Date: 2:20 PM 3/20/01 +0100

From: azad

Subject: I: DELEGAZIONE ITALIANA AL NEWROZ: notiziario n.2 (19/

NEWROZ 2001

Centro d’informazione sulle attività della delegazione italiana in Turchia

e sulla situazione in occasione della celebrazione del Newroz

Riferimenti in Italia:

Uiki (Ufficio d’informazione del Kurdistan in Italia) 06.42013576 – fax 06.42013799 – E-mail <mailto:uiki.onlus@tin.it>uiki.onlus@tin.it

Associazione Azad – 06.57302933 – fax 06.57305132 – E-mail <mailto:ass.azad@libero.it>ass.azad@libero.it

Riferimenti della delegazione in Turchia: E-mail <mailto:delegazione@hotmail.com>delegazione@hotmail.com

Francesca (0347.5089734) e Antonio (0335.7564743) per il gruppo Istanbul/Diyarbakir

Simona (0339.3684700) e Claudio (0328.3245816) per il gruppo Istanbul/Van

Ritrasmettiamo, scusandoci per le eventuali ripetizioni dello stesso messaggio, il comunicato elaborato ieri sulla base di informazioni di prima mano dalla delegazione italiana a Istanbul, circa il fermo degli attivisti dell'Associazione diritti umani che proprio due ore dopo dovevano incontrare la stessa delegazione.

Alleghiamo inoltre la versione inglese di alcuni articoli pubblicati oggi sul quotidiano kurdo in Europa Ozgur Politika (sito in inglese: <http://www.kurdishobserver.com/>http://www.kurdishobserver.com/ ), sul teso contesto nel quale si sta preparando la grande festa di piazza del 21 marzo.

(Per una migliore comprensione: Amed è il nome kurdo di Diyarbakir; la "questione della W" è il significativo cavillo giuridico cui si attaccano i governatori per vietare o attaccare le manifestazioni, dato che la W di "Newroz" nell'alfabeto turco non esiste, la versione "folklorica" inventata dall'establishment per svuotare di senso il Newroz si chiama Nevruz ed è ovviamente disertata dalla gente, e la Costituzione golpista dell'82 ammette una lingua sola...)

Rinnoviamo, anche sulla base del grave attacco all'Ihd, il nostro invito a partire per Diyarbakir, rivolto in particolare alle figure istituzionali ad ogni livello.

La delegazione italiana incontrerà oggi a Istanbul il partito Hadep, e Odp, il sindacato Kesk (reduce dalla dura repressione di una manifestazione sindacale ad Ankara), le famiglie dei prigionieri organizzate nella Tuad-Der, le "Madri per la pace", il Goc-Der (Associazione profughi), l'Istituto kurdo e la fondazioen giuridica Tohav. Domani 20 marzo, vigilia del Newroz, volerà in due gruppi a Diyarbakir e a Van.

Roma, 19 marzo 2001

TURCHIA: FERMATI IERI A ISTANBUL ATTIVISTI PER I DIRITTI UMANI

Sessantasette attivisti dell’Associazione per i diritti umani (Ihd) di Istanbul, fra cui la presidente, avvocata Eren Keskin, sono stati fermati e detenuti ieri mattina dalla polizia per "manifestazione illegale" mentre, vestiti di nero, tenevano una conferenza stampa nella centrale via Sultanahmet in solidarietà con i detenuti politici. A mezzogiorno di oggi nessuno di loro è stato ancora scercerato.

Il governo turco sta lasciando morire lentamente ben 496 detenuti, di cui 150 sono ormai al 150.mo giorno di digiuno e gli altri al 90.mo giorno, senza dare risposte alla loro richiesta di fine dell’isolamento carcerario.

La notizia degli arresti è stata data alla delegazione italiana che proprio nel pomeriggio di ieri è stata ricevuta nella sede dell’Ihd dagli attivisti ancora liberi. Fra loro era Leman Yurtsever, sorella dell’attivista dell’Hadep Metin Yurtsever, per il cui assassinio sotto tortura il 4 aprile del ’99 (durante le manifestazioni seguite al sequestro di Ocalan) la polizia di Istanbul sarà sotto processo su denuncia dell’associazione.

L’Ihd, che per ritorsione rispetto al proprio impegno sulle carceri ha già subito la chiusura delle sue sedi di Barman, Malata e Bingol, ha chiesto presenze e solidarietà internazionale in occasione del processo.

La delegazione italiana, forte di 43 persone provenienti da quindici città, ieri a Istanbul ha incontrato anche l’Associazione profughi (Goc-Der), i redattori del quotidiano di opposizione Yeni Gundem, il Centro di cultura della Mesopotamia e le famiglie dei prigionieri politici, ed ha espresso all’Ihd ed a tutte le vittime della repressione la sua piena solidarietà. Per oggi è previsto un nuovo fitto calendario di incontri a Istanbul.

Dal "Kurdish Observer" del 19 marzo

Another 'W' crisis

The 'W' phobia of some state officials has become a problem this year as well. While the Antep Governor's Office refused permission for Newroz celebrations because the letter 'W' was found in the application, applications were also rejected in Maras, Bitlis and Tatvan and the people were invited to official celebrations of 'Nevruz.' Preparations in provinces and districts in which permission was granted continues full speed.

Whereas last year Istanbul Governor Erol Cakir refused to authorized Newroz celebrations because of the letter 'W', the Antep Governor's Office has refused permission for celebrations this year for the same reason. The application presented by People's Democracy Party (HADEP) Antep organization for Newroz celebration in Station Square was rejected on the grounds that "There is no 'W' in the Turkish alphabet."

HADEP Provincial Chairman Abdullah Ince noted that the rationale was ridiculous and continued to say: "Applications were accepted in a number of provinces. Is a different alphabet being used in these provinces? Newroz is a personal name. How can we change it? Above all, they are not documenting the non-acceptance of our application." Ince said that prohibitions would not be an obstacle to their celebrations and that everyone would celebrate Newroz in their neighborhoods.

Officials also rejected Newroz celebration applications in Maras, Bitlis, and Tatvan, saying, "We are in any case celebrating Nevruz. Join our celebrations as the people."

Newroz fire is rising

Large crowds gathered and danced the halay around fires they lit, chanting slogans and trills with great enthusiasm, to celebrate Newroz in the Yenimahalle and Akkopru neighborhoods of Van, in Hilal, Batman, in the Pinarbasi and Karsiyaka districts of Izmir, in Anadolu neighborhood and Topdagi in Adana, and in the Gundogdu, Yenipazar and Toroslar neighborhoods of Mersin.

Police intervening in celebrations in Van detained seven people.

Meanwhile, about 60 students of Antalya's Akdeniz University arranged an outing called "2001 Peace Outing" to the historical Perge region.

Newroz delegations on their way to Kurdistan

Delegations are coming from various centers in Europe to watch Newroz celebrations in North [Turkish] Kurdistan. Members of the delegations are calling themselves "Doves of Peace."

SAVAS POLAT

While Newroz excitement began with Kurdistanis weeks ago, this year, just as every year, delegations from various centers in Europe are going to North Kurdistan to watch Newroz celebrations in person.

Delegations formed in Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland, and Belgium include people from various nongovernmental organizations and professional organizations, as well as politicians.

'Doves of Peace'

The teams, which began departing for North Kurdistan as of March 10, will all participate as observers in Newroz celebrations in various provinces of North Kurdistan on Newroz, March 21. Among those on the Newroz delegations are a great number of people traveling to Kurdistan for the first time. Answering questions for our newspaper, delegation members said they were calling themselves "Doves of Peace." "We believe in brotherhood of peoples," they said, adding, "and we believe in the brotherhood of the Turkish and Kurdish peoples." But they also called attention to the fact that Turkey had not given serious response to the steps taken by the Kurdish side and to the increase in provocative actions aimed at sabotaging the peace process. The Newroz delegations, comprised of peoples from different places, said they would strive for peace and stressed that they would do everything they could for the Kurdish problem to be solved through peaceful means.

Members called attention to the fact that, along with watching Newroz celebrations,the delegations would also be meeting with nongovernmental organizations, municipal officials, and the people in the Kurdish provinces that they visit and that they would relay their impressions and the results of their contacts in statements to the press upon their return to Europe.

Centers of the delegations and where they will be going in Kurdistan:

- Germany/Hamburg delegation (15 people) - Kars

- Germany/Cologne delegation (12 people) - Hasankeyf, Nemrud, and Amed

- Belgium Delegation (10 people) - Amed, Van, Hakkari

- Italy delegation (43 people) - Amed, Van

- Switzerland delegation (4 people)

Soldiers raid villages

Soldiers raided some villages tied to the Lice and Kulp districts of Amed (Diyarbakir), warned villagers about giving assistance to the PKK, and also wanted them to fill out forms asking their ethnic identity, language, economic situation, and where their children living outside the district were residing.

AMED

Soldiers have arranged raids in the past week against the Cirali, Kiyi, and Zumrut villages in the Amed district of Lice and on the Karaagac, Hevidan, and Kafa villages of Kulp. Soldiers raiding the three villages in Lice district said that there had been undesirable clashes experienced in the region in the past, but that those responsible for this were those who gave support to the PKK, saying that the villagers were to inform the security station from now on if any outsider came to the village.

Soldiers who raided the villages in Lice and Kulp, after searching the homes, additionally gave the villagers forms asking them to fill out "ethnic identity, language, economic situation, if you have quit being a village guard, why?, and the names and addresses of any children who are in prison, in Europe, or who are guerrillas." The soldiers also asked the village muhtars for sketches of the villages, the number of streets, the population, number of households, how many people migrated and to where, and for a panoramic photograph of the village.

Women called for peace

The artists, writers, and journalists who came together as the "Women's Solidarity for Peace" were greeted with trills, victory signs, and slogans of peace. The group, which listened to the women, the greatest victims of war, possibly faced Amed (Diyarbakir) for the first time listening to these stories.

EVRIM ALATAS/LALES ARSLAN

The people of Amed have experienced yet another 'extraordinary' day. The women, wearing their white head scarfs, met every 'hello' of the female writers, journalists, and artists coming from Istanbul and Ankara with trills and warmth, they explained their problems, called for responsibility, and asked for help. Some of the guest women, including writers who had recently lost their jobs due the mass layoffs in the newspaper business, listened and took notes with the intentions of being mediators to the best of their abilities.

Amed, the city in which it is thought that every person or group which comes with the concept of 'peace' has brought peace, that 'Extraordinary Rule' had become 'ordinary', the city in which thousands of people greet with enthusiasm even the opening of municipal water purification facilities, was with its new guests on Saturday.

The women, who came together as the "Women's Solidarity for Peace" through the efforts of sociologist Pinar Selek, arrived in Amed early on Saturday morning. Even though there was great disappointment that Turkan Soray, who had been named as part of the group, did not come because of illness, the tableaux presented at Amed overcame such disappointment quickly, because this was the first time that these women who write or report the news in various newspaper columns and television stations came before the camera objectives and became the news themselves.

Hundreds of women were waiting early in the morning to greet them in front of the Diyarbakir Municipal Building, wearing their national clothing and with carnations in their hands.

But Diyarbakir Security Director Atilla Cinar, who had served in the Istanbul political section and was transferred to Amed after the death of Gaffar Okkan, was not accustomed to such a scene and disturbed it, dispersing the crowd, even if "without using force" and only partial success, in order to "not give ground to provocations."

But a great uproar, special to Amed, broke out when the guest women went out on the Municipal balcony and waved to the crowd waiting below. The women of all ages in their white head scarfs below greeted their guests with victory signs and trills. The guests, who had met with Kurdish women in one fashion or another during the years that they served in news agencies, were nevertheless surprised at the first time they were greeted with slogans of "Biji Asiti" (Long live peace). The square swelled with trills and applause as their names were read out. Justice in applause and trills was only broken when the name of Pinar Selek was read. The women of Amed had a special soft spot for Pinar Selek. While some of the women guests lost themselves in the excitement of the atmosphere and greeted the crowds with victory signals, they soon realized "what they were doing" and "pulled themselves together."

'We are here for peace'

After all the greetings, Duygu Asena and Pinar Selek spoke on behalf of the group. Duygu Asena, a feminist writer who recently lost her job, began her speech saying, "We came here to say 'Long live peace'." Asena, who was applauded at the end of every sentence even by women who did not understand what she was saying, continued to say the following: "Our efforts will continue. In every place where there is not peace, democracy, freedom of thought, and human rights, a number of forces will make us into slaves. You and we will live separate slaveries. We came to send the message to women here, over there, and elsewhere that you are not alone."

Pinar Selek, for her part, said, "All of us feel the same thing. We came here in one and a half hours. This is not a great distance, but there is a great difference in what is experienced. We came here to listen, to share, to understand. There is only one path to ending the pains we experience, and that is for women to come together." Selek was greeting with unending trills when she said, in the Kurdish she learned in prison, "Biji asiti, biji yekitiya jinan" (Long live peace, long live the union of women).

Possibly the most important detail explaining the aim of the visit was the discomfort felt by the guest women because they did not understand the Kurdish announcement introducing them from the podium and that the women below applauded their guests even though they did not understand their speeches in Turkish. The Kurdish women let doves fly, while the guest women rained carnations down on them, thus ending the welcoming section of the visit.

Face-to-face:

Still awaiting the guest women was the "difficult part" of their day. Hundreds upon hundreds of women joined those who had greeted them in the morning, filling the municipal conference hall. The women were again greeted with great applause as they took their places on stage. Following this, there was a dialogue full of questions between the guest author and journalist women and the victimized women of Amed. The guest women were going to see that translation remained insufficient because the wounded women of Amed could not speak any language other than Kurdish and the translators did not know Turkish very well.

'Em asiti dixwazin'

For a short while, the women just looked at each other. After that, journalist Sukran Soner took the microphone and summarized why they had come and what they wanted to talk about in the dialogue, and handed the microphone to the crowd. An aged women who took the microphone began with 'Slav u hurmet' (greetings and regards) and explained her life in a flash. "Dayiken Kurd u Tirkan ji gunehin," she said, asking for the dirty war to end. The entire hall applauded the old woman.

She sat down, and another woman took the microphone, saying she was Leyla Zana's sister. A great commotion broke out. Her name is Pirozhan Dogru. She explained her troubles, ending her words with the sentence, "Em asiti dixwazin." The first half of the women's one-day program passed packed full.

The problem is war, the solution is peace?

Some of them had a loved one missing, some of them had been assaulted under detention, some of them had had their village burned, while some of them lost relatives to "perpetrator unknown" murders. When the tragedies are the same, the stories all resemble each other, all ending with death and pain. They said from the stage that the story was well known, so they should talk about how they could find a solution. Actually, the answer to this desire comes out of every conversation. Because, according to women, the problem is war and the solution is peace? The suicides in Batman come up. Young women who stood up to speak said that suicides were inevitable in places where women had no social life, were experiencing cultural shock because of migration, and had economic problems.

NEWROZ IN ITALIA

Il Newroz sarà celebrato in Italia, anche con collegamenti in diretta con la delegazione presente a Istanbul:

- A ROMA martedì 20 marzo, fuochi, musica e danze dalle ore 18.30 davanti al centro Ararat, nell'area del Campo Boario;

- A CATANIA martedì 20 marzo dalle ore 18, c/o Casa dei popoli in via V. Emanuele 121, video e dibattito dedicato a Leyla Zana ed a tutti i prigionieri politici

- A VENEZIA martedì 20 alle ore 18 fiaccolata da piazza Roma a Campo S. Margherita, dove si canta e si danza fino alle 22

- A FRANCAVILLA FONTANA (BRINDISI) proiezione di "Ax- La Terra", cucina e musica kurda, dalle ore 19 presso l'Arci

- a LECCE e a BADOLATO, martedì 20 celebrazione del Newroz nei centri di raccolta dei profughi kurdi

- A ROMA mercoledì 21 marzo dalle ore 19 filmati, dibattito e musica presso il centro sociale Forte Prenestino

- A BOLOGNA sabato 24 marzo, grande festa nazionale nel Teatro occupato di viale Lenin, dalle ore 14 alle 22, con i gruppi Koma Azin, Koma Car Navan; "Dol u Zurna" (percussioni e flauto kurdo), filmati, mostre e spettacoli: bus da Roma e Milano (da Roma p. ore 9:30 Piramide, pren. £. 30.000 a/r presso Uiki 06.42013576). L'ingresso di lire 10.000 è devoluto ai profughi del campo di Mahmura.

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