Scripts
Nayirah’s Testimony script
Human Rights in Kuwait
Cong. Human Rights Caucus
On October 10, 1990 Nayirah was the last to testify at the Caucus.
Chairperson: Our final witness is also using an assumed name and again we ask our friends in the media to respect the need for her to protect her family and we finally call on Nayirah to testify.
Nayirah: Mr. Chairman and members of the Committee, my name’s Nayirah and I just came out of Kuwait.
My mother and I were in Kuwait on August 2nd for 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 tenth grade classmates had a summer vacation like I did. I may have wished sometime that I could be an adult, that I could grow up quickly. What I saw happen to the children of Kuwait and to my country has changed my life forever. It has changed the life of all Kuwaitis, young and old. We are children no more.
My sister, with my five-day-old nephew, travelled across the desert to safe—safety. There is no milk available for the baby in Kuwait. They barely escaped when their car was stuck in the desert—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 volunteer—volunteered at the Al Adan hospital with twelve other women who wanted to help as well. I was the youngest volunteer. Other women were from twenty to thirty years old.
While I was there I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns. They took the babies out of incubators, took the incubators, and left these children to die on the cold floor. It was horrifying.
I could not help but think of my nephew who, if born premature, 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 surprise—supplies, ransacked their houses, and tortured neighbors and friends.
I seldom talked to a friend of mine after his torture and release by the Iraqis. He’s twenty-two, but he looked as though he could’ve been an old man. The Iraqis dunked his head into a swimming pool until he almost drowned. They pulled out his fingernails and implanted electric shocks to sensitive private parts of his body. He was lucky to survive.
If an Iraqi soldier is found dead in a neighborhood, they burned to the ground all the houses in the general vicinity and would not let firefighters come until the- until 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 in order to destroy everything identifying our country and our government. I want to emphasize that Kuwait is our mother and 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 fifteen—old enough to remember Kuwait before Saddam Hussein destroyed it, and young enough to rebuild it. Thank you.
Human happiness and the environment – Address by Uruguayan president Jose Mujica at Rio +20 Summit
To all of the authorities present here, from every latitude and organization, thank you very much. I want to thank the people of Brazil and Mrs. President, Dilma Rousseff. Thank you all for the good faith undoubtedly expressed by all of the speakers that preceded me.
We hereby express our innermost will as rulers, to adhere to all the agreements our wretched humanity, may chance to subscribe.
Notwithstanding, let us take this opportunity to ask some questions out loud. All afternoon long, we have been talking about sustainable development, about rescuing the masses from the claws of poverty.
What is it that flutters within our minds? Is it the model of development and consumption, which is shaped after that of affluent societies? I ask this question: what would happen to this planet if the people of India had the same number of cars per family as the Germans? How much oxygen would there be left for us to breathe? More clearly: Does the world today have the material elements to enable 7 or 8 billion people to enjoy the same level of consumption and squandering as the most affluent Western societies? Will that ever be possible? Or will we have to start a different type of discussion one day? Because we have created this civilization in which we live: the progeny of the market, of the competition, which has begotten prodigious and explosive material progress. But the market economy has created market societies. And it has given us this globalization, which means being aware of the whole planet.
Are we ruling over globalization or is globalization ruling over us? Is it possible to speak of solidarity and of “being all together” in an economy based on ruthless competition? How far does our fraternity go?
I am not saying any of to undermine the importance of this event. On the contrary, the challenge ahead of us is of a colossal magnitude and the great crisis is not an ecological crisis, but rather a political one.
Today, man does not govern the forces he has unleashed, but rather, it is these forces that govern man; and life. Because we do not come into this planet simply to develop, just like that, indiscriminately. We come into this planet to be happy. Because life is short and it slips away from us. And no material belonging is worth as much as life, and this is fundamental. But if life is going to slip through my fingers, working and over-working in order to be able to consume more, and the consumer society is the engine-because ultimately, if consumption is paralyzed, the economy stops, and if you stop economy, the ghost of stagnation appears for each one of us, but it is this hyper-consumption that is harming the planet. And this hyper-consumption needs to be generated, making things that have a short useful life, in order to sell a lot. Thus, a light bulb cannot last longer than 1000 hours. But there are light bulbs that last 100,000 hours! But these cannot be manufactured, because the problem is the market, because we have to work and we have to sustain a civilization of “use and discard”, and so, we are trapped in a vicious cycle. These are problems of a political nature, which are showing us that it’s time to start fighting for a different culture.
I’m not talking about returning to the days of the caveman, or erecting a “monument to backwardness.” But we cannot continue like this, indefinitely, being ruled by the market, on the contrary, we have to rule over the market.
This is why I say, in my humble way of thinking, that the problem we are facing is political. The old thinkers. Epicurus, Seneca and even the Aymara put it this way, a poor person is not someone who has little but one who needs infinitely more, and more and more.” This is a cultural issue.
So I salute the efforts and agreements being made. And I will adhere to them, as a ruler. I know some things I’m saying are not easy to digest. But we must realize that the water crisis and the aggression to the environment is not the cause. The cause is the model of civilization that we have created. And the thing we have to re-examine is our way of life.
I belong to a small country well endowed with natural resources for life. In my country, there are a bit more than 3 million people. But there are about 13 million cows, some of the best in the world. And about 8 or 10 million excellent sheep. My country is an exporter of food, dairy, meat. It is a low-relief plain and almost 90% of the land is fertile.
My fellow workers, fought hard for the 8 hour workday. And now they are making that 6 hours. But the person who works 6 hours, gets two jobs, therefore, he works longer than before. But why? Because he needs to make monthly payments for: the motorcycle, the car, more and more payments, and when he’s done with that, he realizes he is a rheumatic old man, like me, and his life is already over.
And one asks this question: is this the fate of human life? These things I say are very basic: development cannot go against happiness. It has to work in favor of human happiness, of love on Earth, human relationships, caring for children, having friends, having our basic needs covered. Precisely because this is the most precious treasure we have; happiness. When we fight for the environment, we must remember that the essential element of the environment is called human happiness.