Nayirah testimony

thumb|15-year-old Nayirah al-Ṣabaḥ giving her testimony to the [[Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission|United States Congressional Human Rights Caucus on October 10, 1990, two months after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. It was later revealed that she was the daughter of Kuwaiti ambassador Saud Nasser al-Saud al-Sabah and that her testimony was false.]]

The Nayirah testimony was false testimony given before the United States Congressional Human Rights Caucus on October 10, 1990, by a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl who was publicly identified only as Nayirah at the time, and presented herself as having been a volunteer nurse at a Kuwaiti hospital at the time of the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. In her testimony, which took place two months after the invasion, she claimed to have witnessed Iraqi soldiers taking premature babies out of incubators in a maternity ward before looting the incubators and leaving the babies to die on the floor. Nayirah's statements were widely publicized and cited numerous times in the United States Senate and by American president George H. W. Bush to contribute to the rationale for pursuing military action against Iraq. Her portrayal of Iraqi war crimes was aimed at further increasing global support for Kuwait against the Iraqi occupation during the Gulf War, which resulted in the expulsion of Iraqi troops from Kuwait by a 42-country coalition led by the United States.

In January 1992, it was revealed that Nayirah had never been a nurse and that she was the daughter of Saud Nasser Al-Saud Al-Sabah, the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States at the time the testimony was made. She and her father were members of the House of Sabah, the ruling family of Kuwait. Furthermore, it was revealed that her testimony was organized as part of a wider public relations campaign conducted by the Kuwaiti government-in-exile's Citizens for a Free Kuwait, which sought to encourage American military involvement against Iraq's occupation of Kuwait through coordination with the American public relations firm Hill & Knowlton. In the aftermath of the Gulf War, the Nayirah testimony came to be regarded as a classic example of modern atrocity propaganda.

Nayirah's story was initially corroborated by Amnesty International, which published a report about the supposed killings and testimony from Kuwaiti evacuees. Following the liberation of Kuwait, international media crews were given access to the country. A report by ABC News found that "patients, including premature babies, did die, when many of Kuwait's nurses and doctors ... fled" but Iraqi troops "almost certainly had not stolen hospital incubators and left hundreds of Kuwaiti babies to die." Later, Amnesty International USA reacted by issuing a correction, with executive director John Healey subsequently accusing the George H. W. Bush administration of "opportunistic manipulation of the international human rights movement."

Background

Looting by Iraqi forces

Following the Iraqi invasion and occupation of Kuwait, there were reports of widespread looting. On September 2, 1990, in a letter to the UN Secretary-General Javier Pérez de Cuéllar, Kuwait's UN representative, Mohammad A. Abulhasan, wrote:

Further 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.

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 ... 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.

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In the letter, Abulhasan also noted the "theft of all equipment from private and public hospitals, including X-ray machines, scanners and pieces of laboratory 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."

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|style="text-align: left;|"Iraqis are beating people, bombing and shooting. They are taking all hospital equipment, babies out of incubators. Life-support systems are turned off. ... They are even removing traffic lights. 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."

| style="text-align: left;" |— Evacuee's eyewitness account, as reported in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch on September 8, 1990

Incubator allegations

The looting of neonatal incubators attracted media attention because of allegations that premature babies were being discarded and dying as a result. 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.

On September 5, in another letter to the UN Secretary General, Abulhasan reiterated Fowzan's claims writing:

We are informed by impeccable sources in Kuwait's health institutions that the Iraqi occupation authorities have carried out the following brutal crimes, which may be described as crimes against humanity:

...

2. The incubators in maternity hospitals used for children suffering from retarded growth (premature children) have been removed, causing the death of all the children who were under treatment.

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The letter did not state how many babies had died. The allegations in the letter received widespread media coverage in the following days.

That day, in an interview with released hostages on NPR's All Things Considered, a hostage stated that Iraqi troops were "hitting children with the butts of the guns, taking infants out of incubators and taking the incubators." Reuters also reported they had been told "that Iraqi troops took premature babies out of incubators in Kuwait in order to steal the equipment."

On September 9, NPR reported that "in a ward for premature infants, soldiers had turned off the oxygen on incubators and packed the equipment for shipment to Iraq."

The Washington Post described the origin of the Kuwaiti baby story in a September 10 article headlined "Iraq, Kuwait Waging an Old-Fashioned War of Propaganda", noting that it was unable to verify the accusations as Iraq did not permit access to the area and had quarantined diplomats:

The Kuwaiti baby story originated with a letter from a senior Kuwaiti public health official that was smuggled out of the country by a European diplomat late last month, according to Hudah Bahar, an architect who received the letter here in London. It was supplemented by information gathered from fleeing Kuwaitis and other sources by Fawzia Sayegh, a Kuwaiti pediatrician living here.

The letter claimed that Iraqi soldiers ordered patients evicted from several hospitals and closed down critical units for treating cancer patients, dialysis patients and those suffering from diabetes. Bahar and Sayegh said the Iraqis hauled sophisticated equipment such as dialysis machines back to Baghdad, part of the haul of cash, gold, cars and jewelry that is said by Arab banking sources to exceed $2 billion. Among the equipment taken were the 22 infant incubator units, they said.

The Los Angeles Times reported that "refugees reported that incubators for premature babies were confiscated by Iraqi troops and the babies inside were piled on the floor and left to die." The San Jose Mercury News also reported the same allegation that day, adding that Western diplomats thought "this is the kind of thing that some people call genocide, and if people wanted to construe it as such, it could be cause for some kind of military intervention."

On September 25, The Washington Post reported that "Kuwait City's hospitals are being stripped of incubators."

The president of Citizens for a Free Kuwait wrote to Representative Gus Yatron stating of how he "recently learned that the Iraqi leader has ordered that maternity hospital incubators [in Kuwait], used for treating premature babies, be turned off, allowing these infants to die of exposure."

On September 28, Kuwait's planning minister, Sulaiman Mutawa, reported that 12 babies had died as a result of incubator looting.

On September 30, U.S. News & World Report reported that it had obtained secret US government cables based on eyewitness accounts that revealed "shocking acts of brutality inflicted by the Iraqis against innocent citizens at Kuwaiti hospitals." The cables stated that on the sixth day of Iraqi invasion, Iraqi soldiers "entered the Adan Hospital in Fahaheel looking for hospital equipment to steal" and that "they unplugged the oxygen to the incubators supporting 22 premature babies and made off with the incubators", thus killing the 22 children. In his remarks following the discussion, Bush stated:

"Iraqi aggression has ransacked and pillaged a once peaceful and secure country, its population assaulted, incarcerated, intimidated, and even murdered" and that "Iraq's leaders are trying to wipe an internationally recognized sovereign state, a member of the Arab League and the United Nations, off the face of the map."

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On October 9, during a Presidential news conference, Bush stated:

"I thought General Scowcroft [Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs] put it very well after the Amir left here. And I am very much concerned, not just about the physical dismantling but of the brutality that has now been written on by Amnesty International confirming some of the tales told us by the Amir of brutality. It's just unbelievable, some of the things at least he reflected. I mean, people on a dialysis machine cut off, the machine sent to Baghdad; babies in incubators heaved out of the incubators and the incubators themselves sent to Baghdad. Now, I don't know how many of these tales can be authenticated, but I do know that when the Amir was here he was speaking from the heart. And after that came Amnesty International, who were debriefing many of the people at the border. And it's sickening."

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Citizens for a Free Kuwait

The Citizens for a Free Kuwait was a public relations committee set up by the Kuwaiti embassy, described by The Times News as a "Washington, D.C.- based committee concerned Kuwaitis and Americans". Though the committee occupied embassy office space, they were to be working independently of the embassy. H & K had the Wirthington Group conduct focus groups to determine the best strategy that would influence public opinion. The study found that an emphasis on atrocities, particularly the incubator story, was the most effective.</blockquote>

Testimony

On October 10, 1990, Nayirah was the last to testify at the Caucus. In her oral testimony, which lasted 4 minutes, she stated:

Mr. Chairman, and members of the committee, my name is Nayirah and I just came out of Kuwait. My mother and I were in Kuwait on August 2nd for a peaceful summer holiday. My older sister had a baby on July 29th and we wanted to spend some time in Kuwait with her.

I only pray that none of my 10th grade classmates had a summer vacation like I did. I may have wished sometimes that I can be an adult, that I could grow up quickly. What I saw happening to the children of Kuwait and to my country has changed my life forever, has changed the life of all Kuwaitis, young and old, mere children or more.

My sister with my five-day-old nephew traveled across the desert to safety. There is no milk available for the baby in Kuwait. They barely escaped when their car was stuck in the desert sand and help came from Saudi Arabia.

I stayed behind and wanted to do something for my country. The second week after invasion, I volunteered at the Al-Adan Hospital with 12 other women who wanted to help as well. I was the youngest volunteer. The other women were from 20 to 30 years old.

While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators and left the children to die on the cold floor. It was horrifying. I could not help but think of my nephew who was born premature and might have died that day as well. After I left the hospital, some of my friends and I distributed flyers condemning the Iraqi invasion until we were warned we might be killed if the Iraqis saw us.

The Iraqis have destroyed everything in Kuwait. They stripped the supermarkets of food, the pharmacies of

medicine, the factories of medical supplies, ransacked their houses and tortured neighbors and friends.

I saw and talked to a friend of mine after his torture and release by the Iraqis. He is 22 but he looked as though he could have been an old man. The Iraqis dunked his head into a swimming pool until he almost drowned. They pulled out his fingernails and then played electric shocks to sensitive, private parts of his body. He was lucky to survive.

If an Iraqi soldier is found dead in the neighborhood, they burn to the ground all the houses in the general vicinity and would not let firefighters come until the only ash and rubble was left.

The Iraqis were making fun of President Bush and verbally and physically abusing my family and me on our way out of Kuwait. We only did so because life in Kuwait became unbearable. They have forced us to hide, burn or destroy everything identifying our country and our government.

I want to emphasize that Kuwait is our mother and the Emir our father. We repeated this on the roofs of our houses in Kuwait until the Iraqis began shooting at us, and we shall repeat it again. I am glad I am 15, old enough to remember Kuwait before Saddam Hussein destroyed it and young enough to rebuild it.

Thank you. Nayirah's testimony was described as the most dramatic. it was reported that H&K "provided witnesses, wrote testimony, and coached the witnesses for effectiveness."

Reactions

Nayirah's testimony was widely publicized. Hill & Knowlton, which had filmed the hearing, sent out a video news release to MediaLink, a firm which served about 700 television stations in the United States.

That night, portions of the testimony aired on ABC's Nightline and NBC Nightly News reaching an estimated audience between 35 and 53 million Americans. Her testimony helped to stir American opinion in favor of participation in the Gulf War.

Iraq denied the allegations. On October 16, Iraqi information minister Latif Nassif al-Jassem told the Iraqi News Agency that "now you [Bush] are using what he [Sheikh Jaber] told you to make Congress ratify the budget which is in the red because of your policies" adding that "you, as the president of a superpower, have to weigh words carefully and not act as a clown who repeats what he is told."

In a visit to Kuwait on October 21, 1990, by journalists who were escorted by Iraqi information ministry officials, doctors at a Kuwaiti maternity facility denied the incubator allegations. In the visit, the Iraqi head of the Kuwaiti health department, Abdul-Rahman Mohammad al-Ugeily, said that "Baghdad had sent 1,000 doctors and other medical to staff to help run Kuwait's 14 hospitals and health centres following the invasion."

On January 6, 1992, The New York Times published an op-ed piece by John MacArthur entitled "Remember Nayirah, Witness for Kuwait?" MacArthur had discovered that Nayirah was the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the U.S., Saud Nasir al-Sabah.

Hill & Knowlton

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|style="text-align: left;"|We disseminated information in a void as a basis for Americans to form opinions.

| style="text-align: left;" |— Frank Mankiewicz, Vice Chairman, Hill & Knowlton

On January 15, 1992, the CEO of Hill & Knowlton, Thomas E. Eidson, responded to the concerns raised by MacArthur in a letter to the editor to The New York Times. Eidson stated that "at no time has this firm collaborated with anyone to produce knowingly deceptive testimony", asserting that the firm "had no reason to question her veracity when she testified following her escape from Kuwait."

Critics contended that Hill & Knowlton had concocted a fake popular movement, Citizens for a Free Kuwait, and subsequently used questionable evidence and suspect witnesses to influence public opinion and policy in the United States and the UN.

Hill & Knowlton's actions taken on behalf of Citizens for a Free Kuwait, together with those of other major clients including Bank of Credit and Commerce International, the Church of Scientology, and an anti-abortion campaign by Catholic bishops raised ethical concerns among public relations professionals. The concerns, though not new, were more vigorous than previous ones due to the prominence of the issues.

Tom Lantos

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| style="text-align: left;" |Hold on to your hats. The grand campaign to rewrite the history of the Persian Gulf war is on.

| style="text-align: left;" | — Tom Lantos' response to MacArthur Lantos denied any allegations of wrongdoing arguing that "The media happened to focus on her. If she hadn't testified, they would have focused on something else." Lantos wrote that "the fact that Nayirah was the daughter of the Ambassador of Kuwait made her a more credible witness" and that "her relationship to the Ambassador and Government enhanced her credibility."

Ambassador Sabah

The ambassador has stated that his daughter had witnessed the atrocities she described and that her presence in Kuwait could be verified by the United States Embassy in Kuwait.

Lauri Fitz-Pegado

Lauri Fitz-Pegado was the acting Vice President of Hill & Knowlton at the time of Nayirah's Testimony. It was later confirmed within the Kuwaitis investigation that Fitz-Pegado was responsible for coaching Nayirah in what was proven to be her false testimony.

Other

The campaign has been described by critics as corrupt, deceptive and unethical. Some charge that it was used to spread false or exaggerated tales of Iraqi atrocities.

Lantos was criticized for his withholding the information.

Investigations

Human Rights Watch

In 1992, the human rights organization Middle East Watch, a division of Human Rights Watch, published the results of their investigation of the incubator story. Its director, Andrew Whitley, told the press, "While it is true that the Iraqis targeted hospitals, there is no truth to the charge which was central to the war propaganda effort that they stole incubators and callously removed babies allowing them to die on the floor. The stories were manufactured from germs of truth by people outside the country who should have known better." One investigator, Aziz Abu-Hamad, interviewed doctors in the hospital where Nayirah claimed she witnessed Iraqi soldiers pull 15 infants from incubators and leave them to die. The Independent reported, "The doctors told him the maternity ward had 25 to 30 incubators. None was taken by the Iraqis, and no babies were taken from them."

Amnesty International

Amnesty International initially supported the story, but later issued a retraction. It stated that it "found no reliable evidence that Iraqi forces had caused the deaths of babies by removing them or ordering their removal from incubators."

Kroll Report

Kuwaiti officials do not discuss the matter with the press.

Following the end of the war, Reuters reported that Iraq returned "98 truckloads of medical equipment stolen from Kuwait, including two of the baby incubators". Abdul Rahim al-Zeid, an assistant under-secretary at the Kuwaiti Public Health Ministry, said that by returning the incubators the Iraqis had unwittingly provided proof that they took them. Kuwait's chief ambulance officer, Abdul Reda Abbas, stated that "We think the Iraqis might have returned the incubators by mistake."

Scholarly commentary

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|style="text-align: left;"|In the end, the question was not whether H&K effectively altered public opinion, but whether the combined efforts of America's own government, foreign interests, and private PR and lobbying campaigns drowned out decent and rational, unemotional debate.

| style="text-align: left;" |— The Power House: Robert Keith Gray and the Selling of Access and Influence in Washington

The content, presentation, distribution, effectiveness, and purpose of Nayirah's testimony have been the subject of multiple public relations studies.

In his book Strategic Maneuvering in Argumentative Discourse, Frans H. van Eemeren, when discussing argumentum ad misericordiam, described Nayirah's story as a "clearly fallacious appeal to pity". In the paper The Hill & Knowlton Cases: A Brief on the Controversy by Susanne A. Roschwalb, the author noted that as H&K was a British firm, "what effect did British concerns—such as the possible collapse of its financial institutions, if the Kuwaiti currency, the dinar, became worthless—have on Hill & Knowlton's efforts?" Ted Rowse, in his article "Kuwaitgate — killing of Kuwaiti babies by Iraqi soldiers exaggerated" in The Washington Monthly, noted that "Most reporters, having apparently been burned by Hill & Knowlton's handiwork in spreading the original Nayirah story without checking it out, seem to prefer to let the story fade away, passively falling, once again, for the company's public relations guile."

In A. B. Abrams' book Atrocity Fabrication and Its Consequences, Nayirah's testimony was seen as part of a continuing trend of using fabricated atrocities to influence public opinion, and to justify foreign policy and its consequences. Abrams noted that discredited fabricated atrocities continued to negatively impact the reputation of targeted countries.

Notes

References

Journals

Books

External links

Brian Eno, Lessons in how to lie about Iraq, The Observer, August 17, 2003.
Ameen Izzadeen, Lies, damn lies and war, Daily Mirror of Sri Lanka, 2001 (no more precise date provided), archive.org mirror. Retrieved 18 December 2006.
Phillip Knightley, The disinformation campaign, The Guardian, October 4, 2001.
Maggie O'Kane, This time I'm scared, The Guardian, December 5, 2002.
Alexander Cockburn, Truth or Propaganda?  Radio interview with Geoff Pevere on Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Prime Time, originally broadcast December 14, 1992.

Background

Looting by Iraqi forces

Incubator allegations

Citizens for a Free Kuwait

Testimony

Reactions

Hill & Knowlton

Tom Lantos

Ambassador Sabah

Lauri Fitz-Pegado

Other

Investigations

Human Rights Watch

Amnesty International

Kroll Report

Scholarly commentary

See also

Notes

References

Journals

Books

External links