By Sandy Yang
Daily Bruin Staff
It is a chapter in history where people are slaughtered because
they are a of a certain race. They are not allowed to speak their
own language or cultivate their own literature in fear of
annihilation. They are lucky to even wear the clothing of their
heritage.
This may describe the Holocaust or other historical accounts of
ethnic cleansing ““ all shameful reminders of humanity at its
worst.
But when freelance journalist Kevin McKiernan covered the Gulf
War in 1991, he witnessed this very brutality. Turkish armies were
killing the Kurds, a race with origins in the Middle East tracing
back to 300 B.C.
The only American journalist to document this footage, McKiernan
thought he had a news-breaking story. In addition, he discovered
that the United States helped supply Turkey with most of its
weapons, tanks and attack helicopters. At the same time, the U.S.
sent troops to Kosovo to battle for human rights.
McKiernan’s nine-year effort to document Kurdish tragedies
will make its way to UCLA’s James Bridges Theater this
Saturday. “Good Kurds, Bad Kurds: No Friends but the
Mountains,” has already screened at film festivals such as
Slamdance in Utah, the Santa Barbara Film Festival and Human Rights
Watch in New York.
Though his footage seems to be the stuff Pulitzer Prize winning
investigative reporting was made of, McKiernan’s story was
initially rejected by American news outlets.
McKiernan, a 1976 Pulitzer Prize finalist, pitched this
documented footage to major news stations and newsmagazines such as
CBS and ABC’s “Nightline.” But he didn’t
expect this news to end up as an article in the 2000 edition of
Censored, last year’s collection of news stories that are,
well, censored from the national press.
“We couldn’t even give the stories away,”
McKiernan said. “(News stations) told me it’s
hard-hitting, but it’s not on our radar. I asked myself …
“˜What’s going on here?’ and I wondered what is it
that validates the selectivity of news so that Kosovo is important
but Kurdistan is not.”
While shooting Gulf War footage for NBC and CBS, McKiernan first
learned about the Kurds in Turkey. The largest ethnic population in
the world without its own state, the Kurds reside in Iraq, Turkey,
Iran, Syria and parts of the former Soviet Union.
During the Gulf War, the U.S. protected three million Kurds in
Iraq, who sought to overthrow Saddam Hussein. The U.S., however,
supplied 80 percent of Turkey’s arsenal, which Turkish armies
used to burn about 3,000 Kurdish villages. According to McKiernan,
two million civilian Kurds were displaced and 40,000 killed as a
result.
The annihilation, which can be described as ethnic cleansing,
resulted from a rift that dates back to 1923 when Turkey gained
independence. With the Kurdish population reaching up to 30
million, half of that population lives in Turkey.
Thus, McKiernan came up with the documentary’s title as a
reflection of how the United States treats Kurds differently,
depending on which country they reside in.
Since 1991, McKiernan has visited the Middle East a dozen times,
documenting Kurds living in terror and scrambling in mobs to escape
gunfire. Sometimes, entire villages had to be evacuated because the
government threatened to burn them down. Even children could
recognize which helicopters drop deadly missiles and which ones
would just fly away. Some Kurds joined the PKK, the Kurdistan
Workers Party, a guerrilla uprising that fought for freedom but was
eventually subdued by Turkey.
Unlike the Holocaust, however, Kurds could escape destruction if
they conformed to the Turkish customs and language. As McKiernan
describes it, they had to forget their Kurdish heritage. But there
were still Kurds who wanted to speak their language and embrace
their culture, even if it meant death.
For example, in one scene of the documentary, Kani Xulam, a
Washington lobbyist for the Kurds’ freedom, talks about his
determination to expose America’s treatment Kurds in
Turkey.
“If it takes (sacrificing) my life to make a statement, to
embarrass the U.S., to say that justice doesn’t exist in this
country, I will let it be,” Xulam said. It is later revealed
that his efforts scared the Turkish government so much, Turkey
sought to bring Xulam back inside its borders.
One of 20,000 Kurds who live in the United States today, Xulam
is awaiting trial to determine his status for political asylum.
McKiernan documents Xulam’s rise from a mild-mannered Maytag
salesman in Santa Barbara to a major activist in Washington
D.C.
The U.S. government itself doesn’t escape
McKiernan’s scrutiny. The fact that Turkey is part of NATO,
an ally to the U.S. and a provider of valuable resources such as
air bases, oil and water all comes into play.
“Under the Clinton Administration, report after report of
massive human relations informed Congress that U.S. weapons have
been used against civilians to bomb villages, kill
civilians,” McKiernan said.
“Terrible things have been done in Turkey, but they are an
important ally, so the United States are able to close our
eyes.”
Yona Sabar, professor in the Department of Near Eastern
Languages and Cultures, who is familiar with the Kurds’
plight, agrees with McKiernan.
“Americans are afraid of an uprising,” Sabar said.
“Sometimes we have to keep quiet not to hurt our
friends.”
Sabar, however, believes that the United States should be
informed when a freedom like the ability to communicate in
one’s language has been threatened.
“We take our freedom to speak as we would want to speak
for granted, but many people are deprived of that,” Sabar
said. “They are not allowed to study (their language) or use
it in any public forum.”
McKiernan only hopes his documentary passes on the information
to more people and sparks a debate.
“This is an educational effort,” McKiernan said.
“We spend money subsidizing these weapons and their transfer.
Don’t we have the right to know what we’re
buying?”
FILM: “Good Kurds, Bad Kurds: No Friends but the
Mountains” will screen at the James Bridges Theater this
Saturday at 3:30 p.m. Tickets are available at the door for $6.
Director Kevin McKiernan will hold a discussion after the
screening. He can be contacted at www.kevinmckiernan.com.