Gary Kent taks a personal look at the meaning of the Hillsborough inquiry, the notion of Bliarism and why people should recognise the genocide against the Kurds in his Rudaw column.
One Saturday 23 years ago I tuned into a major football match at Hillsborough between Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. I had decided to give football a try. It wasn’t a good choice because the cameras soon turned to the terraces where spectators were in trouble and I watched in horror as 96 Liverpool fans were crushed and suffocated.
As if that weren’t bad enough it now appears that the police, who made serious crowd control mistakes, colluded with an MP and a major newspaper to switch the blame to the fans. They concocted black propaganda that portrayed the innocent fans as drunk or robbing and abusing the dead. It caused outrage in a distinctive British region and there has been a campaign for truth and justice ever since.
Last week the Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader apologised for the failure of successive governments to break the silence and establish the truth. It was a festering sore and now we know. Nothing will bring back the dead but those who lost loved ones can live with themselves better now. Guilty parties may be punished.
I am sure you can see where I am going here. The Westminster debate reinforced my view that it is morally and politically vital for the UK and the wider international community to recognise other events that finished 24 years ago. I am referring, of course, to the genocide against the Iraqi Kurds which began in 1963 and culminated in the use of weapons of mass destruction, most notoriously at Halabja in 1988.
Read the rest at http://www.rudaw.net/english/science/columnists/5205.html
