrate the old New year or Newroz holiday. Kurds took to the streets to celebrate the holiday and Turkish officials seized the opportunity to flex their ideological as well as their military muscle as one writer at the Jamestown Foundation put it. (And with all so little being reported, I recommend reading the entire article.)

Unconfirmed numbers were killed, hundreds were injured and hundreds more imprisoned. But like so many other familiar events for Kurds in Turkey, the media, the institutions, the world continues looking the other way. The brutality is most certainly nothing new but justice simply lacks a voice in this part of the world.

I’ll leave you with a video that can be seen at the following link. I must warn some that it may be heartbreaking to say the least…

Newroz Tragedy 2008 - Click here for Video

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