>From: Press Agency Ozgurluk <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > >The Guardian: > >Turkish dam 'will rob 70,000 of their homes' > >Special report: Labour's ethical foreign policy > >Paul Brown, environment correspondent Thursday September 7, 2000 > >A confidential report commissioned by the government into the >controversial Ilisu dam project has revealed significant underestimates of >the chaos and misery it would bring to tens of thousands of people. > >Up to 78,000 Kurdish people, around three times the number originally >thought, will be made homeless and landless by the British-backed scheme >in Turkey, according to the report seen by the Guardian. > >The report makes clear that thousands of already extremely poor people >are at risk of "falling into greater destitution" if the government goes >ahead with its plan to make £200m of taxpayers money available to >contractors Balfour Beatty to allow the dam to be built. > >Reports that the government was dropping the dam project have been formally >denied by Richard Caborn, the trade minister. He was writing to >protesters on behalf of the prime minister, who has been threatened with >high court action because damming the Tigris would alter the flow of water >to Iraq and Syria without any consultation. > >His letter reiterating the British support for the project came on August >22, four days after the report on the flawed resettlement plan was sent to >the Department of Trade and Industry by Ayse Kudat, 56, who is Turkish >but has most recently been the World Bank's head of social development. > >The report, leaked yesterday to the Guardian, had been kept secret even >though the department said it would make documents connected with the Ilisu >project public. > >The report said the dam would inundate the most fertile irrigated land in >the area where landlessness and poverty was already widespread. Half of >the people did not grow crops but grazed animals on pasture, worked for >cash payments and relied on subsistence gardening "to stay alive". > >The people who were forced to move would be at high risk of falling into >greater destitution, Dr Kudat said. > >Dr Kudat was employed by the export credit agencies of the UK and other >European countries to report on the Turkish plans to resettle Kurds in the >area to be inundated. She said some of the area was not accessible because >of Turkish military operations against the Kurds, but potentially the >number of people affected was between 47,000 and 78,000 - up to three times >the government's original estimate. > >The government made its support for the project conditional on a proper >resettlement plan but Dr Kudat noted that many similar plans round the >world had failed. She said sweeping institutional reforms were required in >Turkey if there was to be any hope of an Ilisu plan working. > >"In the Turkish context, past failures have been particularly severe with >respect to inadequate and inappropriate delivery of resettlement housing," >she said. > >There had been a lack of concern for the well being of those forced to >move, failure to consult them, and no monitoring of social impact. > >She said the Ilisu catchment already contained thousands of people >displaced from previous projects who had not been properly settled or >compensated for losing their homes. > >The coalition of environment and human rights groups opposing the dam said >the report highlighted 10 serious problems with the Turkish resettlement >plan which violated World Bank and OECD guidelines on financing such >projects. These included Turkey's failure to provide a resettlement >budget. > >Kerim Yildiz, a director of the Ilisu Dam Campaign, said: "This report >clearly indicates that the Turkish government is in no position to fulfil >even the basic conditions put forward by the UK government. > >"It provides more than enough evidence for the government to abandon this >ill conceived and destructive project." > >A trade department spokesman confirmed that no decision had yet been made >on whether the Ilisu project would be backed, but it was conditional on the >resettlement plan being satisfactory. :%s///g > > >-- >Press Agency Ozgurluk >In Support of the Peoples Liberation Struggle in Turkey and Kurdistan >http://www.ozgurluk.org >DHKC: http://www.ozgurluk.org/dhkc > _______________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. Box 66 00841 Helsinki - Finland +358-40-7177941, fax +358-9-7591081 e-mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.kominf.pp.fi _______________________________________________________ Kominform list for general information. Subscribe/unsubscribe messages to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Anti-Imperialism list for anti-imperialist news. Subscribe/unsubscribe messages: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________________
