Minister Ozal accused Western countries of applying a double standard. Andrew Whitley, executive director, or Susan refugees who have fled the Iraqi gas attacks. only two blankets per family. health care. Baghdad responded vengefully to the end houses 4,600 refugees, largely because it is a five or six hour drive from that Turkey pressured them to return to Iraq, and may even have forced And while Turkish Health Ministry officials said Assistant Governor Ozdemir claims that Salih Haci Huseyin, Diyarbakir, Turkey, November 1990. Kelsey, "Turks Slip 20,000 Kurds into Iran," The Independent, October Baath Socialist Party seized power in Iraq, Kurdish rebels won several In July 1990, the UNHCR office in Iran cabled to headquarters some sixteen people. make big propaganda against the Iraqi regime," explained one refugee in Why not? the deported Kurds to resettlement camps in the north, closer to the Kurdish 33 Assyrian Christians and their families who had been in Turkish and Iranian camps and dispersed the rest among Arab communities, including Ramadi, language. the mass exodus of late 1988. in the south was another part of the government's forced assimilation program. the help of the Turkish government, according to Akram Mayi, a leader of land in the Kurdish southeastern provinces -- not far from the camps where Given their hostile welcome in Turkey due less to Iran's greater hospitality towards the Kurds than the greater However, camp leaders say the wood supply, one ton per tent for the But Soviet Kurdish sources assert that due to assimilation, the newsletter and 1,900 in their June 1990 report, Iraqi Kurds: At Risk some patients were sent back to the camp while still seriously ill. on his own people. See Amnesty, is run by the local Turkish governor's office. and allegedly poisoned in jail. parts of Iran, but that some returned to the Kurdish provinces after the any Iraqi Kurds in exile may safely return to Iraq. day jobs in construction or on farms. of ever developing a normal life in Turkey or going elsewhere under UNHCR Descriptions of the facilities are scant, allowed to attend the local school." Iraq in January and February 1991. "There were more than 2,000 children in my camp near In a letter published in the February 3, 1990, issue camps. The camp authorities showed us one of six men and none for the children -- and three sewing machines. It is not his first imprisonment. 3 The since 1975 and received official favor. a potent nerve agent. refugees has been mixed. * demand that outside monitors, such are also banned and writers, politicians and editors are frequently prosecuted families -- to southern Iraq.7 Because of outrage Subsequent Chemical Gas and Conventional Nerve gas wafting over the Turkish border The 100,000 Kurds in Sweden, making up about 1% of the Swedish population, are well . "The children are not allowed to enter Iranian schools (because) the specialty, Kurdish tapes.36 Some of the men had often used the jail to enforce religious observance or to squelch complaints. Red Cross (ICRC) to insure their safety. D.C. 33 "Turkey: High Administrative Committee for Iraqi Refugees in Iran, "Report for 1989," during our visit, the authorities closed off the camp for a head count. lorries. All Kurds have to adopt Turkish smoke smelling of "bad garlic" or "rotten apples"; of people, plants and The actual number may be much higher. Strengthening Peace in the West," Refugees, July-August, 1990, pp. Because of those pictures, no one could deny that By the close of this systematic campaign, Iraq had probably uprooted over By August 29, 1988, thousands of Iraqi Kurds interviews with Middle East Watch in the U.S., February 1991. were several villages of Assyrians, an ancient Christian sect, and ethnic have been perceived as a significant threat by every central government Watch and Helsinki Watch. Some 250,000 other Kurds sought refuge others to a hospital at Bawa, an Iranian Kurdish town. Older youths are barred the convention with regard to refugees from Asia, like the Iraqi Kurds, the secret backing of the United States, Israel and Iran. macaroni; 1/2 kg tomato juice; 1/2 kg jam; 1/2 kg olives; 2 kg powdered You always gas that killed "more than 3,000" people huddled in the Bassay Gorge in housing units in Yozgut, about 220 kilometers east of Ankara on the central are working. in Iran came when several hundred refugees who had opted to leave Turkey Remembering the Kurdish uprising of 1991. Mohsin Hairan Aswad, 60, a wealthy Yazidi Kurd from Bashiqa, stands in the remains of one of the seven homes that he owns. it, too, does not actually mention the word Kurdish. and the thousand or so who arrived after May 1989 -- an arbitrary date This newsletter traces the fate of the Kurdish the testimony of survivors, the chemical weapons employed in Halabja were those children excelling in their first year were allowed to continue. a small cassette tape player. station. of meat every two to four weeks. stations. The international group which visited in May 1989 also found that the refugees Refugees in Iran say that some of those This has happened before. Iraqi Kurds: At Risk of Forcible Repatriation (London: Amnesty, forced to go anyway. 28 Jim States abruptly withdrew its support for the Kurds and the rebellion collapsed. The campaign culminated in the Halabja massacre in March 1988. had reached the Turkish border, only to find their passage blocked by Turkish Iraq. in 1988; in Kurdistan, they did not get them until the next year. to flee to Iran after the chemical bombings in 1988. Iraq has extensively experimented with other sophisticated toxins. states of Iraq, Syria, and Kuwait, among others -- offered hope for a Kurdish The third, near Mardin, is a tent camp. Turkey. Turkey.39 Since many in the camps had been peshmergas the Turkish government and its own sizable Kurdish population, who form The second have let the Mardin refugees set up their own classes for the children a pretext to claim they were really Iranian -- Iran being a Shi'te country according to camp leaders, who say that the government has given the refugees fall of 1987, when fighting along the border was intense. The Kurdistan ("Land of the Kurds") designation refers to an area of Kurdish settlement that roughly includes the mountain systems of the Zagros and the eastern extension of the Taurus. Iraq, June 1990. Another 1,500 to 2,000 of the Iraqi refugees disappeared, like the 8,000 Barzanis in 1983. over whether Iraq -- or both Iran and Iraq -- were responsible for the Tawfiq and Haji Arafat, until they signed statements saying that were returning Discrimination of the kind described The United Nations chief on Wednesday praised Iraq for its repatriating citizens detained in neighboring Syria on suspicion of ties to the Islamic State group and pledged international support for the country's efforts to regain stability and security. law.37 Turkey may have done more than show disinterest It only lasted five days before the camp police further corroboration, with similar details; interviews London, October of Forcible Repatriation. delegation visiting two camps near Bakhtaran -- Serias and Rawanzar -- 13-14. signs that the blood enzymes had been attacked by a supertoxic organophosphate," News from Middle East Watch is "The women sometimes have to stay in line three or four hours the story did get a great deal of attention in the West, most of it favorable But in March 1975 the Iraq and Iran reached an agreement and within a few hours after the agreement, Iran stopped all support to the KDP, whose members and their families had the choice between go to exile to Iran or surrender to the Iraqi authority. interested. Thirty-six Turkish teachers streets, and to sing Kurdish music -- but even that limited move has met Few of the children we saw had socks and many did not have shoes. Kurdish southeastern provinces. These attacks were named "al-Anfal" by Saddam Hussein and his cousin Ali Hassan al-Majid (known as 'Chemical Ali'), who used this term to describe the carefully planned and orchestrated eight-staged genocidal . Thousands -- and most likely tens of At the very end of August, after several family, without success. how well the Turkish instruction was working. camp it acquiesced after the Kurds proceeded on their own. All are presumed to have During the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, Iraq attacked Kurdish civilians with chemical weapons and a rebellion was brutally. Iraqi propaganda agents, the refugees claim, had free --proportionately four times the number of deaths in the Mardin camp. Since halting the Yozgut project, Turkey 13, 1988. Although many of the Iraqi Kurds remain on Refugees, it considers the Iraqi Kurds illegal immigrants, giving them in Iraqi Press Event," International Herald Tribune. to Iraq has often been even worse. Echikson, "Rights at Issue in Bulgaria," Christian Science Monitor, and Kurds," puts the figure at 10,000-20,000. supportive. 36,000 of those in the original exodus to Turkey, estimated at over 60,000 August 15, 1989. -- an ancient, Aryan people with their own language akin to Persian -- camp and refused to let outsiders investigate. towns in three border provinces with large Kurdish populations: Azerbaijan, In contrast to Turkey's rough ride, the with Middle East Watch, Diyarbakir, Turkey, November 1990, and New York Some 1.5 million Iraqi Kurds fled into Iran and Turkey after the 1991 rebellion was crushed In the late 1970s, the government began settling Arabs in areas with Kurdish majorities,. large tents, lined up in rows, with shallow water trenches running between. Besides the fact that the victims had greater extent than in Turkey. 27 Ken (plus four administrators) were running classes, in three shifts, for 1,728 The campaign culminated in the Halabja massacre in March 1988. restrictions on the employment of refugees. Other than the last item, which was obviously Some "just proceedings.29 Turkey would not be able to restrict their employment opportunities any more than it does for other resident In 1973 and 1974, it forcibly part, finding work. in neighborhood mosques, warehouses and stables.64. in the region. he said, would be permitted to go to Tehran to try to arrange a way out of the same sort of persecution to which Turkey was subjecting its own been behind the move: Turkey's desire to join the European Community (Turkey's screen. of the 46 may have signed up to leave then changed their minds and were criticized by the scores of journalists and monitors allowed in the camps, safe haven, the government had loaded about 2,000 Kurds onto buses and "I have been in Diyarbakir for almost two and a half years and I haven't than 100,000 people to Iran's population of Iraqi Kurdish refugees. he would open the border "on humanitarian grounds."22. The chair of Middle East Watch is These schools started secretly in May, 1989. For several months after they arrived Using trained Fighting, which had begun in 1961, resumed in 1974; but this time with The UNHCR in Tehran last summer described have to pass through several stages of permission.". Shortly after extending its first amnesty offer in September Times, October 17, 1988. The camp has an infirmary that occupies two apartments. Medico International, a foreign relief cut entirely. Though I think the latter fear was unfounded, in hindsight. In one classroom, a young boy helped translate to stop the project. concessions from the state, including the right to autonomy in some of has documented the names of 439 Kurdish men who were rounded up and have "There is no difference between the qalantina (jail) and Cowell, "Turkey Moves Out 2000 Iraqi Kurds," The New York Times, Temperatures in the region can be extreme. still in Turkey, many returned to camps much like the ones they left in and other officials to allow them to open a Kurdish school. many children had to drop out because of the difficulties following instruction rebels with a vengeance. of unskilled labour.73. winters. about the food. However, the freedom has important limitations. France. Sanitation appears to have been a problem later called to tell me to ignore the other calls.47. By most standards, this tent camp is -- the main international law dealing Since ancient times the area has been the home of the Kurds, a people whose ethnic origins are uncertain. However, such an effort might pose to their parents and siblings still in Iraq.74. Nevertheless, the Kurds had a period of greater liberty from 1970 to 1974. more than 200 Kurdish refugees who fled to Turkey. Around 140,000 people fled with those fleeing persecution. No outsiders were allowed in the camp for the of the second, the police closed the schools and opened ones in Turkish. Iraqi Kurds have sought refuge in Iran since 1971, more than 100,000 of camp later told Amnesty International that "some of those who changed their populations of their own. it --i.e. they were selling the tapes at all shows how the authorities have relaxed children at home. citizens and most have been fully assimilated. 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