Iraq: Baghdad Uses Satellite TV To Intimidate Exiled Opponents
By Charles Recknagel
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's regime has often attacked its domestic opponents by punishing family members with detention and physical abuse. Now, it has found another channel for threatening challengers. In recent months, Baghdad has begun forcing exiled opposition members' families to appear on Iraqi satellite television to beg their relatives not to endanger them.
Prague, 24 April 2002 (RFE/RL) -- The phone call that Faiq Sheikh Ali, an exiled writer in London, received from Iraq early this year should have been a happy one.
On the line was one of his close relatives telling him to watch Iraqi satellite TV because family members would be appearing on it soon. That would give him a rare chance to see and hear his loved ones, whom he has not met in person for more than 10 years.
But if the message sounded appealing, the tone of the caller's voice -- flat and emotionless -- assured Ali that seeing his family on TV would be anything but pleasant.
Ali described the call in a recent interview with Radio Free Iraq correspondent Sami Shoresh:
"I have two brothers with me in London. The Iraqi security forces arrested my family [in Iraq] and spoke with them about my situation. They told my family members: 'Contact your sons in London and tell them that you will appear on Iraqi satellite television on such-and-such a day.'"
When Ali watched the Iraqi satellite channel at the appointed time, he saw his mother, two sisters and a brother nervously take turns denouncing him in a video made in their house in Najaf, south of Baghdad.
His mother, dressed in the dark robes traditionally worn by women in the south, said, "Your father died because of your activity...you have to think about us."
His younger brother sat uncomfortably beside his mother. "I don't want to say 'hello' to my brother...I don't know him," he said.
At another point in the 25-minute ordeal, a younger sister also spoke up. "Please Faiq, you have to think that you have a sister in this country before you do anything," she begged.
Ali recalls his relatives also said that they no longer regard him as part of their family and that the government can kill him without any regrets or anger on their part.
The frightened family members then disappeared from the screen and the satellite channel resumed its usual programming, which mostly features idyllic portraits of Iraq under President Saddam Hussein.
The Ali family's brief moment on TV marked the third time Baghdad has used its satellite television channel to reach out and intimidate exiled opponents. In recent months, the families of the London and Damascus representatives of the largest armed opposition group operating in southern Iraq -- the Iran-based Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) -- have also been shown on the channel. Those families, too, called on their kinsmen to give up politics.
The television broadcasts are the latest twist in a long-standing Baghdad policy of pressuring political opponents by attacking their families.
In the past, the most common method has been to arrest and imprison the relatives of those the regime deems a threat. Thousands of families with sons or fathers active in Kurdish, Islamist, communist, or other opposition groups have been routinely put in prison for varying lengths of time -- with women and children jailed apart from men. The detentions can include beatings as well as other forms of abuse.
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