On September 5, Abdul Wahab Al-Fowzan, the Kuwaiti health minister-in-exile, stated at a press conference in Taif, Saudi Arabia "that Iraqi soldiers had seized virtually all of the country's hospitals and medical institutions after their invasion" and that "soldiers evicted patients and systematically looted the hospitals of high-tech equipment, ambulances, drugs and plasma" which resulted in the death of 22 premature babies. The looting of incubators attracted media attention because of allegations that premature babies were being discarded or dying as a result. In the letter, Abulhasan also noted that "theft of all equipment from private and public hospitals, including X-ray machines, scanners and pieces of laboratory equipment." The allegations of looting were also retold by evacuees who described "soldiers looting office buildings, schools and hospitals for air conditioners, computers, blackboards, desks, and even infant incubators and radiation equipment." Douglas Hurd, the British Secretary for foreign affairs surmised that "they are looting and destroying in a way which suggests that they may not expect to be there for very long." What has occurred in Kuwait is the perpetration of an act of armed robbery by a State which has used its military, security and technical organs for that purpose. It is impossible to compare this operation to any similar incidents or to provide an exact account thereof because it is in effect an operation designed to achieve nothing less than the complete removal of Kuwait's assets, including property belonging to the State, to public and private institutions and to individuals, as well as the contents of houses, factories, stores, hospitals, academic institutes, schools, and universities. Abulhasan, wrote:įurther to those of our communications which are intended to inform you of the actions perpetrated by the Iraqi occupation authorities in Kuwait in contravention of all international laws, and on the basis of confirmed information provided to us by the Government of Kuwait, we wish to draw attention to a phenomenon which has no precedent in history, namely, the Iraqi occupation authorities' organized operation for the purpose of looting and plundering Kuwait. On September 2, 1990, in a letter to the UN Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar, Kuwait's UN representative, Mohammad A. Louis Post-Dispatch įollowing the Iraqi invasion and occupation of Kuwait, there were reports of widespread looting. Evacuee's description as reported in St. The Iraqis are beating Kuwaitis, torturing them, knifing them, beating them, cutting their ears off if they are caught resisting or are with the Kuwaiti army or police. They are taking all hospital equipment, babies out of incubators. ![]() Background Incubator allegations Iraqis are beating people, bombing and shooting. fled" but Iraqi troops "almost certainly had not stolen hospital incubators and left hundreds of Kuwaiti babies to die." Amnesty International USA reacted by issuing a correction, with executive director John Healey subsequently accusing the Bush administration of "opportunistic manipulation of the international human rights movement". An ABC report found that "patients, including premature babies, did die, when many of Kuwait's nurses and doctors. Following the liberation of Kuwait, reporters were given access to the country. Her story was initially corroborated by Amnesty International, a British-based global NGO, which published several independent reports about the supposed killings and testimony from evacuees. In her testimony, Nayirah claimed that after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers take babies out of incubators in a Kuwaiti hospital, remove the incubators and leave the babies to die. Following this, al-Sabah's testimony has come to be regarded as a classic example of modern atrocity propaganda. Furthermore, it was revealed that her testimony was organized as part of the Citizens for a Free Kuwait public relations campaign, which was run by the American public relations firm Hill & Knowlton for the Kuwaiti Government. In 1992, it was revealed that Nayirah's last name was Al-Ṣabaḥ ( Arabic: نيرة الصباح) and that she was the daughter of Saud Al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. ![]() Bush in their rationale to support Kuwait in the Gulf War. The testimony was widely publicized and was cited numerous times by U.S. The Nayirah testimony was false testimony given before the United States Congressional Human Rights Caucus on October 10, 1990, by a 15-year-old girl who was publicly identified at the time by her first name, Nayirah. It was later revealed that she was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States and that her testimony was false.
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