Truth and justice needed here

"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."
- Dr. Martin Luther King

Ten-year old dies after Israeli action

A ten-year-old Palestinian girl has died in hospital in Jerusalem, three days after being injured during an incident involving Israeli border police. The child, Abir Aramin, was the daughter of Palestinian peace activist Bassam Aramin. They lived in the West Bank village of Anata, where Israel is building a section of its West Bank barrier.

Palestinians say Abir was with two other girls in the village when an Israeli border police vehicle drove past. Stones were thrown in the direction of the police, who responded with tear-gas and stun-grenades, hitting the girl in the head. According to press reports, border police have launched an investigation.

Iraqi children dying from lack of simple equipment

Colin Brown reports in The Independent that children are dying in Iraqi hospitals for the lack of simple equipment that in some cases costs as little as 95p. The is revealed today in a letter signed by nearly 100 eminent doctors.

In a direct appeal to British Prime Minister Tony Blair,more than 100 doctors describe desperate shortages causing "hundreds" of children to die in hospitals. The signatories include Iraqi doctors, British doctors who have worked in Iraqi hospitals and leading UK consultants and GPs. They are backed by a group of international lawyers, who say the conditions in hospitals amount to a breach of the Geneva conventions that require Britain and the US as occupying forces to protect human life.

"Sick or injured children who could otherwise be treated by simple means are left to die in hundreds because they do not have access to basic medicines or other resources," the doctors say. "Children who have lost hands, feet and limbs are left without prostheses. Children with grave psychological distress are left untreated," they said.

The doctors said babies are being ventilated with a plastic tube in their noses and dying for lack of an oxygen mask. Other babies are dying from the lack of vitamin K or sterile needles, all costing about 95p (about $1.85). Hospitals have little hope of stopping fatal infections spreading from baby to baby because of the lack of surgical gloves, which cost about 3.5p (seven cents) a pair.

Turkish-Armenian editor shot dead

A prominent Turkish-Armenian editor, convicted in 2005 of insulting Turkish identity, has been shot dead in broad daylight outside his newspaper's office in Istanbul. The BBC reported that crowds of Hrant Dink's colleagues and supporters gathered at the scene, chanting their outrage at his murder.

Dink was given a six-month suspended sentence in October 2005 after writing about the Armenian "genocide" of 1915. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemned the killing and said two suspects had been arrested. Mr Erdogan told a news conference that the murder was a "bullet fired against free speech and democracy." He ordered what he called the "dark hands behind the killing" to be brought to justice.

Dink, editor-in-chief of the bilingual Turkish and Armenian weekly Agos newspaper, was one of Turkey's most prominent Armenian voices. He was the frequent target of anger from Turkish nationalists who viewed him as a traitor.

Dink, 53, was found guilty of insulting Turkish identity after writing an article which addressed the mass killings of Ottoman Armenians nine decades ago. Dink claimed his aim was to improve the difficult relationship between Turks and Armenians. In one of his last newspaper columns, he admitted having received death threats. His computer hard drive was full of them, he wrote, amounting to what he called "psychological torture."

Comments

[mary]

this is how it always starts out the children throw stones at the Isrealis and they in turn kill them

[guerrilla radio]

bassaam6@yahoo.com it is the @mail from the father of the girl,
if you want,
you can send to him your empaty.

my salutationssssss

Vittorio

[guerrilla radio]

Here the new in italian:

http://guerrillaradio.iobloggo.com/archive.php?eid=1459

[pinar]

and this happened in my city.. my country..it is outrageous..
if you want to read a few sentences about how he felt.. after the threatening letters he received.. I have tried to translate an article of him.. at my blog..
let him lie in piece..

[my backyard]

this is so sad

[miss*R]

it breaks my heart to read of these poor children. BREAKS MY HEART. I want to do something. reading your words brings to mind the words of the song by The Black Eyed Peas ~ Where is the love? *People killin', people dyin'
Children hurt and you hear them cryin'*

[[a}]

I love how you present ALL viewpoints.

V. sad.

[Britt-Arnhild]

A positive story from Norway:
Our minister of Foreign Affairs, Jonas Gard Støre has visited Afghanisatn. yesterday he brough with him home a 10 year old girl badly wounded by fire. She will get help at a hospital in Bergen, specializing in these wounds, and then return to Afghanistan with her father. Støre says: No one can help everyone, but everyone can help someone!

[awareness]

injustices everywhere.........that was my thought reading your post......unfortunately, one wouldn't run out of real human being stories of injustice. I find it overwhelming sad. However, no matter how learning of these situations and of these people makes one feel, it is paramount that we DO learn, that we DO pay attention.........

[annieelf]

I am so sorry to read of Dink's murder Tara. I had never heard of him until I read of him here else on your blog. Very, very sad. There are troubling times ahead, I fear, for Turkey.

[Frida]

That's the quote I used in my letter to my nephew when he turned one. It was the letter explaining why I lived in the Gaza Strip and therefore would not be there for his first birthday party, or most of the ones to follow. It was the quote I used to explain why defending the rights of Palestinian children was something I was also doing for him.

Thanks.
x

[Pam Aries]

It never ceases to amaze me .. in this world today...how these atrocities can still happen. It is sad , sad ,SAD! Today, I met a young soldier ..on leave from Iraq....He spoke about a few things he had witnessed there. It broke my heart , not only for the inhumanity he had seen, but also for him.. He is only 20 years old.

[Paris Parfait]

These three pieces are news stories, not commentary on modern-day Turkey, Armenia or politics. These stories have their own tragedy without invoking history. First and foremost, they are human stories and the loss of these people transcends borders and politics.

[Joseph H.]

"Dastardly Plot"

These words only ring insolence in the face of the Armenian populace. Armenians, a people ravished by an oriental migration of the Turkic tribes onto the once-thriving Anatolian peninsula. To state that Turkey has been rooted in hospitality and understanding is a complete disgrace to the millions of Armenians, Galatians, Cilicians, Chypriots, and Greeks that have been insulted by the buffoonery and brutality administered by the Turks.

Some praise Kemal Ataturk as the benevolent founder of the "modern day" Turkey, but he promoted the backward beliefs that inundate Turkey today. The esastern Turkic tribes will only find peace if they retreat to their historical homelands in modern-day Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

To revel in the beauty of Turkish culture is analogous to staring in awe at a hungry mouth, eating and corroding all culture the Anatolian Peninsula once had. It was the turks who used the Parthenon as target practice for their rifles. It was the Turks who capsized the first Christian churches ever built magnificently by the Armenians.

To claim understanding and hospitality is a crime on equal or greater level than the Armenian genocide of 1915 - if it weren't for this period of time in the spring of 1915, the word "Genocide" itself would not likely have been invented by Lemkin himself! There would have also been a less likely chance that the holocaust would be committed against the Jews.

Now to take the Greeks and the Armenians who have spent millenia and millenia on building their culture and coming to their land to rape and claim - this is one of the greatest appalling trials of mankind. It astonished me how a few tribes can put such a scar on humanity.

[giggles]

Is War ever worth the death of one mother’s child? NO, not mine, not yours, NEVER!
Very sad post!

Desperate for Peace!

[Colette]

Thank you,Tara, for pointing out the error in my email link -- gulp! not a good way to start the service!! I fixed it, so it should work now. xoxo

[Colette]

Desperate. It leaves one feeling helpless.

As for Hrant Dink, I believe he was the 18th journalist to be shot/attacked in Turkey. The government never does anything about this sort of thing, so it's hard to take their pronouncements seriously. The Genocide is fully documented in the Turkish government archives (and elsewhere), so it's really really difficult to accept or understand any of this. I submit that denying their own history is tantamount to "anti-Turkishness".

[JanePoe (aka Deborah)]

Perfect quote for a heart-breaking piece.