Abdullah's Restaurant is again open in Kirkuk

Abdullah's Restaurant, where suicide bomb killed about fifty people during Kurban Bayram the 11th December 2008, has been repaired and reopened , as you can see from these pictures. It is located in Kirkuk by the road to Hewlêr.

Another restaurant of the same owner was bombed in Kirkuk centrum about one year earlier, the 3rd November 2007.

The owner of these restaurants is a wealthy Kurd. He says that if his restaurants are destroyed by bomb explosions, he repairs them and reopens as soon as possible.

Pictures by Kristiina Koivunen, the 21st January 2009.

Human Rights of Dead People

Graveyard of Barzan Anfal victims.

Do dead people have human rights? According to Finnish Dr Helena Ranta they have three basic rights: a grave, their name in it and funeral ceremonies according their religion or belief.

Last September I visited the graveyard of the Anfalized Barzan men near Bile. It was a big victory in the search of the Anfal victims when the bodies of five hundred Barzanis were found. They were buried with Islamic funeral ceremonies in their home region.

Any way, the first thing which came to my mind in this graveyard was the statement by Helena Ranta of the rights of the dead people. Five hundred victims of Barzan Anfal have got two of the three rights: a grave and funeral ceremonies. But they do not have their name in their grave. No one knows whose bodies were found and who are still missing.

Dr Helena Ranta is forensic odontologist and Team Leader of the Finnish Forensic Expert Team. She has written several articles about the human rights of dead people. The latest of them was published last November in an essay collection in Finland. She writes there:

”The lawyer’s view, unwavering in logic but simultaneously narrow in focus, is that human rights belong only to the living. My personal view is that even the dead have human rights.
I regard being buried according to one’s religion and traditions in a grave that bears one’s own name a human right. That right is closely related to the rights of the relatives; namely, they have right to know how their loved ones died.
Only this information and the existence of a grave can help them to close the door to the past and build their life again in a damaged society”, writes Dr. Helena Ranta.

When I read these lines I remembered a view from the movie ”All my mothers” which tells about Barzan Anfal and the brave Barzan widows: The funeral convoy carrying the five hundred Anfal victims to their funeral travelled through the Barzan villages. Roads were full of mourning people, who joined the convoy. One elderly Barzan lady refused to believe that the body of her husband was among those to be buried. She refused to believe the death of her husband. She still waits him to return, for more than twenty years. Her waiting will end only if she gets documents stating the death of her husband. She is living in her memories.

Dr Ranta’s text about the importance of the grave continues:
”At the grave the relatives can remember and pay tribute to them who have gone before them. The forensic research community agrees that the dead also have human rights. This way of thinking springs from the ethical code of the discipline and is indirectly supported by Additional Protocol 1 to the Geneva Convention from 1977.”

Dr. Helena Ranta is coordinator at the department of Forensic Medicine Helsinki University for Disaster Victim Identification and International Missions.

She has been leading the forensic investigations of deceased found in mass graves since 1996 in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Cameroon, Peru and Iraq.

March 2003 Mrs. Ranta was Chamber Witness in Haag International Tribunal at the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia) at the court case of Slobodan Milosevic.

Mrs Ranta was advisor of the Truth and Conciliation Commission in Peru. She has coordinated Master of Science education in forensic sciences and human rights at the Catholic University of Lima in Peru, South-America.

I interviewed Dr Ranta two years ago about the difficulties in searching disappeared persons:

”There are lots of problems in accomplishing these basic rights in the battle fields all around the world. Despite situations are different the circumstances are always the same: there is a country which is breaking down and it turning against its own citizen.”

Quotations: Dr. Helena Ranta: The Right to be buried, in Suomalainen-Karvinen: The Ahtisaari legacy: Resolve and Negotiate. Tammi 2008

About TRT-6

The opening of the Kurdish language television channel TRT-6 has surprised me as much as everyone else. There are many comments about it in internet; I do not refer to them. I just explain two aspects, which I find of importance:

The opening of Kurdish language channel in a state television is a good step. However, it does not mean that there would be now freedom of expression in Turkey or that Kurdish language would be free. Now the state can use Kurdish but not the Kurds. The level of repression of Kurds has lowered from genocide level (linguistic genocide is one form of genocide) to ordinary level of an authoritarian state. This is one-step towards the normalization of situation.

I have not yet watched TRT-6 programmes. If the programmes are same poor quality than other TRT channels, the government's hopes that Kurds could be bought by Turkish soap operas in Kurdish language are in vain. If the state would have done this at the beginning of the 1980s, it might have succeeded. However, resisting three decades towards oppression has changed the Kurdish nation. They are not just Kurdish speaking Turkish citizens; they are different kind of nation than the Turks. They cannot be brainwashed by cheap entertainment programmes the same way as the Turks unfortunately can be.

Secondly, I wonder what the generals think about Erdogan’s election channel and prime minister wishing Happy New Year for his Kurdish-speaking citizens. TRT-6 is a big victory for Erdogan in the fight against the Deep State. The law that students can wear headscarves in universities (despite this law might not yet be followed in practise) is a big step in breaking the Kemalist rule that state and religion are separated; the existence of TRT-6 in practise admits that Turkey is bi-lingual country.

The next step must be that Roj-TV will be legal in Turkey and all writers and journalists, who are in Turkish prisons, must be free immediately. Then it is fair play and TRT can make competition with Roj-TV about the viewers. Now TRT-6 is for its potential audience just one more guard in their prison, one more institution to deny their identity as a nation. By using softer methods than TSK.

Genocide studies lesson provided by the Armenians

Church of Tigran Honents in Ani, the ancient Armenian capital. This photo is from the boarder of Turkey (left) and Armenia (right), in between is river Arpacay, which can not be seen here.

Photo: Kristiina Koivunen.

This text was published in Xebat on Monday the 5th January 2009.

Some days ago I compared Anfal and the Rwanda genocide in Xebat. There is a need to compare also the Armenian genocide and Anfal. Kurdistan Regional Government wants Anfal to be internationally recognized. Therefore, Kurds need to study how Armenians succeeded in reaching similar target with their genocide, after many decades it occurred.

Many foreign journalists visit North Iraq, write their stories and travel away. When the tension on the Turkish boarder becomes very hot, journalists arrive to Hewlêr like birds that fly to south in autumn and to north in spring. The same way these war reporters fly away as soon as the conflict tenses down. They move to the next war zone in some other part of the world. Their writing is important for Kurds. However, it does not serve the purpose of reaching international recognition of Anfal.

Genocide is very complex issue. A reporter cannot understand it deeply enough during a short visit. Neither can genocide be described well in newspaper articles or television programmes. It is so wide and complicated issue that it can be explained well only in books. I have read in internet and newspapers several well-written articles about Anfal. They are usually interviews of Anfal victims or NGO representatives working with the Kurdish genocide. They express the fate of interviewed persons and their pain, often there is also some background information about Anfal.

Stories in mass media are important, but they have different audience than books, which can be anything from travel stories to academic dissertations. Newspaper stories are written to big audience, so they may not be too difficult to read. Usually they repeat every time same background information, as some of the audience might be not at all familiar with the issue. Politicians do not make their decisions based on information provided by mass media. Of course, they follow it intensively but they need also harder facts. Newspaper stories should be followed by such documents which provide deeper analysis about the situation.

Some war reporters stay so long time in a war zone that they get enough of information for a book instead of newspaper articles. There are several well selling books in English language about the Iraqi war. But they express Baghdad perspective not Hewlêr perspective. Examples of such books are Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s “Imperial Life in the Emerald City” and Jeremy Scahill’s “Blackwater”.

Maybe some journalists will stay long enough in Hewlêr to write books about their experiences here - especially if Hewlêr turns into a war frontier. However, most probably such books would not tell about Anfal. It happened too long time ago for the interests of the mass media houses which look for profit. Such atrocities are not selling which happened one generation ago!

The Armenian immigrants residing in United States and Europe have understood this. The recognition of the Armenian Genocide in France and discussions about it in the United States are based on massive research material about the topic. It is gathered by scientific methods so it not possible to deny it. Armenians immigrants have themselves supported research about the Armenian genocide.

In many countries it is possible for outsiders to finance research in universities by paying the salary of a professor and all the necessary costs related to scientific research about some topic. It is long process to get university’s acceptance for this, it is not enough that the donor has enough of money. Academic research is objective; it does not function so that any rich person goes to a university and orders a research according his interest. Any way, by this method Armenians have managed to get enough of evidence about their genocide to get it internationally accepted. It has taken long time.

Their success is a good lesson for KRG to study in making their long perspective plan on research about Anfal. Scientific documenting and analysis are compulsory if Kurds want to get international recognition for Anfal.