Posted on 03/05/2003 6:16:26 PM PST by aculeus
"It's the woman professor who haunts me most. A prisoner under Saddam, she gave birth to a girl, but couldn't feed her because the thin soup wasn't enough to provide breast milk," Ann Clwyd tells me.
"When she begged the guards for milk, they beat her. She held that dead baby for three days, refusing to give it up. The temperature in the cell was stifling, the smell was horrendous, but none of the other prisoners complained. In the end, they took her away and killed her."
When Mrs Clwyd stood up in the House of Commons last week to talk about the plight of the Iraqis and Kurds, MPs fell silent. The Prime Minister was thrilled that a Labour backbencher was finally coming to his aid, exhorting MPs to listen to her. Here was a staunch Left-winger, who had held sit-ins down coal pits and marched with Greenham Common women, backing his call for a war against Saddam Hussein.
The MP for Cynon Valley has become his heroine. He mentions her at every opportunity: three times in one interview this week. After the embarrassment of Carole Caplin, here is a woman who doesn't have a clue about chakras and crystals, but has gone to northern Iraq many times, at great personal risk, to uncover the facts about Saddam Hussein's regime.
Mrs Clwyd laughs. "He's forgotten that I was the first person he sacked from the front bench when he became leader of the Labour Party," she says.
The former rebel is sitting in the Pugin tearooms, overlooking the Thames. Every few minutes, another Tory or Labour MP comes across to pat her on the back. It must be strange to be feted after eight years in the wilderness. She still can't quite believe the fuss, and sits quietly, sipping lemonade.
"Eight years ago, I was a front bench spokesman on foreign affairs and, in six months, I'd never left the country. Then I got an invitation to go into northern Iraq. I was the first MP to cover the plight of the Kurdish refugees fleeing bombardment in 1991 - it's one of my great passions, I had to go.
"I was up near the border when I got a phone call saying: 'Come back immediately or you'll be sacked.' But I had to listen to these Kurds' stories, Arabs as well: Assyrians, Turkomans and Shi'as. It was right, what I did, although I do have regrets. It ruined any conventional career path."
Last week, she returned once more. "I hardly recognise the place since it became self-governing. There's now a university, a library, new schools and three women judges. It's amazing what democracy has done. The markets are full - I bought this watch for $40."
Mrs Clwyd had been invited by the Kurds to open the new genocide museum.
"I'd seen museums in Rwanda, Cambodia and on the Holocaust, but nothing prepared me for this," she says.
"The museum has been set up in the old torture centre, where thousands died. They've kept the cells with the bullet holes, and pictures drawn by children imprisoned there - images of birds and aeroplanes scratched into the walls with blood. The guards said they didn't imprison anyone younger than 11 but they forged their birth certificates."
Former prisoners showed her around. On the walls were hundreds of photographs of piles of clothing, mass graves and skulls. "Saddam's regime is like the Khmer Rouge and the Nazis; they are obsessed by documenting everything they've done. There are lots of photographs of prisoners just before they were executed, grinning at the cameras. The guards tickled them before they died to make them laugh."
The day she opened the museum it was snowing, grey and icy. "Hundreds of relatives of the dead and the victims queued up to watch and to tell me their stories. An old Kurdish woman shoved a piece of plastic at me; inside were two photographs of her husband and two missing sons. She wanted to know how they died. One old man showed me a photograph of 15 of his family. He was the only survivor. 'Why was I meant to survive?' he said."
Mrs Clwyd was asked to cut the ribbon. "I could feel my voice breaking. I've given thousands of speeches but I couldn't speak. I started walking round the room, trying to compose myself, but when a Kurdish TV cameraman asked me how I felt, I burst into tears. As I stood in that museum, I just thought: 'Why didn't we carry on to Baghdad? Why did we let this keep happening for another 12 years?' "
The next day, Mrs Clwyd says, she felt embarrassed. "The Kurds were so composed. I hadn't even suffered and I was sobbing. I went to the market with a Kurdish friend. Suddenly, all the shopkeepers were coming to offer me gifts. One explained: 'We saw you crying on TV last night. Thank you. My mother cried for the first time in 10 years when she saw you. She finally felt she could grieve for her lost husband and brother. Soon, my whole street was crying'."
She also went to the new UN refugee camp. "It's like every wretched camp in the world, only even muddier and colder than Kosovo, and as haunting as Rwanda. They have no fuel, and no possessions. Many once lived quite affluent lives in the towns. Most had less than 24 hours to flee their homes after one of Saddam's ethnic purges."
The suffering of the Kurds and Iraqis has touched her more than any other human rights issue. "As a young journalist, 25 years ago in Cardiff, I met lots of Iraqi students. They used to talk about executions and torture. I couldn't believe them, now I can't forget. As far back as 1986, I went to see William Waldegrave and David Mellor to tell them about the genocide. They said they had no proof."
Mrs Clwyd is a strange mixture. She was ousted from the front bench by Neil Kinnock for opposing nuclear weapons yet she has supported American and British intervention in Kosovo, Afghanistan and now Iraq. She was the first politician into Cambodia after Pol Pot and campaigns vociferously against human rights abuses, yet she is just as passionate about bogus cosmetic surgeons operating in Britain. It is refreshing to meet an MP who cares so intensely about causes rather than her career. With no children - just a "long-suffering husband" - she devotes her life to her campaigns.
I suspect this is why her fellow backbenchers have praised her, even if they disagree with her. The Labour MP Alice Mahon is sitting near us, drinking coffee. "She's my closest friend here," says Mrs Clwyd. "We have neighbouring offices and sit together on the backbenches. She's very anti-war but we've agreed not to discuss it because she knows I mind so much."
Anti-war protesters aren't so understanding. "They screamed traitor at me at the Welsh Labour conference. Somehow, it sounds much worse in Welsh but I held my head up," she says. "I admire Tony Blair now, he's brave. He's out on a limb, and I can tell you, that's tough."
She has met the Archbishop of Canterbury on his home territory in Wales to reason with him, and addressed the peers this week to win them round to her cause.
"Even if Saddam does give up his weapons, he isn't suddenly going to stop being a brutal, fascist dictator. Is it moral to let him remain.
A salute to a liberal. This woman gets it and well she should having gone into the den and seen the evil.
Bumping a brave woman.
Why we fight......
This Alice Mahon must be some piece of work, to be able to hear these stories from her FRIEND, someone she KNOWS, and to still be an obstinate dumbass appeaser.
The sheer, dense, breathtaking evil of the left incarnate: Alice Mahon.
Bless you Mrs. Clwyd. Here in the US, a lefty with common sense is unheard of. I guess they build 'em differently in Britain!
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