Human Rights Watch on Kurds

Yoshie Furuhashi furuhashi.1 at osu.edu
Sat Oct 19 12:56:53 PDT 2002


At 1:45 PM -0500 10/19/02, s-t-t at juno.com wrote:
> > Human Rights Watch urged indictment of "Saddam," as such
>> indictment is said to be conducive to "regime change" in Iraq,
>> based on the successful "regime change" in Yugoslavia after
>> indictment of Milosevic:
>
>Whatever the ideological blinders of HRW, in discussing the craven
>cynicism that is the creed of the Free Milosevic! crowd it's a red
>herring. The article you fwd'd from Free Milosevic! quarter charged HRW
>with being an accomplice to the coming war *not* so much for _neglecting
>repression_ of the Kurds in Turkey but *because* they were honestly
>_cataloging repression_ of the Kurds in Iraq.

WW has its own ideology for which I am not responsible, as I am not its member. My own charge against Human Rights Watch is not that it is "_neglecting repression_ of the Kurds in Turkey" but that it actually went so far as to help persecute them, for instance by pressuring the Italian and other governments to prosecute Abdullah Ocalan for "crimes against humanity," while merely recommending that the Turkish government "investigate and hold accountable those members of its security forces responsible for serious violations of international human rights and humanitarian law committed against the Kurds" (@ <http://www.hrw.org/press/1999/jan/tur0120.htm>).

Has Human Rights Watch honestly catalogued repression in Iraq, regardless of the political ideologies of those who committed repression? I don't think so. Human Rights Watch's catalogue has been consistently shaped by its political work on behalf of the empire. I recommend that you turn, instead, to Amnesty International for conscientious documentation of human rights violations as well as its sensibly left-wing political stance: <http://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/iraq/>; and <http://www.web.amnesty.org/web/ar2001.nsf/webmepcountries/IRAQ?OpenDocument>. -- Yoshie

* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Anti-War Activist Resources: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/activist.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osu.edu/students/CJP/>



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