The members of the Special Units (police) proclaim: "We break the arms of those who throw stones." The expression is that of Tansu Ciller, the ex-Prime Minister of Turkey (in the '90s): "Those hands that are raised against Turkey we will break; the tongue that speaks against us we will cut out."

Appel urgent pour l'aide aux enfants kurdes torturés et emprisonnnés

La direction de la Communauté Kurde de la Bavière vient de lancer un appel urgent après la violence de l'Etat envers le peuple kurde lors des célébrations de Newroz dans le Kurdistan de Turquie:

A l´occasion de la fête de Newroz en Turquie, des nombreux enfants kurdes ont été arrêtés, maltraités, enlevés et torturés brutalement par des membres de la police et des unités turques d'opération militaire et speciale. On leur refuse un traitement medical et comme il semble aussi la défense par un avocat.

Les incidents ont été en partie filmés. Sur un video filmé par les unites d´operation speciales, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ENIwySnfNM, vous pouvez voir comment un membre d´une unité speciale en civil fracture le bras à Cuneyit Ertus qui a 15 ans.

Les membres des unites speciales crient : "Nous cassons les bras à ceux qui jettent des pierres." L'idiome est de l´ancien premier ministre turc Tansu Ciller: Les mains qui se levent contre la Turquie, nous les casseront, la langue, qui parle contre nous, nous la couperons.

Depuis l´incident survenu le 23.03.2008 à Hakkari/Yüksekova, Cuneyit Ertus est toujours emprisonné sans avoir recu de traitement medical. Personne n´a pû le voir jusqu´ici.

D´autres enfants subissent également le même sort. Une information vient d´arriver de l´association des avocats de Hakkari. Un enfant a perdu ses yeux et a subi une fracture de crâne. Il est actuellement opéré à Ankara. Nous attendons d´autres informations demain.

Il faut aider d´urgence ces enfants emprisonnés.
Veuillez transmettre l'information à vos distributeurs et nous communiquer rapidement ce qui a été entrepris.
Vous pouvez toujours nous contacter aux addresses ci-dessus.
Nous-mêmes dépendons pour le moment des publications parues dans l'Internet et des médias kurdes travaillant à l'étranger ainsi que de l´association des avocats et de IHD, organisation des droits de l´homme. Les informations sur Cuneyit Ertus sont de Roj TV, une station de télévision kurde, qui a recu l'information du père de l'enfant.

Vidéo montrant ce qui est arrive à Cüneyit Ertus :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ENIwySnfNM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2JA7yy56Eg&feature=related

D´autres liens montrant la situation générale et la facon dont des enfants kurdes sont maltraités en plein rue:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYvE7bm2cl0&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PikJpE0OH2U&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=related&v=ML_TnmyxCrc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SxHbFs0aao&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2JA7yy56Eg&feature=related

Liens pour voir les rapports des droit de l'homme établi par l`IHD (organisation kurde des droits de l´homme en Turquie) en anglais: [Reports in English:]

http://www.ihd.org.tr/report/summary/2007.htm
http://www.ihd.org.tr/report/summary/January-June2007.html
http://www.ihd.org.tr/report/summary/1999_2007_comparative_balance_sheet.htm
http://www.ihd.org.tr/report/summary/2006.htm

Contact: mehmetsahin@t-online.de

Turkey is Not Ready for Europe

If you are sitting in Brussels and looking at what is going on in Turkey, it is almost unavoidable that you will reach a sad conclusion: Turkey is simply not mature enough as a democracy to qualify for EU membership. In the past, I used to think that the main challenge for Turkey was to become a "liberal" democracy. If only Ankara could shed some of its illiberal tendencies, I believed, it would prove its political credentials as a first rate democracy and deserve EU membership. Yet now I can't help but realize that the challenge for Turkish democracy is much more daunting than I thought. The issue is no longer whether Turkey can become more liberal. It is rather whether Turkey can maintain a semblance of democracy.

None of the countries in Europe's periphery have the kind of identity problems that Turkey has. Yes, it is absolutely correct to argue that if countries such as Bulgaria and Romania managed to become members of the European Union, so should Turkey. But such arguments focus on the economy and the level of social development. Turkey is certainly economically more advanced than some of the new members of the EU. But Turkey's challenge is not the economy. The real challenge for Turkey's EU membership is political. The most basic prerequisite for democratic rule is civilian supremacy over the military. No one can dispute who is in charge of Bulgarian or Romanian politics. It is the civilian government, not the Bulgarian military. The same goes for Romania. But in Turkey the answer to the question of who is in charge is much more complex. Is the civilian government really in charge of Turkey? How can we argue that it truly is, if despite having won an overwhelming electoral victory a few months ago it now faces a real risk of being shut down by the judiciary? How can Turkey prove to Europe that it is a first class democracy if the civilian government cannot be sure if it can survive this political onslaught?

Samuel Huntington called Turkey a "torn" country in his book on the clash of civilizations. Unfortunately, he was right. Turkey's identity problems are so deep and so existentialist that they constantly paralyze the political dynamics of the country. A harmonious balance between Islam, secularism and Western identity and democracy appears increasingly elusive in Turkey. To the contrary, Turkey is rapidly emerging as a country where political conflicts over Muslim and secular identity jeopardize the country's chances of staying on a Western and democratic path. We are far removed from the days when it was fashionable in Western circles to argue that Turkey was the perfect case proving the fallacy of the clash of civilizations. Instead Turkey is now a perfect case of how a country's own paradox can lead to a domestic clash of civilizations. If the current dynamics of polarization in Turkey culminate with a judicial coup against the Justice and Development Party (AKP), it will simply be impossible to argue that Turkey is a Western country and a European democracy. In other words, the EU would legitimately be able to argue that it is impossible to continue accession negotiations with a country where the civilian government is toppled by non-democratic forces. Simply put, the closure of the AKP would be the end of Turkey's EU journey.

Turkey had one major factor going in its favor during these difficult decades: the Cold War. The bipolar design of the Cold War divided the world into Eastern and Western blocs, and within this division Turkey clearly belonged to the West. As a NATO country that shared borders with the Soviet Union and tied down some 24 Russian divisions, Ankara's Western credentials went undisputed. Thorny questions concerning democratic standards, military interventions, human rights and a Muslim identity were therefore largely set aside.

This somewhat uncomplicated Western image of Turkey lasted as long as the Cold War did. To the dismay of Ankara, the Turkish bid for EU membership came under increasingly critical democratic scrutiny after the demise of the Soviet Union. There are still some people in Turkey who believe Europe should embrace Turkey despite all its political and democratic deficits, simply because of the country's geo-strategic importance as an energy corridor or a country that borders the Middle East. Such circles fail to understand that Europe is a club of liberal democracies. There are also those in Turkey who believe that Europe would never let Turkey in because of Islamophobia.

Unless Turkey becomes a liberal democracy, we will simply never know whether Europe is serious about Turkey or not. It would be very easy to adopt a narrative of victimization on grounds that Europe will always say "no" to Turkey because of its Muslim identity. But as long as Turkey gives the EU an opportunity to say "no" for political reasons, the question of Turkey's Muslim identity will remain irrelevant.

Today's Zaman 31.03.2008

The ACSA challenges Senator McCain on his legislative history of Human Rights Violations: "a Skeleton in his closet: UNFIT to hold public office!"


A public research website: http://www.cain2008.org has brought together diverse historical elements of factual proof that Senator John McCain's was the key "point man" introducing, enacting and enforcing law that removed Dineh-Navajo Families from their reservation on the Black Mesa in Arizona. The McCain revised law relocated them to Church's Hill, Nevada (a Nuclear Waste Superfund Site, called "the New Lands" in PL 93-531). The Dineh-Navajo, a deeply spiritual and peaceful people, engaged in only peaceful resistance to being moved off lands they'd owned since 1500 A.D. Nonetheless, the Public Press and UN depicted brutalization, rights deprivation and forcible relocation.

- snip -

Senator McCain and his predecessors introduced legislation (S1973-1 and S.1003) which they claimed were justified by what has turned out to be a non-existent range war between the Dineh (mainly consisting of grandfathers and grandmothers in their 70's living on farmlands that had belonged to their tribe since 1500 AD) and the Hopi (the 3-5 individuals rapidly assembled to assist Peabody Western Group by Senator McCain, Congressman Owens and John Boyden).

Subsequently, as the Dineh were removed from their farms by the "Relocation Commission" authorized by the US Senate at the behest of the revisions to the Public Law 93-531 introduced as S.1973-1 (1996 Partition) and S.1003 (2001 and 2005 accelerated removal of the Dineh by amendment) by Senator McCain, expanded Coal Mining Rights to their lands were granted to Peabody Western who with Bechtel Corp, have been mining the lands formerly occupied by the Dineh, and piping the coal to the Mohave Generating Station in Nevada, which serves the Las Vegas and Reno areas power needs.

Source

The Dineh (otherwise known as Navajo) were stripped of all land title and forced to relocate. Their land was turned over to the coal companies without making any provisions to protect the burial or sacred sites that would be destroyed by the mines. People whose lives were based in their deep spiritual and life-giving relationship with the land were relocated into cities, often without compensation, forbidden to return to the land that their families had occupied for generations. People became homeless with significant increases in alcoholism, suicide, family break up, emotional abuse and death.

- snip -

"I feel that in relocating these elderly people, we are as bad as the Nazis that ran the concentration camps in World War II."

-- Roger Lewis, federally appointed Relocation Commissioner upon resignation

"I believe that the forced relocation of Navajo and Hopi people that followed from the passage in 1974 of Public Law 93-531 is a major violation of these people's human rights. Indeed this forced relocation of over 12,000 Native Americans is one of the worst cases of involuntary community resettlement that I have studied throughout the world over the past 40 years."

-- Thayer Scudder, Professor of Anthropology, California Institute of Technology in a letter to Mr. Abdelfattah Amor, UN Special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance

Source

James McLaughlin served under 12 U.S. presidents as an American Indian agent on the Standing Rock Reservation. He wrote an official government report covering the death of Sitting Bull at a camp near the reservation.

- snip -

Sitting Bull regarded McLaughlin as an evil enemy of all American Indians.

Source

John McCain's political history is loaded with abuse of his position concerning lobbyists. Since posting actual links is against HuffPo policy, do the simple research yourself.

Look into the forcible removal of the Dineh tribes, known as the Navajo, in Arizona. Follow his ties to Atty John Boyden and the Peabody Western Group (nka Peabody Energy) and their advantages gained from McCain's legislation S1973-1 and S1003. He pushed Atty Gen Reno in forcing them off their treaty lands and onto
a nuclear waste site (Church Hill, Nevada) through the "Relocation Commission" Look up PL 93-531. Genocide for the expansion of mining rights. Follow the money that supported his political career from the energy elites that own the Mohave Generating Station in Nevada. John McCain is a corrupt politician and the evidence is there to prove it. posted 02/21/2008 at 11:28:47

John McCain "knows what's best for America", and that's Straight Talk, my friends....unless of course you're a Native American.

Within a month of Kennedy's election, some of Nelson [Rockefeller]'s closest allies ... were meeting in the White House's Cabinet Room or heading key offices in the new administration. Swiftly and quietly, they began implementing many of the changes in government structure and policy that Nelson advocated.

This secret victory [for Rockefeller] was the outcome of Kennedy's inexperience. Kennedy had spent the past five years running for office. He knew politicians, but not men who could run the government of a world power.

To seize this opportunity, will all agencies concerned please review their programs for Indonesia and assess what further measures might be useful. I have in mind the possibility of expanded civic action, military aid, and economic stabilization and development programs as well as diplomatic initiatives.

Simultaneous and identical actions of United States Steel and other leading steal corporations increasing steel prices by some $6 a ton constitute a wholly unjustifiable and irresponsible defiance of the public interest. In this serious hour in our Nation's history when we are confronted with grave crises in Berlin and Southeast Asia, when we are devoting our energies to economic recovery and stability, when we are asking reservists to leave their homes and their families for months on end and servicemen to risk their lives--and four were killed in the last two days in Viet Nam and asking union members to hold down their wage requests at a time when restraint and sacrifice are being asked of every citizen, the American people will find it hard, as I do, to accept a situation in which a tiny handful of steel executives whose pursuit of private power and profit exceeds their sense of public responsibility can show such utter contempt for the interests of 185 million Americans.

When Kennedy went against his advisors on foreign policy, it was because he rejected the idea that the US had a right to control economic and political event sin other nations. In quite sharp contrast to his strong military stand against the powerful Soviet Union, Kennedy was reluctant to employ military force against smaller and weaker nations. This reluctance was completely consistent with his comments in 1959 ... where he rejected "the pageantry of imperialism."

Chester Bowles cited the following decisions made by Kennedy against a majority of his advisors: refusing to invade Cuba during the Bay of Pigs disaster; refusing to intervene in the Dominican Republic following the assassination of Trujillo; refusing to introduce ground forces into Laos; refusing to escalate our involvement in Vietnam; backing U.N. policy in the Congo, and backing India in a dispute with China and Pakistan. In making these decisions, Kennedy was repeatedly affirming his idea of a US foreign policy against those who either shared the neo-colonialist attitudes of various economic interests in Europe and the US or viewed all interests of the Third World nations as unimportant compared to the ongoing conflict with communism.

Considering the multitude of factors involved in any significant foreign policy decision, it is reasonable to conclude that consistency across a series of such decisions indicates underlying principles.

I have, therefore, chosen this time and place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth too rarely perceived. And that is the most important topic on earth: peace. What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, and the kind that enables men and nations to grow, and to hope, and build a better life for their children -- not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time but peace in all time.

KURDISH DEMONSTRATORS CLASH WITH TURKISH SECURITY FORCES DURING NEWROZ

By Gareth Jenkins

Tuesday, March 25, 2008


Over a period of four days from March 21-24, two people were killed and several hundred injured in clashes with Turkish security forces, as hundreds of thousands of Kurds took the streets to celebrate the Kurdish New Year of Newroz. No reliable figures are available for the number of demonstrators detained by the security forces, although Turkish media reports suggest that several hundred were taken into custody (Hurriyet, Radikal, Cumhuriyet, Milliyet, Yeni Safak, NTV, CNNTurk, March 22-24).

Newroz is not an exclusively Kurdish holiday. It is celebrated on March 21 each year from the Balkans through the Caucasus and Iran and across Asia into northern China. However, during the late 1980s and early 1990s, Newroz celebrations were banned in Turkey on the grounds that they encouraged Kurdish separatism. Attempts to mark the holiday were broken up, usually violently, by the security forces. In 1992 over 60 people were believed to have died in clashes with the Turkish security forces during Newroz celebrations.

The situation changed in 1995 when the Turkish authorities decided to rediscover Newroz as “Nevruz,” an authentically Turkish spring holiday with its origins in Central Asia. Although Kurds continued to be prosecuted if they referred to it as Newroz rather than by its Turkish name, the authorities not only began to allow celebrations, but state officials joined in the traditional Newroz ritual of jumping over a fire to symbolize rebirth and renewal.

Initially, the strategy of appropriating Newroz appeared to have worked. During the late 1990s, most of the celebrations passed peacefully, and killings and arrests became relatively rare. However, the newly rediscovered festival of Nevruz failed to capture the imagination of most ethnic Turks, who still regarded it as essentially a Kurdish celebration. In recent years, violence at Newroz celebrations has begun to rise again. The main reason is that participants have increasingly begun to use the festival not just as a public demonstration of their Kurdishness but of their support for the PKK. There is also little doubt that the opportunity has been deliberately exploited by the PKK itself, for whom newspaper photographs and television footage of defenseless demonstrators being beaten and sometimes killed by the Turkish security forces are a propaganda gift.

Significantly, the worst of the recent clashes – and both of the deaths – occurred in southeast Turkey in cities such as Van, Yuksekova, and Hakkari, which have long been hotbeds of PKK support and where the authorities banned any Newroz celebrations this year for fear that they would be hijacked by the organization. But demonstrators gathered anyway, chanting pro-PKK slogans, waving PKK flags and holding posters of the organization’s imprisoned leader Abdullah Ocalan. The result was several days of rioting. In Hakkari, life virtually ground to a halt. Stores remained closed and shuttered for three days as the streets became a battleground between stone-throwing youths and members of the security forces (Radikal, Hurriyet, Milliyet, Zaman, March 22-24).

But there were also clashes at Newroz celebrations between PKK supporters and the security forces in the cities of western Turkey, which all now have their own substantial Kurdish populations as the result of migration from southeast Turkey. In Istanbul, which in terms of sheer numbers is now the largest Kurdish city in the world with perhaps up to 4 million ethnic Kurds among its total population of 14 million, more than 100,000 Kurds gathered in the Kazlicesme neighborhood, some of them chanting pro-PKK slogans and carrying banners with portraits of Ocalan (Milliyet, Hurriyet, Radikal, NTV, Dogan Haber Ajansi, March 24).

The Turkish authorities took the opportunity of the Newroz demonstrations to flex their ideological as well as their military muscle. Both in the southeast and in Istanbul, where 10,000 police were assigned to the Kazlicesme demonstration alone, members of the Turkish security forces marched through the streets chanting slogans such as: “Everything for the motherland”; “How happy is the one who says I am a Turk”; “Every Turk is born a soldier”; and, in a reference to Kurdish demands for education in their native language, “One state, one language.”

It is currently unclear whether such attempts at intimidation will do anything either to reduce support for the PKK or to defuse Kurdish demands for greater political and cultural rights. But Turkish television footage of young, male demonstrators clashing with the security forces at Newroz coincided with the publication of a study by the state-owned Turkish Statistical Institute (Turkstat) on the median age of the Turkish population by geographical region. The results suggested that the median age of the Turkish population rises steeply as one moves from the east to the west of the country. Turkstat reported that, in the predominantly Kurdish provinces of southeastern Turkey, the median age was in the range 17.4 to 21 years, rising to 31.8-35.4 years along the Turkish Aegean coast. The median age in Istanbul was in the range 28.3-31.8 (Radikal, March 23).

The southeast of Turkey has also long been the most underdeveloped region of the country. In some provinces, per capita income is less than 20% of the national average. In many of the cities of southeast Turkey the unemployment rate among young people often reaches 50-60% (see EDM, March 18). As has been once again demonstrated by the clashes during Newroz, the combination of ethnic unrest, poverty, a young population, and a high rate of unemployment is rarely a recipe for social stability.

I am convinced that many viewers are particularly irritated with me because they responded to me as “uppity”. Uppity black folks are those of us who don’t know our place and don’t defer sufficiently to our betters.

One viewer was so livid with my statement that he emailed the show’s producers and asserted “she is not tenured.” It was simply impossible for him to accept that it was true.

This feels like precisely the kind of racial misunderstanding that Obama reminded us continues to mark interracial discourse in America. I was angry. The viewers are resentful. Over all the noise we find it hard to hear each other.

Richard Garwin, whose program biography did not include his work for the CIA (which he acknowledged during the Q&A), presented an opaque argument that the sounds on the Dictabelt tape came a minute too late to have been any of the shots in Dealey Plaza. Presenting charts and graphs that confused most people in the audience, and fumbling over his sound files, Garwin was not well received.

Garwin was followed by Donald Thomas, who had written an article on the acoustical evidence for the well-respected British publication Science & Justice (2001 – see http://www.forensic-science-society.org.uk/Thomas.pdf).

Dr. Thomas presented a stark contrast to Garwin. Thomas began by asserting that the number on the tape Garwin tested was not the number of the tape the House assassination committee tested. He also pointed out that there is a difference in recording speed and playback speed, and that Garwin’s team had applied one which made the shot sounds no longer line up with the House committee analysis.

Thomas provided slides that made clear the points he was making. One could feel the change in the room. People now felt they could follow along as Thomas lined up each sound with the motorcycle’s probable position, and then showed us pictures from the Zapruder film and others that confirmed that the motorcycle cop, Officer H.B. McLain, was indeed in those positions at those times.

MASS RACIAL TAUNTING; AMERICAS WEEKEND SPORT

by Carter Camp, Ponca Nation

For thousands of people in America, Friday nights in the fall are for going to the High School football game. On Saturday, college towns across America swell to double or triple their normal size as fans pour into town to cheer the local college football team. On Sunday, Sunday evening, and Monday night, millions of Americans gather in stadiums, in bars, and in front of their televisions to see a great communal American pastime, professional football. But did you ever stop to think that a great percentage of these same all-American people also will spend some of their time hurling racial epithets at my people? Every Friday, Saturday, and Sunday (and Monday night) millions of Americans will scream and beg for my Indian people to be scalped, chopped, burned, tomahawked and murdered, by the Indians, Savages, Redskins, and Braves across the field. In the winter it moves inside for basketball and in the spring back outside for baseball, but every weekend all year around, one of Americas' favorite things to do is to spend some time ignorantly portraying a stereotypical Indian person or spending a few hours mock-hating and degrading Indian people. And when we Indians dare mention it is offensive, they argue they should keep on doing it because 'they have done it for a long time', longer ago than when they kept slaves or would not let women vote, so long that now it is a tradition! You see, in America even screaming racial epithets can become a cherished tradition that some people are willing to fight a civil war over.*

Not 'racist' epithets, the Americans who are screaming to kill, burn, and scalp us, don't mean us really, they mean those people dressed as caricatures of our ancestors. And they also do not mean to denigrate our religion because most of them do not even know we have religions and they all assume our culture is dead because they have been taught we were a "vanishing race", so it must be ok to insult our Grandfathers dress, speech and hair. They may not be 'racist' people but their 'racial' barbs are just as harmful to our children.

One of the things Americans like to tell us is not to be so sensitive, it is all done in good fun. And perhaps it would be funny to us if the very things they scream to be done to the Indian mascot had not actually been done to our Grandfathers by theirs. I am one generation removed from the atrocity of the genocidal "Ponca removal", my Grandfather and Grandmother survived the Ponca," trail of tears" forced march to Oklahoma Territory in the late 1800's, but one third of my Tribe perished. What is ancient history to most Americans is still fresh in the minds of we Indian people, as close as Hitler's holocaust is to a Jew and much closer than slavery is to a Black person. I think it is too soon to ask us not to be sensitive, I still mourn my Grandparents and my people are still not whole.

When all else fails, mascotteers like to tell Indians they are really "honoring" us. Even those who mean it sincerely must not have considered that there are two sides to every contest and one half of the people in the stadium are in no way seeking to "honor" the "redskins" they are about to "slaughter". There can be no way to honor Indian people by using their Tribe or race as team mascots because mascots become a part of the fray and to half of the people attending they are an enemy to be punished, mocked and defeated. We would like it very much if Americans really did honor us as co-Americans who are worthy of the same respect you give all the other races. Black, White and Yellow people are exempted from the great American weekend custom of mass racial taunting, is it too much to ask of our fellow citizens that we also receive such an exemption?

* Statistics: There are approximately 3,000 schools using Indian people as mascots. Each has four grades with aprox. 6 teams for each grade. Each team plays aprox. 10 games per year. This makes 720,000 games, and if each game has 500 people (stadiums have many thousands while soccer fields have few, 500 is an arbitrary but real number used to make my point), there are 360,000,000 Americans taking part in a given year. If one-half of them are in the opposition, we have the amazing statistic of 180 MILLION! Americans per year taking part in the Great-American-Weekend-Sport of "Mass Racial Taunting"! (MRT) of Indian people. The other 180 million Americans think it is not a big thing. Warning: These statistics do not take into account the hundreds of millions of Americans joining the "MRT" of my people, at home, in front of their kids. CC

When the individual believes in nothing transcendent, has no allegiance to a notion of nationhood, and believes nothing is worth sacrificing for, stasis sets in, lethargy follows, and an effete citizenry becomes as vocal in condemnation as it is impotent in matching deed with word.