Hmm, turns out that the Iraqi/baby/incubator story, apocryphal or not, was widely repeated in Kuwait at the time.
>>IRAQ CITED FOR NUMEROUS RIGHTS VIOLATIONS IN KUWAIT (Amnesty International issues
lengthy report) (800)
Washington -- Amnesty International, in a report released December 19 in London, cites Iraq for numerous violations of human
rights in Kuwait and calls on the Iraqi government to end the imprisonment, torture and killing of thousands of people in
Kuwait.
The human rights organization reports that Iraqi forces have tortured and killed many hundreds of victims, taken several
thousand prisoners, and left more than 300 premature babies to die after looting incubators from at least three of Kuwait
City's main hospitals.
The organization's report has been submitted to all members of the United Nations Security Council, which has requested
information on the human rights situation in Kuwait, and to the Iraqi government.
The report cites 38 methods of torture used by the Iraqi military, including cutting off people's tongues and ears, shooting them
in their limbs, applying electric shocks to their bodies, and raping them.
"The Iraqi forces' brutality in Kuwait has shocked many people in the past four months," Amnesty International said, "but such
abuses have been the norm for people in Iraq for more than a decade."
While welcoming the release of Western nationals, Amnesty International said it fears that the plight of thousands of victims of
human rights violations in Kuwait and Iraq might now be forgotten. The organization called on governments throughout the
world to appeal to Iraq to stop the human rights violations.
The organization said it has collected evidence supporting earlier reports of the killing of premature babies by Iraqi soldiers.
"We heard rumors of these deaths as early as August," the organization said, "but only recently has there been substantial
information on the extent of the killings."
Amnesty's investigation team interviewed several doctors and nurses who worked in the hospitals where the babies died. All
had seen the dead bodies and one doctor had helped to bury 72 babies in a cemetery near the hospital.
GE 2 POL402 In some hospitals, unofficial records were kept of the number of people who had been killed, including the
babies.
The report was based both on medical evidence and on in- depth interviews with more than 100 people from about a dozen
countries. Since the invasion, Amnesty International investigators have traveled to Bahrain and Saudi Arabia to talk to victims
and the doctors who treated then, relatives and eyewitnesses and have interviewed dozens more in several other countries.
The investigators also talked to scores of people who had been arrested in their homes or on the streets. Most of those arrested
were Kuwaitis, although many from other Middle Eastern, Asian, European and North American countries were also held.
The team collected the names of some 1,000 people who were arrested but believes the true figure to be much higher.
Thousands of people -- some as young as 13 -- are reported to still be held in Iraqi and Kuwaiti prisons, detention centers and
homes; others were killed shortly after their arrest, in police stations, before firing squads, or at their homes.<<
fas.org
>>Finally, Amnesty addressed its report of December 1990, which
accused Iraqi soldiers of killing large numbers of babies by
removing them from their incubators. While the overall tone of that
report was declared accurate, Amnesty re-examined its information
after the credibility of the babies' deaths was questioned. Testimony
from several sources appeared to confirm that the babies had died,
and medical and cemetery officials insisted that the babies died after
being removed from incubators, although they had no concrete
evidence. After receiving similar reports from several different
sources, Amnesty decided to include the allegations. The December
report will be corrected to indicate that reports that Iraqi occupiers
had removed babies from incubators in Kuwait were based on
hearsay rather than hard evidence. <<
washington-report.org
In other words, some witnesses after the fact stuck to their story that the babies died after being removed from incubators, but there was no hard evidence. Wonder what kind of hard evidence would suffice? |
