At 12:34 PM -0400 10/18/02, Nathan Newman wrote:
>If you can find even a mention of the word "Kurds" on the International
>ANSWER web site, you are a better detective than me. Same is true over at
>"Not in Our Name."
-***** Human Rights Watch
-Providing Bush with ammo for attack on Iraq
-...HRW gives the plight of the Kurds as one reason for indicting the
-Iraqi leader.
-But HRW is silent about that. It certainly would never suggest an
-international tribunal to indict and try the right-wing Turkish
-government for its brutal war against the Kurds.
Not surprised that Workers World itself mentions the Kurds-- to give Iraq a pass by targetting Turkey-- but the attack on Human Rights Watch is of course ridiculous, since it has written extensively about the Turkish repression of the Kurds
See first their whole page devoted to the panopoly of Turkish human rights abuses at http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/turkey/index.htm and specific pieces on Kurdish oppression at: http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/turkey/index.htm
Some bits: " any attempt to assert political or cultural rights based on Kurdish identity is looked upon as treason and as a threat to the very foundations of the Turkish state--and punished accordingly...the population as a whole has often been targeted and has endured two decades of terrible hardship, instability, and fear. Kurdish villagers in particular have been subjected to frequent security raids in which they have been abused, tortured, and even "disappeared," or extrajudicially executed. Many commentators agree that the crude and wholesale methods used by the military only serve to boost PKK recruitment."
But then the bashing of human rights groups is all of a piece with WWP's slavish defense of its dicatorial pets like Milosevic and Hussein.
-- Nathan Newman