Human Rights
Week 2002
By Noam Chomsky
Human Rights Week is not
much of an occasion in the US, with some notable qualifications. But
it does receive considerable attention elsewhere. For me personally,
Human Rights Week 2002 was memorable and poignant. The week opened on
the eve of Human Rights Day, Dec. 10, at St. Paul's Cathedral in London,
where thousands of people gathered to celebrate -- though that may not
be quite the right word -- the tenth
anniversary of the Kurdish Human Rights Project KHRP, which has done
outstanding work on some of the most serious human rights issues of
the decade: particularly, but not only, the US-backed terrorist campaigns
of the Turkish state that rank among the most terrible crimes of the
grisly 1990s, leaving tens of thousands dead and millions driven from
the devastated countryside, with every imaginable form of barbaric torture.
The week ended for me in Diyarbakir in southeastern Turkey, the
semi-official capital of the Kurdish region, teeming with refugees
living in squalor, barred from returning to what is left of their
villages, even though new legislation theoretically allows that choice.
I had been invited to Diyarbakir
by the Human Rights Association, which does courageous and impressive
work under conditions of constant serious threat. The preceding days
I spent in Istanbul at the invitation of the Publishers Association,
which was holding its annual meeting and an international book fair,
dedicated to peace and freedom; and the public sector union KESK (not
permitted to function as a union under harsh laws and state practice),
which was holding an international symposium on the
same themes. While in Istanbul, I was able to visit the miserable slums
where unknown numbers of Kurdish refugees seek to survive the damp cold
winter months in decaying condemned buildings: large families may be
crammed into a single room with young children virtually imprisoned
unable to venture into the dangerous alleyways outside, and older children
working in illegal factories to help keep the family alive. They too
are effectively barred from returning to the homes from which they were
expelled, despite the new legislation that lifts the state of
emergency in southeastern Turkey -- formally, at least.
The founder and director
of the KHRP is also barred from returning to his country. And just to
round out the picture, the US is now refusing entry to human rights
activists recording and protesting these crimes. A few weeks ago Dr.
Haluk Gerger, a leading figure in the Turkish human rights movement,
arrived with his wife at a New York airport. INS cancelled his 10-year
visa, returning him and his wife at once after fingerprinting and photographing.
Dr. Gerger has received awards from
Human Rights Watch and the American Association for the Advancement
of Science for his outstanding contributions to human rights; his punishment
by the Turkish authorities had been singled out by the State Department
as an example of Turkey's failure to protect elementary rights. In an
open letter to the US Ambassador, the spokesperson of the Freedom of
Speech Initiative in Istanbul, protesting this treatment, writes that
Dr. Gerger is "a founding member of the Human Rights
Association of Turkey" and "an ardent defender of Kurdish
rights," who "has written extensively on the issue and has
criticized governmental policies," likening "the Turkish government's
treatment of the Kurds to Serbia's ethnic cleansing of Muslims in Bosnia,"
and suffering imprisonment and heavy fines as well as loss of his academic
position for his writings on human rights issues.
Colin Powell's State Department
has now declared him persona non grata in the United States, adopting
the stand of extremist elements in the Turkish military and ultranationalist
parties.
The Turkish state, with the
hand of the military never hidden, remains harsh and repressive, despite
some encouraging changes in recent months. But even superficial contact
reveals that Turkish culture and society are free and vibrant in ways
that should be a model for the West. Particularly striking is the spirit
of resistance that one senses at once, from the caves outside the city
walls of Diyarbakir where refugees speak eloquently of their yearning
to return to their homes to the urban centers of intellectual life.
The struggle of people of
Turkey for freedom and human rights is truly inspiring, not only because
of the depth of commitment but also because it seems so natural and
without pretense, just a normal part of life, despite the severe threats
that are never remote. That includes courageous writers of international
renown like Yashar Kemal; scholars who have faced and endured severe
punishment for their commitment to tell the truth, like Ismail Besikci,
who has spent much of his life in prison for his writings on state terror
in Turkey; parliamentarians like Layla Zana, still languishing in prison,
serving a 15 year sentence for expressing in her native language her
hope that "Kurdish and Turkish
people can live peacefully together in a democratic framework";
and many others like them, from all walks of life. They are of course
unknown in the US, much like the Latin American intellectuals assassinated
by US proxy forces, not to speak of the hundreds of thousands of usual
victims -- "unworthy victims," in Edward Herman's phrase,
because they suffer at the wrong hands: ours.
Dr. Besikci refused a $10,000
prize from the US Fund for Free Expression in protest against Washington's
decisive contribution to terror in Turkey, primarily in the Clinton
years, when the US provided 80% of Turkey's arms and Turkey became the
leading recipient of US arms (Israel-Egypt aside) as criminal atrocities
escalated. In the single year 1997 alone, US arms flow to Turkey exceeded
the combined total for the entire Cold War period up to the onset of
the state terror campaign; or as it is called in State Department reports
on terror, and in the press, the "successful counter-terror"
campaign for which Turkey is to be praised and rewarded. That practice
accords with the standard doctrine, by no means unique to the US, that
"terror" is what THEY do to US, and "counter-terror"
is what WE do to THEM, commonly much worse, and only occasionally retaliation,
not that it would be tolerable in that case.
Privileged people in the
West should feel humility and shame when observing the courage and integrity
of those who live under draconian laws and brutal repression and terror,
in no small measure thanks to Western support, and not only condemn
the abuses and defend the victims but regularly carry out acts of civil
disobedience in protest, at severe risk. They should also feel shame
that the KHRP operates in London, not New York, where it belongs, given
the locus of responsibility for the crimes. The British record is not
attractive, but the primary responsibility, by far, lies here. There
is in fact a major Kurdish Center in New York, with many activities
and important and highly informative publications (Center for Research
of the Kurdish Library,
Brooklyn, Vera Saaedpour, director). Its anniversary, however, would
not bring together thousands of people in New York. It is known only
to those who are concerned with human rights -- seriously concerned,
that is, as shown by their attitude to their own crimes. It is far more
gratifying to wring one's hands over the crimes of others that we can
do little about, or perhaps to contemplate the strange flaw in our character
that keeps us from responding to the crimes of others in some proper
way (rarely spelled out beyond bold and often mindless declarations).
In sharp contrast, the crimes that we could easily bring to an end merely
by withdrawing our decisive participation must be
buried deep in the memory hole.
Uppermost in everyone's minds
from London to Diyarbakir and beyond is the feverish determination of
the Bush administration to find a pretext for what it believes will
be a cheap and politically useful war in Iraq, with Blair trailing loyally
behind. In Turkey, popular opposition to the coming war is overwhelming.
Much the same is true throughout the region, and in most of Europe and
the rest of the world as well. Poll results for the US look different,
but that is misleading. It can hardly escape notice that although Saddam
Hussein is reviled everywhere, it is only in the US that people are
genuinely afraid that if we don't stop him today,
he'll kill us tomorrow.
Engendering such fears is
second nature to the re-cycled Reaganites at the helm in Washington.
Throughout the 1980s they were able to ram through their reactionary
agenda, significantly harming the population, by maintaining a constant
state of fear. Twenty years ago Libyan hit-men were wandering the streets
of Washington to assassinate our leader. Then the Russians were going
to bomb us from an air base in Grenada (if they could find it on a map).
Meanwhile the awesome Sandinista army was poised only two days marching
time from Harlingen Texas, a "dagger
pointed at the heart of Texas." And on through the decade. To determine
a meaningful measure of domestic support for the coming war, it would
be necessary to extricate the fear factor, unique to the US. The results
would probably show little difference from the rest of the world.
There is no historical precedent
for such enormous popular opposition to a war, and protest against it,
before it is even launched (fully launched, to be more accurate).
In the Kurdish areas the
general opposition to war is heightened by concern over the consequences
for the Kurds. The neighboring countries are likely to intensify domestic
repression in the context of war. Similar concerns extend to Kurds elsewhere,
including the 4 million who, for the moment, have achieved unusual progress
in the northern enclaves of Iraq under the uneasy alliance of Masoud
Barzani and Jalal Talabani. Apart from their vulnerability to murderous
Iraqi assault in the event of war, and the anticipated Turkish reaction
if there is any hint of a move towards meaningful autonomy, more than
half are reported to be reliant for survival on the UN "Oil for
Food" program, likely to be severely disrupted in the event of
war. "Free Kurdistan is like a huge refugee camp," one Kurdish
leader commented, dependent on UN-run programs for food and on Baghdad
for fuel and power. The UN High
Commissioner for Refugees is planning for possible flight of hundreds
of thousands to neighboring countries, where they are not likely to
receive a warm welcome, and where the prospects for the indigenous Kurdish
populations are sufficiently grim even without what might lie ahead
-- or perhaps to camps in northern Iraq that are being constructed by
the Turkish army there, according to Turkish sources, a development
with threatening portent.
I mentioned a qualification
to the lack of attention to Human Right Week here: namely, when human
rights violations can be exploited as a weapon against some official
enemy, a practice that Amnesty International has bitterly deplored,
again in the past few months. Through the 1980s, Human Rights Day was
the occasion for impassioned denunciations of the Soviet Union, technically
accurate but with extreme cynicism that
utterly resists exposure. Human Rights Day 2002 was the occasion for
the release by the Jack Straw, British Foreign Secretary, of a Dossier
on Saddam Hussein's crimes -- accelerated by a few days, as part of
the US-UK effort to elicit some hostile Iraqi gesture prior to the crucial
Dec. 8 deadline for Iraq's submission of documents on its weapons of
mass destruction (WMD). The Dossier was authentic, drawn mostly from
reports of human rights organizations on Saddam's horrendous atrocities
through the 1980s. Unmentioned, as usual, was the fact that these shocking
crimes were of no concern to the US or UK, which continued to provide
their friend Saddam with aid, including means to develop WMD at a time
when he was vastly more dangerous than today.
In the US, those responsible
are now again in office, and instructions are that we are to disregard
the criminal record for which they show not the slightest contrition.
The current British government was then in opposition, but as journalist
Mark Thomas revealed, parliamentary protests against Saddam's crimes
from 1988 through the 90s are missing a few names: Blair, Straw, Cook,
Hoon,.., that is, the leading figures of
the governing party. Thomas also released a letter demonstrating that
Straw's discovery of Saddam Hussein's evil nature is quite recent. In
January 2001, as Home Secretary, it was his responsibility to rule on
pleas for political asylum. He rejected the appeal of an Iraqi who had
been detained and tortured in Iraq because the "wide range of information
on Iraq" that Straw had at his disposal made it clear that the
Iraqi tyrant's courts would not "convict and sentence a person"
improperly, and "if there are any charges outstanding against you
and if they were to be proceeded with on your return, you could expect
to receive a fair trial under an independent and properly constituted
judiciary."
But something changed since
January 2001, and the crimes that were of no account shock our sensibilities
and require war. And we are all supposed to observe this performance
with sober approval, if not awe.
I also mentioned that in
1997, US arms flow to Turkey exceeded the combined total for the Cold
War years as state terror mounted to levels far beyond anything attributed
to Milosevic in Kosovo before the NATO bombing, which was undertaken,
we were solemnly informed, because we are so high-minded that we cannot
tolerate crimes so near the borders of NATO -- only within NATO, where
we must not only tolerate but expedite them. 1997 was an important year
for the human rights movements in other
ways as well. It was the year when the world's leading newspaper
informed its readers that US foreign policy had entered a "noble
phase," with a "saintly glow." It was also the year when
US military aid to Colombia skyrocketed, increasing from $50 million
to $290 million by 1999, then doubling by 2001 and still increasing.
In 1999, Turkey relinquished to Colombia its place as leading recipient
of US arms. The reason is not hard to discern: Turkish state terror
was by then a success, Colombia's was not. Through the 1990s, Colombia
had by far the worst human rights record in the Western hemisphere,
and was by far the leading recipient of US arms and military training,
a correlation that is well-established and would be of no slight concern
if it were known
outside of scholarship and dissident circles.
Turkey and Colombia share
other common features. Each has several million people violently displaced;
2.7 million by now in Colombia, increasing at the rate of 1000 a day,
according to the latest reports of the leading human rights organization.
These are the numbers internally displaced, not counting those who have
fled elsewhere. And Colombia, like Turkey, provides a model of courageous
resistance that should be observed with shame and humility by privileged
Westerners -- particularly those who labor to suppress the continuing
atrocities and terror for which we bear responsibility, to efface the
disgraceful record of the past, and to erect firm barriers against the
threat of exposure of crimes that the general population would not tolerate,
were
the barriers to be breached.