A Jungle They Call Civilization

A Jungle They Call Civilization
by Ahmad Fatemi
May 20, 2010

Last week’s news from the Turkish newspaper Sabah (1) covered an ongoing legal case during the prosecution of which a horrendous crime has been revealed. According to an eyewitness, 13 years ago the Turkish border police, ordered by government authorities, tied the hands of 40 Iranian and Afghan refugees, executed them, and buried them in a large ditch. The “logic” of the authorities who ordered this savage crime is so sickening that I will refrain from repeating it here out of respect for the humane sentiments of the readership.

We can not leave this anti-human savagery “without response.” We cannot; but not because a number of these executed refugees were Iranian nationals.

We can not leave this barbaric thuggery unanswered; but not because of the very reasonable argument that in all these 13 years since that ominous day to the date, the Turkish government has had any other “policy” but pure savagery and barbarity against asylum seekers.

This crime must be condemned. The details of this barbarity must be disclosed; the identity of those murdering perpetrators involved, in all levels from the decisionmaking to the executing, published; and those responsible prosecuted in an independent court and punished specifically for the reason that inhumanity against refugees is common practice in an upside-down world that they call civilization – and then hit us with it.

This Turkish government’s horrendous crime “accidentally” unfolds while its neighbour and classmate, the Islamic Republic of Iran, on fabricated charges and in the Islamic Republic’s usual and well known impostor courts, based on confessions obtained under torture and pressure, “generously” executes Afghan immigrants and refugees (2). And if there is a difference between these two governments, it is the fact that the Islamic Republic is so disgraced that it shamelessly advertises its crimes. After being exposed as the regime of thuggery and murder in the light of nearly 12 months of Iranian peoples’ uprising, the regime of Islamic butchers, by these executions, even tries to score political points, terrorize the society, and strengthen its position in the balance of power against the Iranian masses. I did say that it is an upside-down world!

What hurts most here is the fact that the coincidence of the revelation of the Turkish government’s thuggery and the Islamic regime’s barbaric execution of Afghan refugees is only accidental in that sense that these two cases have caught the mass media’s attention without any premeditated effort. And this is indeed a point that we need to come back to later.

Otherwise, this savagery is a norm, it is global and there are no exceptions, as if these are all graduates of the same school. Here I no longer talk about the Islamic regime of Iran or the chauvinist regime of Turkey, the Stone Age Taliban and the backward Sudan.

This behaviour is a norm because the very “courtly” and ”humble” government of Japan, too, in “solving the refugee problem,” is not much behind the Turkish government or the Islamic regime. They confine the refugees in POW camps and special prisons and under the most anti-human pressures break them. They kill these totally normal and healthy human beings by refusing to treat their incidental illnesses; or by pushing them to committing suicide; or by deporting them, broken, crushed, crumpled and transformed, back to the hell they had one day in search of a better life run away from!

This is a norm because the “noble” and “humane” government of Sweden, a country where, thanks to the humane sentiments of the Swedes, selling a puppy younger than 8 weeks old is forbidden and a punishable crime, separates an infant from its refugee mother to deport the mother according to the law!

It is a norm because the United States of America, the ”leader of the free world,” installs barbed wires, fences, walls, and hires an army of manhunters to deprive the poor, hungry Mexican of the “freedom” of bringing bread to the table!

This is the norm of our upside-down world, and it is upside-down because the creators of poverty and war and exploitation and injustice and suppression and helplessness; creators of the problem of hundreds of millions of refugees; creators of the inhumane terms of “legal” and “illegal” human, and “paperless” human beings, are the same bunch who own the refugee camps and prisons and the minefields and sharpshooters and immigration offices.

The thuggery of the Turkish government must be answered especially for the reason that in an upside-down world they call civilized, this barbarity is the norm. This crime must be answered and the answer is the indictment of hundreds of millions of human beings who, from Arizona to Hakari, and Stockholm to Cape Town, live a life in hell, and have nothing but a better world, another kind of world, a humane world to hope for. This barbarity of the Turkish government must be answered and it must be answered by us who are not only the herald of a better world, a humane world, a world in the future, but are the envoy of that future world in today’s upside-down world, this lawless jungle they call civilization.

We will answer the Turkish government’s savagery.

The Farsi version of this article was first published in Anternasional No: 349, Friday 21 of May 2010 (http://www.anternasional.com)
(1) May 11, 2010, Sabah: Eski uzman, gizli tanık oldu: 40 mülteciyi öldürüp gömdük (translation to English below provided by a dear friend; translation to Farsi also below translated by another friend)
(2) May 13, 2010, RFE/RL: Afghans protest against Iran over executions

Sabah article translated from Turkish to English:
Former expert becomes secret witness: “We killed 40 refugees and buried them”

The secret witness who served at the Turkish gendarmerie intelligence in Yüksekova district at the Hakkari province asserted that they killed 40 refugees who illegally entered Turkey from Iran and buried them in a pit. He acknowledged that he is able to locate the mass grave of the refugees.

The expert sergeant, who left his job at the Gendarmerie Intelligence Headquarters at Yüksekova district after his contract was not renewed, applied some time ago to the office of the Special Executive Head Prosecutor of the city of Diyarbakır with the intent to become a secret witness. The former expert sergeant was interrogated for three days. He declared that he had served 12 years at the inquiry unit of the Gendarmerie Anti-Terror Intelligence (JITEM) in the eastern and south-eastern provinces of Hakkari, Şırnak, Van, and recently Diyarbakır. He denoted that while serving in Hakkari, they were temporarily sent to the Başkale district of Van in 1997, where they caught 40 refugees who entered Turkey illegally from the border at Başkale. Most of the refugees had Iranian, Pakistani and Afghani nationalities.

The secret witness reported that the brigade’s commander, a brigadier general who was informed about the incident, had said that if the refugees were sent to the prosecutor’s office, they would not be arrested but released, and they would want to re-enter Turkey after they were deported. The former expert reported that they received an instruction saying “Kill them all.” The refugees’ hands were tied behind their backs and they were raked by gunfire at a mountain area located 5 kilometers from the headquarters. Their bodies were buried in a pit dug with machines. The witness asserted that a report was written saying that the killed people were PKK members who attempted to infiltrate from the border.

The file has been sent to the Special Executive Head Prosecutor of the city of Van in an effort to locate the pit and implement other legal procedures.

این هم ترجمهء دقیق مقاله به فارسی:
بر اساس گزارشی از روزنامه صباح ترکیه و بنا به اعترفات یک پلیس امنیتی سابق که در شهر*حَکّاری منطقه یوکسک اووا به عنوانه گروهبان در قسمت اطلاعاتی‌ ژاندارمری این منطقه مشغول به خدمت بوده است،چهل پناهنده را که در صدد فرار(به صورت قاچاق)از مرز ایران ترکیه بوده اند,به قتل رسانده و در یک گور دسته جعمی دفن کرده اند.

چهل پناهنده را کشتیم و چال کردیم

بر اساس گزارشی از روزنامه صباح ترکیه و بنا به اعترفات یک پلیس امنیتی سابق که در شهر *حَکّاری منطقه یوکسک اووا به عنوانه گروهبان در قسمت اطلاعاتی‌ ژاندارمری این منطقه مشغول به خدمت بوده است،چهل پناهنده را که در صدد فرار ( به صورت قاچاق ) از مرز ایران-ترکیه بوده اند , به قتل رسانده و در یک گور دسته جعمی دفن کرده اند.

وی ادعا می‌کند که حتا میتواند جای این گور دسته جعمی را نشان بدهد،او پس از اخراج ناگهانی از ژاندارمری به مقامات ویژه دادستانی در شهر دیاربکر مراجعه کرده و از این مقامات تقاضای حفاظت جانی کرده است.

او همچنین ادعا می‌کند که دوازده سال پیش ،به مدت سه روز در زمان خدمتش در ژاندارمری شهر *حَکّاری یوکسک اووا ، شمدیلان، چوکورجا در منطقه شیرناک وان و در آخر دیاربکر با سازمان امنیتی به نامه مستعار “جیتم” و به نام مبارزه با ترور به عنوان بازجو به طور موقت خدمت و همکاری کرده است.

او می‌گوید در زمان ورود این پناهندگان به صورت قاچاق ، یعنی‌ در سال ۱۹۹۷ میلادی وی در یک پست موقتی و به عنوانه پلیس مرزی; در شهر وان ،در منطقه باش قلعه خدمت می‌کرده است،او در توضیحات خود ادامه میدهد : اکثر این پناهندگان تابع کشورهای ایران، افغانستان و پاکستان بودند .

بنا به اعترافات این شاهد ،دستور کشتار پناهندگان ،از طرف فرمانده کل منطقه و با این عنوان بوده است: این افراد فراری هستند و از طرف کشورشان در پیگرد قانونی‌ قرار دارند ،اگر ما آنهارا دستگیر کنیم و به دادستانی تحویل دهیم هیچ فایده ای ندارد زیرا که دادستانی آنهارا یا آزاد می‌کند و یا یا اینکه آنها را به کشورشان بازمیگرداند ،و اگر این اتفاق بیفتد اینها در مدتی‌ کوتاه دوباره به صورت قاچاق برای ورود دوباره به خاک ترکیه تلاش خواهند کرد….دست همشان را از پشت ببندید و بعد آنها را بکشید !!

این جنایت، در فاصله تقریبا ۵ کیلومتر به دور از ایستگاه پلیس همان منطقه در جایی‌ که از قبل علامت گذاری شده بوده است صورت می‌گیرد،و در گزارش پلیس اینطور نوشته میشود: این افراد از اعضای سازمان تروریستی پکک * )بوده‌اند و در یک جنگ مسلحانه کشته شدند…

در حال حاضر این پرونده و مدارک برای رسیدگی بیشتر به مقامات ویژه دادستانی کلّ در شهر وان فرستاده شده است

توضیحات

حَکّاری (به ترکی: Hakkari، به کردی: Colemêrg، تلفظ” جوله‌مِرگ) شهری است در منتهی‌الیه جنوب شرقی ترکیه و در نزدیکی مرز ایران. این شهر مرکز استان حکاری است.

حزب کارگران کردستان معروف به پ.ک.ک نام گروهی چپگرا و مسلح در جنوب شرقی ترکیه (باکور کردستان) است که خواستار ایجاد کردستان بزرگ در مناطقی از ترکیه، عراق، ایران و سوریه است. سازمان ملل متحد ، اتحادیه اروپا ،[۱]آمریکا، ترکیه و ایران این حزب را گروهی تروریستی اعلام کرده‌اند

منبع خبر
http://www.sabah.com.tr/Gundem/2010/05/11/eski_uzman_gizli_tanik_oldu_40_multeciyi_oldurup_gomduk
با تشکر از مترجم متن ماسى فتحى