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| New ICRC database seeks protection for war victims |
New ICRC database seeks protection for war victims
| By International Justice Desk (Photo: RNW) More about: armed conflictcustomary international humanitarian lawcustomary lawDatabaseICRCInternational Committee of the Red CrossInternational Justice Tribune 111
The International Committee of the Red Cross has launched a new legal database designed to be used as a reference in international and non-international armed conflicts.
It contains a comprehensive study on customary international humanitarian law that governs armed conflict between nations, civil war combatants, conflicts between states and non-state belligerents.
A previous version published in 2005 has been used as a legal reference for conflicts in Israel and the occupied territories, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Colombia, and Sri Lanka. It was also influential at the Special Court for Sierra Leone in determining that the recruitment of child soldiers is a war crime in non-international armed conflicts.
The new database is almost twice the size of the earlier version and features a more comprehensive list of rules. Information can be accessed by subject matter, type of practice, and country.
It is intended to be used as a legal reference by researchers, courts, tribunals and international organizations such as the United Nations.
The ICRC’s Head of Project for Customary Law, Jean-Marie Henckaerts says respect for customary law reduces the human cost of conflict:
“The majority of armed conflicts are non-international, and current treaty law doesn’t regulate them in sufficient detail. Customary law therefore provides men, women and children caught up in such conflicts with essential protection.”
The first section of the new database consists of 161 rules which were assessed in the previous version as being of a customary nature. The second part contains the practice on which the conclusions in part one are based. There are also new examples of international case law and UN material up until the end of 2007.
The unwritten rules of customary law are often derived from common or general practice which is regarded as law. It is the basic standard of conduct in armed conflict accepted by the world community and is universally applicable.
Even though a State may not formally accept a rule of custom, it is still bound by it if the overall State practice on which the rule is based is widespread, representative and virtually uniform.
Customary international humanitarian law is constantly evolving. The database will be regularly updated by ICRC delegations and national Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. |
| Dutch arrest suspect in Rwandan genocide |
Dutch arrest suspect in Rwandan genocide
| By International Justice Tribune (IJT 109) More about: 1994 genocideabsentiaCoalition for the Defence of the RepublicDutch policegacacagenocideGikondoHutusIJTinternational justice tribunejoseph mpambarakigalilife imprisonmentnewsrwandathe NetherlandsTutsisYvonne Ntacyobatabara
Dutch police arrested a 63 year-old woman last week on suspicion of involvement in the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Yvonne Ntacyobatabara is said to have led a group of young men in the mass murder of Tutsis and moderate Hutus in the Gikondo locality near the Rwandan capital Kigali.
By Thijs Bouwknegt
A former member of the extremist Coalition for the Defence of the Republic, she moved to the Netherlands in 1998 and obtained Dutch citizenship in 2004. She was later sentenced in absentia to life imprisonment by a local gacaca court in Gikondo.
Ntacyobatabara, who denies all charges, is only the second person in the Netherlands to be arrested for crimes committed as part of the Rwandan genocide. In March last year a court in The Hague sentenced Joseph Mpambara to twenty years in jail for the torture of a German doctor and his wife during the genocide.
Ntacyobatabara’s arrest came a few days after the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Netherlands and Rwanda. Dutch caretaker Minister of Justice Ernst Hirsch Ballin and his Rwandan counterpart Tharcisse Karugarama agreed that both countries should cooperate more closely in trying to bring suspected génocidaires to justice.
The two countries will share expertise on witness protection and will collaborate in training judges, public prosecutors and other judicial staff.
Hirsch Ballin says there could be up to a dozen Rwandan génocidaires living in the Netherlands, adding that he hopes an extradition treaty will soon be in place, allowing suspects who came to the Netherlands as refugees to face trial in Rwanda |
| Darfur rebels appear at ICC |
Darfur rebels appear at ICC
By International Justice Tribune (IJT 109) More about: Abdallah Banda Abakaer Nourainabu gardaafrican unionBandadarfurhaskanitaICCIJTinternational criminal courtinternational justiceinternational justice tribuneJerboluis moreno ocamponewspeacekeepersSaleh Mohammed Jerbo JamusSudantrialtribunalUNwar crimes
Two Darfur rebel commanders appeared before the International Criminal Court’s pre-trial chamber in The Hague on June 17th, charged in connection with a deadly attack in 2007 on an African Union peacekeeping mission (AMIS) that killed 12 and wounded eight others in the village of Haskanita in Darfur.
By Tajeldin Adam
Abdallah Banda Abakaer Nourain, former commander-in-chief of the Justice and Equality Movement and Saleh Mohammed Jarbo, former chief-of-staff of SLA-Unity, each face three counts of war crimes, including violence to life, targeting peacekeeping personnel and pillaging.
The same charges were brought by the prosecution against another rebel leader – Bahar Idriss Abu Garda - whose case was scrapped for lack of evidence in February. ICC prosecutors had requested a summons to appear for the three commanders in November 2008. Abu Garda was the first to appear but it took some time for Banda and Jarbo to come forward.
“I took up arms to seek justice. I decided to cooperate with the court because I know the court has duties to find out the truth. I call on every one who is accused by the court to come forward and clear their names,” Banda told the court.
The confirmation of charges hearing is scheduled to start on November 22nd and the prosecution faces a difficult task to persuade the judges to confirm the charges and move the case forward. In the Abu Garda case, judges ruled that the prosecution failed to provide adequate evidence to establish his involvement in the attack. The vital question now is, can the prosecution avoid another setback and proceed with the case?
Its success is not only important for the prosecution but also for the court. The collapse of Abu Garda’s case allowed the Sudanese government to brand the court “hypocritical” and the pre-trial sessions a “theatrical show.’’
It is no surprise to hear this kind of rhetoric from Khartoum which, from the very beginning, labeled the ICC a new tool of Western colonialism. But others are now starting to express their concern about the ability of the prosecution to support the claims brought against Banda and Jarbo.
Hafiz Mohamed of rights group Justice Africa also questions the motivation of the prosecution in bringing the case against the two commanders. “I think the assumption that the prosecutor has opened this case to show some balance between the warring sides in Darfur makes a bit of sense. It is clear that he was, to some extent, hasty in gathering evidence and scrutinizing it. It will be interesting to wait and see how it will proceed, but if we weigh it in the light of the evidence presented to the judges in Abu Garda’s situation, it is a weak case.’’
Nevertheless, even in the Abu Garda ruling, judges accepted that the Haskanita attack warranted the attention of the court, as it had consequences not only for AMIS personnel but also for the vulnerable local population who benefited from the presence of the mission.
And this is what matters for the prosecution: investigating the case and tracing the offenders. “Any talk about show of balance to silent critics and skeptics beyond the limit of the crime is mere political talk,” says Ali Agab of the Coalition for the ICC. “The court is not seeking and not keen to respond to such politically driven analysis. The court’s limit is to investigate the crime and compile evidence for the judges. What happened in Haskanita is a crime that falls under the jurisdiction of the court. The lack of evidence in Abu Garda’s case doesn’t bury the fact that a crime took place in Haskanita and claimed the life of innocent peacekeepers.”
Internally displaced people (IDPs) in Darfur have welcomed Banda and Jarbo’s appearance before the court. “We want everyone who is wanted by the court for crimes to go to The Hague and face the charges. The African Union peacekeepers were there to help us and protect us. Any attack on them is an attack on us and our interest” says one IDP from Taweela camp, west of Alfashir. |
| Politics trumps merit in choice of judges |
Politics trumps merit in choice of judges
| By International Justice Tribune (IJT 113) More about: choiceelectionelectionsicjInternational Justice Tribune 113international tribunalsjudgesKate Mallesonpolitics
International judges are required to decide upon an increasingly wide range of issues of global importance, yet very few people know how these powerful decision-makers are selected.
By Kate Malleson
Our three-year judicial selection project was an attempt to shed some light on the subject (Mackenzie, Malleson, Martin and Sands, Selecting International Judges: Principle, Process and Politics, Oxford University Press, 2010).
Based on interviews and case studies, our findings confirm that although the integrity and ability of the judges are not generally in issue, there are real dangers that political influence can have a distorting effect on the goal of selecting the most meritorious and independent candidates.
Inconsistent
Focusing on the selection of judges to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) and International Criminal Court (ICC) our research shows that the nomination process by which states put up candidates for election is critical in determining the quality of judges selected.
Yet in the absence of detailed guidance on the process in the provisions of the ICJ and ICC Statutes states have been left to establish their own practices. The result is considerable inconsistency in the nature and quality of the ways in which judges are nominated.
Some states use formal, transparent and merit-based systems, others rely on informal personal recommendations; prioritising the views of the friends and contacts of members of the government.
Politicized
The more informal the process, the more politicized it is. Most states use processes which are both very informal and highly politicised.
Numerous examples of political favouritism or nepotism were reported to us. Often there is no identified ‘selection pool’, only a single candidate who is known to the decision-makers, and who may initiate and lobby for nomination.
The ICJ and ICC nomination rules are meant to insulate nominations from political influence. However, in practice, many governments have a strong vested interest in strictly controlling the nomination process in order to influence the composition of international courts.
By contrast, a small number of states have developed procedures that place far greater emphasis on merit and transparency.
These include strengthening the independence of the Permanent Court of Arbitration national groups which nominate candidates, the use of independent expert selection committees and open selection procedures such as public advertisements, peer review, consultation and interviews.
Cattle market
In the elections themselves the degree of politicization is, if anything, even greater. One interviewee described it as ‘a cattle market sort of process.’
The central mechanism for securing support for a candidate is the ‘mutual support’, reciprocal, or vote-trading arrangement by which State A will secure a vote from State B for its candidate in return for a promise to vote for a candidate fielded by State B.
One consequence of the politicization of the process is that more powerful countries and regions dominate with the P5 and western states over-represented. In contrast, women are still dramatically under-represented in all international courts except those which have formal rules that require a degree of gender balance.
Although our findings indicate that merit is often a secondary factor in the selection processes, this does not mean that successful candidates necessarily lack quality. But merit is not the priority.
As one candidate put it to us: ‘I don’t think I lost because I am bad and, had I won, it would not have been because I am good.’
In practice, states will not contemplate giving up control over judicial elections; nor, arguably, should powerful decision-makers be selected through processes which are wholly disconnected from elected governments.
Nevertheless, urgent steps need to be taken to limit the growing and pervasive role of extraneous political factors, particularly at the nomination stage, in order to ensure that politics does not overwhelm the prospects for selecting the very best judges for the international courts.
Kate Malleson is Professor of Law at Queen Mary, University of London. She is a member of the governing council of JUSTICE and recently set up the Equal Justices Initiative to monitor developments in judicial appointments. |
| France arrests Rwandan genocide suspect |
France arrests Rwandan genocide suspect
By International Justice Tribune (IJT 107) More about: 1994 genocidefrancegenocidehutuIJTinternational justice tribunenewspaul kagamerwandasarkozytutsi
French police last Wednesday arrested Eugene Rwamucyo, a doctor suspected of involvement in the 1994 Rwandan genocide.
By Thijs Bouwknegt
Rwamucyo was arrested near Paris while attending the funeral of Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza, who was convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda on genocide charges and who died in prison in Benin while serving his sentence.
Rwamucy, 50, was suspended from his job at a French hospital last year after a nurse found his name on the Interpol website, listing his alleged offences as “genocide and war crimes.”
French prosecutors opened an investigation into Rwamucyo in 2008 but did not question or indict him. He was refused status as a political refugee but nevertheless obtained a French residence permit. At the time of his arrest, he was reportedly living in Belgium.
Rwamucyo’s arrest comes nearly three months after French police detained Agathe Habyarimana, one of the alleged masterminds behind the 1994 massacre.
In March, French president Nicolas Sarkozy visited Rwanda where he said France would do everything possible to ensure that “all those responsible for the genocide are found and are punished.” |
| Defence contests Naomi Campbell subpoena at war crimes trial |
Defence contests Naomi Campbell subpoena at war crimes trial
| By International Justice Tribune (IJT 107) More about: charles taylorCourtenay GriffithsIJTinternational justiceinternational justice tribuneliberiaMi FarrowNaomi CampbellnewsSCSLsierra leonesierra leone courtSubpoenatrialwar crimes
Model Naomi Campbell has taken center stage at Charles Taylor’s war crimes trial. Prosecutors at the Special Court for Sierra Leone want to subpoena her to testify against the former Liberian president.
By Thijs Bouwknegt
The prosecution claims that Taylor gave Campbell a large rough-cut diamond after a 1997 state dinner at the home of former South African president Nelson Mandela, and says her testimony could help directly link Taylor to the possession of uncut diamonds used to fuel a campaign of terror in Sierra Leone between 1996 and 2001.
Prosecutor Brenda Hollis requested the subpoena after Campbell refused to be interviewed by the court. But “the Trial Chamber should refuse the application,” Taylor’s lead counsel Courtenay Griffiths said on Monday in a response to the request. “The defence contends that Naomi Campbell’s only utility would be to bring unwarranted media attention to the proceedings, it cannot be said that her testimony is necessary to try the case fairly.”
Griffiths also called the evidence “tangential to the real issues” against Taylor and said prosecutors were trying to introduce it too late in the trial - 15 months after they closed their case.
Under cross-examination, Taylor repeatedly denied he had a large quantity of diamonds or that he had given one to Campbell, calling the allegations “total nonsense |
| Rwanda suspects living in The Netherlands |
Rwanda suspects living in The Netherlands
| By International Justice Tribune (IJT 105) More about: genocideinternational justiceNetherlandsPierre-Claver KarangwaPresident Paul Kagamerwanda
“I am the victim of a politically-motivated slander campaign by Rwanda’s dictatorial government,” says Pierre-Claver Karangwa. This former major in the Rwandan army is being accused of participating in the 1994 genocide in his home country.
Now living in the Netherlands, and a Dutch citizen since 2004, Karangwa says he is being targeted by Rwandan president Paul Kagame, as part of a vedetta against his political opponents.
Relying on an extensive report by human rights organisations African Rights and REDRESS, Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad reported that Karangwa was involved in a 1994 massacre committed in the small town of Mugina, during which an estimated 20,000 people were killed.
Church massacre
The report accuses Karangwa, now 54, of serious crimes committed in the Mugina region where he lived, and the Rwandan capital, Kigali. He is said to have set up, armed and funded Hutu militia. It is also alleged that he lured Tutsi refugees to Mugina’s church with the promise of protection, whilst simultaneously organising the militiamen who would later massacre them in that same church.
African Rights and REDRESS quote several witnesses in their report, both victims and perpetrators. “I regard Karangwa as the organiser of the genocide in our village. Villagers were involved in the killing of Tutsis because he enticed them,” says one of the militia members. “Not only did he behave as the head of the organisation. He also shot dead several victims,” adds another. According to the report, Karangwa was also involved in the murder of the mayor of Mugina, who was doing all he could to protect the Tutsis from Hutu militia attacks.
Karangwa dismissed the report and questioned the credibility of the rights organisations. “They are biased and on the Kigali payroll,” he told the NRC. “They are destroying people who have done nothing wrong.”
Dozens, perhaps hundreds of people accused in connection with Rwanda’s 1994 bloodbath are believed to be living in Europe currently. “A considerable number of genocide suspects are living in the Netherlands,” says Rakiya Omaar, director of African Rights.
The Rwandan ministry of justice has already provided its Dutch counterpart with incriminating evidence concerning 16 Rwandans living in the Netherlands who are suspected of involvement in the genocide.
In an interview with the NRC last week, Karangwa said he had tried to protect the victims in 1994, not harm them. He claims he filed an official complaint when the Rwandan courts sentenced him to death for his involvement in the massacre. “All the evidence has been fabricated,” he said.
Link to opposition
According to Karangwa, a campaign was started against him after he joined one of Rwanda’s main opposition leaders, Victoire Ingabire, who was also living in the Netherlands. Ingabire recently returned to Rwanda to run in the upcoming August elections, where she was briefly detained last month on charges of ‘spreading ethnic division and propagating a genocidal ideology’. “Obviously I constitute a threat to the Rwandan regime,” says Karangwa, “and I must be discredited.”
Rakiya Omaar disagrees: “The first witness statements against the Major date back to 2005, 2006 - long before Victoire Ingabire entered the stage as opposition leader.” She says it is “incomprehensible” that Karangwa has not been arrested and recalls the Dutch justice minister’s statement that “the Netherlands can’t be a safe haven for war criminals.” Asked to comment, the prosecutor’s office said that the statement still stands, but it refused to respond to the new report “in the interest of the investigation and privacy.”
Koert Lindijer and Dick Wittenberg co-authored the original article which appeared on April 24th, 2010 in the NRC Handelsblad. |
| Sweden Recognizes Assyrian, Greek and Armenian Genocide |
Sweden Recognizes Assyrian, Greek and Armenian Genocide
Assyrian International News Agency
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Stockholm (AINA) --- In adopted a resolution adopted today, the Swedish parliament (the Riksdagen) referered to the World War I-era killings of 2.75 million Armenians, Assyrians (also known as Chaldeans and Syriacs) and Pontic Greeks by the Ottomans as a genocide. Turkey is regarded legally and politically as the successor state of the Ottoman Empire but vehemently rejects calling the killing genocide according to the U.N. definition adopted in 1948, insisting that those killed were victims of war and uprising.
The genocide claimed the lives of 750,000 Assyrians (75%), 500,000 Greeks and 1.5 million Armenians.
The resolution passed by a single vote after some members of Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt's ruling centre-right coalition broke ranks and voted with the red-green opposition.
Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt is cited by Swedish radio news saying that he regretted the Parliament's decision and feared it could "be used" by reform critics in Turkey and that it "will unfortunately not have a positive effect on the ongoing normalization process between Turkey and Armenia."
In contrast the Left Party's foreign policy spokesperson Hans Linde told The Local newspaper on Thursday that the time had come for Sweden to take a stand on the issue. "First, to learn from history and stop it from repeating and second, to encourage the development of democracy in Turkey, which includes dealing with its own history. The third reason," added Linde, "is to redress the wrongs committed against the victims and their relatives."
The Washington Post cites Gulan Avci saying that, "after 95 years it is time for people who have suffered so long to obtain redress." Gulan Avci is a Liberal Party lawmaker who broke with her party's line and voted to recognize the resolution. Avci is a Kurdish immigrant from Turkey.
The uniqueness of Sweden's genocide adoption is that it refers also to Assyrians and Pontic Greeks. Their suffering during the World War I has been mostly forgotten for decades, but in December 2007 the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) did vote overwhelmingly and recognized the genocides of the Assyrian and Greek populations of the Ottoman Empire between 1914 and 1923. For the Assyrians organizations in Sweden, the recognition of the genocide, called Seyfo in Assyrian, is a milestone in their effort for political acknowledgment. More than 80,000 Assyrians live in Sweden, and they closely followed the debate in the parliament.
As expected, Turkey condemned the decision of the Swedish Parliament. A strong condemnation was voiced in a press release from the Prime Minister's office. Turkey recalled its ambassador to Sweden for consultations and said Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has cancelled his planned visit to Sweden on the 17th of this month.
Last week a U.S. a congressional committee approved a similar resolution that would send the measure to the full House of Representatives. Minutes after the vote, Turkey withdrew its ambassador to the U.S. Also last year, Turkey also recalled its ambassador to Canada after Prime Minister Stephen Harper referred to the killings as genocide.
By Abdulmesih BarAbrahem |
| Assyrian Genocide Researcher Sends Letter to Obama |
Assyrian Genocide Researcher Sends Letter to Obama
Assyrian International News Agency
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Mr Sabri Atman, the Director of the Assyrian Genocide and Research Center (Seyfo Center), together with Professor David Gaunt of Södertörn University, Sweden, have jointly written to the President of the United States of America and United States' House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs, urging both the President and honorable members of the House Committee when voting on the recognition of the Armenian Genocide to consider at the same time the simultaneous Seyfo Genocide, committed against the Assyrian people during World War I, as one same issue.
Mr. Atman and Mr. Gaunt have stressed importance of the recognition of the Genocide and requested the Administration serve to force Turkey to recognize its past acts. Further they have expressed their fear that without the persistence of this Administration, the Assyrian Genocide issue will remain unattended to and unanswered.
Here is the text of the letter:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 March 2010
His Excellency President Barack H. Obama
President of the United States of America
Honorable Members
United States House of Representatives
Committee on Foreign Affairs
Dear President Obama and Members of the House Committee,
On behalf of the Assyrian Genocide and Research (Seyfo) Center and its worldwide affiliates, we extend to you our warmest greetings.
At the same time we would like to take this opportunity to extend the thanks of the Seyfo Center to you on the efforts of the President and US congressional leaders with regard to the current plight of the Assyrian people around the world.
The Seyfo Center (Assyrian Genocide Research Center) comprises Assyrians and non- Assyrians from around the world who share a passion and a determination for the recognition of the Assyrian Genocide as well as that committed against the Armenian and Greek peoples during the same period in Ottoman Turkey. Our Board of Directors comprises many noteworthy Assyrian and non-Assyrian scholars and academics and is an international center of research.
We would like to bring to your attention a matter of great important to the Assyrian people worldwide; the recognition of the Genocide committed by the Ottoman Turks against the Assyrian, Armenian and Pontian Greek peoples of Asia Minor between 1914-1918.
You may be familiar with the widely-known and recognized Armenian genocide. What is less familiar to most individuals is the simultaneous genocide committed against the Assyrian people residing in the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. During this period hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of Assyrians faced genocide at the hands of the Ottoman Turks and Kurds. This number equates over 50 per cent of the Assyrian population at the time.
There is in existence an extensive body of academic research and material which has found beyond the shadow of a doubt that what can easily be termed 'genocide' did take place from between 1914 and until 1923 in what was previously known as the Ottoman Empire. Taking the form of massacres, death marches and forced deportations, the Young Turk government systematically initiated a policy of riding the Ottoman Empire of its Christian inhabitants. The resulting policies resulted in the death and murder of millions of Assyrians, Armenians and Greeks.
Similarly, countless books, studies, doctoral thesis and articles in addition to archival materials attest to the irrefutable fact that this genocide, arguably the first major genocide of the twentieth century, did indeed take place within the geographical parameters of the former Ottoman Empire. In fact, in December 2007, the world's foremost group of genocide academics and scholars, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, formally recognized both the Assyrian and Greek genocides (following its 1997 recognition of the Armenian Genocide), announcing that:
"It is the conviction of the International Association of Genocide Scholars that the Ottoman campaign against Christian minorities of the Empire between 1914 and 1923 constituted a genocide against Armenians, Assyrians, and Pontian and Anatolian Greeks." It "calls upon the government of Turkey to acknowledge the genocides against these populations, to issue a formal apology, and to take prompt and meaningful steps toward restitution."
Within the above excerpt from the International Association of Genocide Scholars' wider report on the Assyrian Genocide is the affirmation that the Genocide committed within the Ottoman Empire during the previously noted period was not one simply against the venerable Armenian peoples but against all Christians more broadly and in particular, against the Assyrian people.
Until this very day Turkey bullies the small number of Christian minorities living in the country through various legal and land disputes (Refer to the ongoing case of the St. Gabriel Assyrian Monastery in Midyat) and threatens and puts on trial those who dare to voice an opinion which does not follow the state view of history or offends 'Turkishness' (Refer to Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code). Despite this, our communities hold no ill-feelings towards the Republic of Turkey. We only hope that as Turkey modernizes and aims to enter the European Union, that its past policies with regard the Christian populations of the Ottoman Empire are not ignored or denied but that it does what the majority of academics and scholars in the genocide field as well as numerous governments have already done; recognize the Assyrian, Armenian and Pontian Greek Genocide.
Mr. President and honorable members of the House Committee, we would like to take this opportunity to urge you to not overlook the Assyrian people in the vote on the recognition of the Armenian Genocide. We ask that, as countless universities and scholars have done, to include ample reference to the Assyrian Genocide within the resolution to be debated and voted on by your committee.
President Obama, we understand that with your recent victory and assumption of the leadership of the United States, you have already pressing matters, both domestic and foreign with which the Administration must contend. Turkey without regret has refused to recognize or acknowledge the Assyrian Genocide and as you may be aware has placed heavy fines and burdens on those who do proclaim the fact to be evident, both in and out of Turkey. With its horrific track record in human rights violations, we fear that without the persistence of this Administration, the Assyrian Genocide issue will remain unanswered. In no uncertain terms, the diplomatic actions of the United States must serve to force Turkey to recognize their acts of Genocide against the Assyrians. The repercussions of the Assyrian Genocide are real and are felt today in Iraq by the Assyrian people. History is, no doubt, repeating itself in the current war in Iraq.
Even today, as a community of 3.5 million Assyrians living worldwide, the atrocities committed against the Assyrian people since the Genocide of 1915 has had profound cultural, political and economic ramifications on the Assyrian people. The Assyrian people, since the fall of the Assyrian empire, have been targets of countless acts of Genocide, resulting in the dwindling of its people. We fear that future generations will only be able to look to ancient history books for signs that an Assyrian people once existed if concrete and effective action is not taken.
Under your watchful eye and guidance, we urge you to hold Turkey accountable for its actions and crimes against humanity. In this respect, we urge you, President Obama, to make right what history could not.
Sincerely Yours,
Sabri Atman
Assyrian Genocide and Research Center
Seyfo Center
Professor David Gaunt
Director Södertörn University, Sweden
Seyfo Center |
| Assyrian Genocide Monument Moves to Second Phase |
Assyrian Genocide Monument Moves to Second Phase
Assyrian International News Agency
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The Assyrian Universal Alliance (AUA) -- Australia Chapter is pleased to announce the commencement of the second phase of its plan to erect the genocide memorial at Fairfield, Australia. We are seeking your support to raise the funds needed to construct this memorial.
The total cost of building this memorial which was unanimously approved by the Fairfield City Council on 15 December 2009 is estimated at AU $70,000.00. We are depending on financial support from the Assyrian communities and our friends worldwide to erect this memorial. We would like every Assyrian to have a share in this work by contributing to the construction of this historic monument.
We will recognize all sponsors and contributors by publishing their names on the AUA website and also in the booklet prepared for the official opening ceremony of the memorial. Donations over AU$1000.00 will be further recognized by presenting them a special certificate of appreciation. All donors who wish to remain anonymous will also receive the certificate of appreciation for their contribution.
A special online bank account has been established under the name of the "Genocide Monument" to facilitate the collection of funds. We encourage our sponsors to send their donations directly to this account established, please refer to the following link: http://www.aua.net.
Assyrian Universal Alliance |
| Statement on the anniversary of 5th, 6th and 7th Anfal stages the day of mass graves |
Statement on the anniversary of 5th, 6th and 7th Anfal stages the day of mass graves
The bad Anfal stages was a series of mass murders, the dictatorial Baathist regime by neglecting the legal principles, human rights, international agreements and human values, under the direct supervision and ordered from the criminals like Saddam Hussein and Ali Hassan al-Majid the 5,6,7th successive Anfal stages was implemented against innocent people like women, children, the elders and our nation young peoples in which it started from 15 \ 5, to 23 \ 8 \ 1988.
So Balisan area faced the hardest attacks, in addition of other attacks that happened in the mountainous borders in Shaqlawa, Rawanduz, Diane, Balisan, Alanna, Smaqoli, Malakan, Wartee and Hiran.
the process had been started under the supervision of the criminal the Major General (Yunus Mohamed Alzerb) the leader of fifth Corps, while the government at this stage as so as the previous stages has used the chemical weapons, especially in the villages and the valleys of Nazanin, Kamusak, Espindar, AliAwa, Smaqoli, Bonnie, Wartee, Balisan and Hiran, and after getting 327 injuries the victims whom were estimated at that stage were 183 people from the valley and villages of Khoshnawti and Sheikh Wasan, and 45 person from Warey, 19 people in the Malakan and 10 people from Totma.
on 20 \ 5 the army launched in an attack from three sides on the lower Bley village, which was the most populated and eligible after it has been occupied and as a result 276 people were arrested by the 45th Army band and they were transferred to Speelik camps then they transferred to the custody of the security department in Arbil, Kirkuk and Dobz, after some of them were transferred to Nugratsalman, then the request comes from the 5th Corps commander to postpone in the 20 \ 7 \ 1988, Saddam ordered the statement No. 861 to delay 6th and 7th stages of the Anfal operation, and after that, a secret decision No. 1076 the chemical Ali and his army attacked Balisan and invaded it, thus at the end of the Anfal 5th,6th and 7th operation 2602 family were arrested, on the other hand 52 villages, 52 mosques and 24 schools were destroyed, as were hundreds of water springs and streams were vandalized as well as they have burned hundreds of farms, fields and gardens.
At the same time, specifically on the anniversary of 16 of may in which it known's as the mass graves day, each year we explore and extract a number of victims remains and we burying it in the territory of parents and grandparents, and that foreign journalists are talking about the land of Iraq in a way which makes Iraq a land of mass graves and this What confirms that there is many of these graves, and the Most of those mass graves were contains victims of the Anfal operations, beside that the failure of awakening the conscience of the international community which has become the subject of the endless horrors Kurdish nations, so Saddam and his government continue to kill Kurds collectively without any fear by hiding theme selves under international community's silence cover.
on 16 \ 5 \ 2003 the first mass graves was discovered in the Mahaweel district which is under the Babylon province, in a way that used to contain of 2000 victims remains, so that the incident forced the Iraqi government to announce officially the day of mass graves, recently 300 mass graves where discovered, and has been noted that 80% of thees mass graves found in central and southern area of Iraq and that half of that figure was only present in the city of Samawah, adding that more than 40 mass graves are belong to Anfal victims, three groups of those graves were specific prepared for the Barzanians so 512 the remains were transported to Barzan the Fatherland, also in 17 \ 2 \ 2008 the remains of 358 Anfal victims in which they were belong to the Valley of Jafayati were transported and they were buried in the resort of Dukan, after and on 14 \ 4 \ 2009 187 the remains of Garmeean victims were buried in (Dienp) village whom located in the Rizgary area those who have been discovered in two different locations of the city of Najaf, and in 13 \ 4 \ 2010 the remains of 105 children and two women had transported from the Dobz graves to the fatherland and were buried during the proper ceremony, either in the Hamrin mountains other mass graves were discovered, which is valid and they predicting that they contain a large number of remains, so we hope from the Ministry of Martyrs and Anfal issues , as well as from the Iraqi Ministry of Human Rights to rush in doing the necessary action about that.The extinct Baathis government and for his purpose to erase the national affiliation of the villages Kurdish citizens, and to stop the liberation movement, hence the formal directorates have been in action to achieve that goal, therefore It is clear that if we want to find the remains and to recover the huge number of victims then we have to ask for help from loyal peoples and conscience owners.
We are the center of Anfal congratulate and encourage everyone who has provided information and assist the concerned authority to determine the locations of mass graves for to be opened in an appropriate manner and decent, also we ask the Iraqi federal government to maintain the graves and tighten its attempts to comply with decisions of the Supreme Iraqi Criminal court on the fact that the Anfal process is known as a genocide, which was one of the important decisions that helps to transfer the victim remains to the land of parents and grandparents.
On this occasion, we are requesting the follows:
1 - To provide adequate living in a material and moral to all Anfal victim families and to provide job vacancies for them, in order to live remarkable life.
2 – Rush in the excavation of Anfal mass graves and open them for the purpose of recovery of remains and to establish their own shrines and monuments.
3 - Establishing a special institute to train people professionally to delegate the grave exploration and grave opening works to them, for maintenance and making genetic (DNA) tests for the purpose of identifying the remains.
Finally, we are sending our greetings to Anfal victims of holy and pure souls, and greatness and superiority to the people and the families of the mass grave victims.
Anfal Center Erbil, 15-16\5\2010 |
| Death Flight pilot extradited to Argentina |
Death Flight pilot extradited to Argentina
Published on : 27 January 2010 - 2:35pm | By International Justice Tribune (IJT 98) More about: Argentinadeath flightsesmafair trialIJTinternational justiceinternational justice tribuneJulio PochNaval Mechanics SchoolNetherlandsTransavia Air pilot
Retired pilot Julio Poch will be extradited to Argentina to face charges of running ‘death flights’ under the country’s former military dictatorship. Spain’s National Court ruled last week that there are sufficient guarantees to ensure that Poch would receive a fair trial in Argentina.
Julio Alberto Poch, a former pilot with the Dutch Transavia Airlines, is wanted in Argentina for allegedly flying planes used to dump opponents of the military regime into the sea - known as ‘death flights’.
The 57-year-old, who has dual Dutch and Argentine nationality, is said to have been a military pilot at Argentina’s notorious Naval Mechanics School, ESMA - one of the biggest torture and detention centres of the Argentine military regime, which ruled the country from 1976 to 1983.
Between 13,000 and 30,000 people died or disappeared during that time.
Poch, who has been in custody in Madrid since his arrest in September last year, denies all the allegations.
He had accepted his extradition to Argentina saying that he hopes for a “fair trial” in Argentina as there is “no evidence” against him. Poch considers himself a political prisoner, a term generally used in Argentina for victims of the former military regime |
| The execution of Chemical Ali |
The execution of Chemical Ali
Published on : 27 January 2010 - 4:17pm | By International Justice Tribune (IJT 98) More about: Ali Hassan al-MajidChemical AliIJTinternational justiceinternational justice tribuneIraq WarIraqi High TribunalSaddam Hussein
Many Iraqis have been celebrating this week, following Monday’s execution of 68-year-old ‘Chemical Ali’. Former defense minister, Ali Hassan Al-Majid, a cousin of deposed Iraqi president Saddam Hussein, received a fourth death sentence on Sunday, January 19th, 2010. This time it was for ordering the gas attack on the Kurdish city of Halabja, during which an estimated 5,000 people were killed.
By Goran Baba Ali
Kurds and Shiites, who suffered the most at his hands, particularly welcomed his death. But many Sunnis were also happy, says Abdul-Zahra Zaki, editor in chief of Al-Sabah newspaper in Baghdad. “Not all the Sunnis were against the verdict. Most of them had also suffered the brutality of Ba’ath regime. Even in Tikrit, the birth place of Saddam and Al-Majid.”
But the survivors of Halabja were not entirely satisfied. “We are relieved with the fulfilment of the sentence. But the case has not ended yet,” says Goran Adham, head lawyer for the Halabja victims. “We tried our best to prove that the gassing of Halabja was part of a chain of crimes the regime committed against the Kurds.” According to him, the further persecution of the inhabitants of Halabja after the massacre makes the case a part of the genocidal Anfal campaign for which Al-Majid had already received a death sentence.
Aras Abid Akram, one of the survivors who testified against Al-Majid, was disappointed with the verdict. “We hoped that he and his henchmen would be convicted of genocide. At the end of his verdict, I asked the judge: ‘Is this all that you have for the people of Halabja who lived through all this misery?’ But he hadn’t any idea what the essence of the case was, what the Kurds have gone through.”
Aras lost his parents, seven sisters, three brothers, two nephews, his grandmother, two uncles, an aunt
and six cousins. “But when I saw Al- Majid up close, I couldn’t hate him. He sat there so powerless and tired that I found him pathetic. They didn’t let me talk to him but I would have said: ‘Look at me, you killed all my family. But you are now sitting in this cage and waiting for your sentence.’ But his death isn’t so important. For me the rehabilitation of justice was much more important.”
Anfal Campaign
“I will kill them all with chemical weapons! Who is going to say anything? The international community? F*** them! I will not attack [the Kurds] with chemicals just one day, but I will continue to attack them with chemicals for fifteen days […] Then you will see that all the vehicles of God himself will not suffice to carry them all,” Al-Majid said in 1987, in the run up to the Anfal campaign which he had planned to put a conclusive end to the Iraqi Kurdish resistance.
The campaign, headed by Al- Majid himself, took place between February 23rd and September 6th 1988. More than 2,000 villages were destroyed and an estimated 100,000 Kurds were killed - the majority of whom were non-combatant civilians, including women, children and the elderly. The Kurds themselves estimate that there were up to 188,000 victims.
In 2006, a Hague court recognised the Anfal campaign as a crime of genocide and convicted Dutch businessman Frans van Anraat of complicity in genocide. In the 1980s, Van Anraat had supplied the Iraqi regime with chemicals which were later used to manufacture the chemical weapons used against the Kurds.
The tribunal
Shortly after the fall of Saddam Hussein following the 2003 Anglo-American invasion, the Coalition Provisional Authority - established by the multinational coalition forces to provide a transitional government of Iraq - created the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal. In 2005 it was incorporated into domestic Iraqi law as the Iraqi High Tribunal. This tribunal, for a large part financed by the US government, had jurisdiction over residents of Iraq accused of committing genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes between July 1968 and May 2003.
On December 13th, 2003 coalition forces captured Saddam. Between October 2005 and November 2006, he and seven other members of the Ba’ath party, including Al-Majid, stood trial on charges of crimes against humanity relating to the killing of 148 Shi’ites in the city of Dujail. The tribunal sentenced Hussein to death by hanging on November 5th, 2006 and, after losing an appeal, he was executed on December 30th of the same year.
Criticism
The execution of Saddam caused international condemnation. Cell phone footage of the execution was posted on the internet and showed Saddam as an elderly man being dragged to the scaffold.
The tribunal has faced further criticism for a lack of international standards; a chaotic situation caused by Saddam’s attempts to use the court as a public platform; and the kidnapping and murder of some of the defence lawyers. The role of the US in founding and financing the tribunal has also led to concerns about America having undue influence on the court. Another point of criticism was the use of the death penalty - one reason most human rights organisations have refused to cooperate with the tribunal.
But the court has its proponents, too. Compared to the legal conditions in most Middle Eastern countries and under the former Iraqi regime, emphasizes Al-Sabah journalist Zaki, the court is doing a good job. “There was a high level of transparency in the proceedings and all the legal rights of the defendants were guaranteed.”
As for Al-Majid, Zaki is not surprised by his death sentence. “The verdict was not unexpected as the man had committed big crimes according to any human measure. But since the execution of Saddam - the symbol of fear - Iraqis aren’t interested in the tribunal anymore. They are busy with their miserable daily life, the security situation and the shortage of water and electricity,” says Zaki.
Other cases
Al-Majid received an earlier death sentence in December 2008 for his role in the repression of the Shi’ite uprising after the Gulf War in 1991, and yet another in March 2009 for the mass murder of Shi’ites in the Sadr City district of Baghdad in 1999.
The Iraqi writer Mowaffk Al-Sawad is from Basra and is now living in the Netherlands. He participated in the 1991 uprising and only survived by chance.
He was injured and fled to his uncle’s house in a part of Basra which the Republican Guard couldn’t reach. “But two of my cousins were captured and executed in front of their house. The guards were raiding houses and taking any young men with them. They gathered most of the people in the yard of Southern Oil Company and brought them to the University of Basra to execute them. Al-Majid led the operation himself.”
“Victory of justice”
Al-Sawad managed to flee to Saudi Arabia where he stayed for four years in a refugee camp before he came to the Netherlands. He only followed the broadcasts of Al-Majid’s trial occasionally.
“I couldn’t stand look at those faces. But I am really delighted with the end of these tyrants. To hell with them. This is a great victory for people who suffered long under their oppression. It is the victory of justice and I hope will be the birth of a new epoch where murdering people is outlawed.”
|
| Radical Hutus killed Rwandan president |
Radical Hutus killed Rwandan president
| By International Justice Tribune (IJT 97) More about: genocidehutuinternational justice tribuneJuvenal Habyarimanapaul kagamerwandatheoneste bagosora
Hutu extremists shot down the plane carrying former Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana in 1994, says the Rwandan government. An official report issued on Monday found that members of Habyarimana’s inner-circle planned his murder in order to scuttle a power-sharing deal with former rebel leader Paul Kagame. The assassination was then used as a pretext for the genocide.
By Thijs Bouwknegt
The report accuses Theoneste Bagosora, leader of the Hutu Power movement, of planning the coup. He was given a sentence of life in prison by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in 2008.
Writing for The New Yorker, Rwanda expert Phillip Gourevitch says the depth and seriousness of the investigation is more surprising than the findings themselves: “Obviously,” he says “the report serves President Kagame and his government’s interests. So why has it taken them so long to produce it? For more than a decade, critics held up the post-genocide government’s seeming reluctance to examine Habyarimana’s death as evidence that Kagame had something to hide.”
An earlier probe by French judge Jean-Louis Bruguière led to the indictment of nine of Kagame’s closest associates on charges of terrorism. |
| ICC: “use of child soldiers abuse” |
ICC: “use of child soldiers abuse”
Published on : 13 January 2010 - 2:07pm | By International Justice Tribune (IJT 97) More about: child soldiersICCIJTinternational criminal courtinternational justice tribuneThomas Lubanga Dyilowar crimes
Trial of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo
Thomas Lubanga Dyilo:
Alleged founder of Union des Patriotes Congolais (UPC) and the Forces patriotiques pour la libération du Congo(FPLC); Alleged former Commander-in-Chief of the FPLC, since September 2002 and at least until the end of 2003. Alleged president of the UPC.
Charges:
1.Enlisting and conscripting of children under the age of 15 years into the FPLC and using them to participate actively in hostilities in the context of an international armed conflict from early September 2002 to 2 June 2003.
2.Enlisting and conscripting children under the age of 15 years into the FPLC and using them to participate actively in hostilities in the context of an armed conflict not of an international character from 2 June 2003 to 13 August 2003.
Links
•The International Criminal Court
•Case information sheet
•International Justice Tribune
•The Lubanga Trial at the International Criminal Court
•Thomas Lubanga Dyilo (TRIAL)
Children cannot consent to their own exploitation, making the use of children in warfare “particularly abusive,” an expert witness told the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the trial of Thomas Lubanga Dyilo which resumed last Thursday. Lubanga is accused of enlisting child soldiers into his militia - the Union of Congolese Patriots - during Congo’s Ituri conflict.
By Thijs Bouwknegt
Children have an “underdeveloped notion of death,” Radhika Coomaraswamy, the UN Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Children and Armed Conflict, told the court’s judges. “The lack of the concept of death makes them fearless in battle.”
Coomaraswamy testified that many child soldiers she has met joined armed forces because it was the only way they could escape abuse at home. Other children were indirectly coerced into becoming soldiers.
Her testimony also touched on the multiple roles played by girls who are recruited to fight, including combat, scouting, portering and sexual slavery.
The prosecution wrapped up its case against Lubanga last July, and the defence is shortly to begin presenting exculpatory evidence over the coming months, with some 30 witnesses expected to testify.
The prosecution case was presented over 22 weeks and 30 witnesses took the stand. Nearly all prosecution witnesses were granted protective measures, including voice and facial distortion and the use of pseudonyms. A psychologist sat in during the proceedings to support and monitor witnesses.
Lubanga and his defence team were able to see all of the witnesses as they gave their testimony, but some required further special measures to avoid direct eye contact with the accused. |
| Halabja, the massacre the West tried to ignoreRichard Beeston: |
Halabja, the massacre the West tried to ignoreRichard Beeston:
comment It has taken nearly 22 years for Ali Hassan al-Majid to be judged by Iraqis for perpetrating one of the worst massacres in modern history.
Even peering out from the smudged window of an Iranian military helicopter, it was clear that a terrible crime had been committed against the inhabitants of Halabja, as part of a campaign by Saddam Hussein and his commanders to teach Iraqi Kurds the cost of siding with the enemy — at that time Iran.
On the ground, the scale of the slaughter became clear. Entire families had been killed by the poison chemicals. Some died together huddled in makeshift shelters that offered no protection against the gas. One family was killed in their garden along with their pets.
Another succumbed as they tried to escape by car. We found the vehicle crashed into a wall with the driver and all occupants dead and the keys in the ignition. The most poignant memory of that day was a father in traditional Kurdish dress lying dead at the entrance to his home cradling a baby.
Those who survived were arguably worse off. Hundreds had been hit by mustard gas that burnt their eyes and lungs but did not kill them. Victims of this slow and painful poison are still dying of their injuries to this day.
Even by Saddam’s ruthless standards the massacre broke new boundaries. Yet what was more shocking was the cynical response of the West. The US attempted to blame this crime on Iran. Britain carried on business as usual with the regime in Baghdad. Saddam was shielded from any meaningful punishment. He went on to invade Kuwait two years later and ordered the massacre of thousands of Iraqi Shia Muslims in 1991.
The failure of the West to respond adequately to this outrage made it difficult for George Bush and Tony Blair to make a moral case for overthrowing Saddam in 2003.
But as the Iraq war comes under new scrutiny and more voices argue that Saddam should have been left in place, it is worth sparing a thought for those thousands of innocent Kurdish men, women and children who died in the deadliest chemical weapons attack on civilians in history. |
| Anfal Monument costing over ID 7 bil. to be built in Shorsh |
Anfal Monument costing over ID 7 bil. to be built in Shorsh
The Anfal Monument to be built in Shorsh sub-district in Chamchamal district will immediately go into action next week by a Turkish company at a cost of ID 7.300.000 billions allocated by the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Dr. Majeed Hamad Amin minister of Martyrs and Anfal affairs told PUKmedia.
The monument expected to be constructed in Garmiyan area on 4000 square meters land will be considered as the biggest one across Iraq and Kurdistan Region, and it will encompass some vital parts including parks, water tunnel, reception hall and a big gallery to meet 500 people, he added. |
| Bosnian lab researchers helps Iraq unearth war secrets |
Bosnian lab researchers helps Iraq unearth war secrets
One of the cleaning ladies in the building won't enter the room where the vials are stored because she can feel the restless souls inside them.
But for 33-year-old biologist Amela Jamakovic, the 11 vials, each containing a few grains of bone powder that look like sand, are her daily assignment.
She's part of a team of six at the laboratory of the International Commission for Missing Persons in Sarajevo that's on a daunting mission: analyzing DNA from bones found in mass graves from atrocities or natural disasters around the world and matching it to lost lives.
The researchers try to restore identity to nameless remains by comparing the DNA to genetic material collected from living relatives. The detective work has been carried out on remains of victims from the 1990s Balkan wars, the Pinochet regime in Chile, Typhoon Frank in the Philippines, Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, and Asia's December 2004 tsunami.
Those efforts have been dwarfed by the commission's latest mission: helping Iraqis find and identify the victims of the Saddam Hussein regime and its aftermath.
Officials in Baghdad estimate that 350,000 human remains are hidden in mass graves throughout the country. Human rights groups say it could be close to a million.
When Jamakovic adds liquid to the grains of bone to form a solution ready for analysis, she likes to think she is performing a kind of alchemy that will conjure up an identity from dust and lead to peace and closure for a bereaved family.
"While I work with it, I handle it with care because any mistake and I have prolonged their agony," she says.
For the past two years, the team has been bringing Iraqi forensic archaeologists, anthropologists, nurses and other experts to Bosnia for training on collecting blood samples, excavating mass graves and setting up labs in Iraq.
Some of the dead were killed in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. Others were Kurds, killed because of their ethnicity, or Shiites, massacred because of their religion, or Sunnis, eliminated because of their political views.
If the estimates of human rights groups prove accurate, "they represent a crime against humanity surpassed only by the Rwandan genocide of 1994, Pol Pot's Cambodian killing fields in the 1970s, and the Nazi Holocaust of World War II," says a 2004 report from the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Building on the Iraq numbers are the unknown number of mass graves filled by victims of post-Saddam revenge killings as Sunnis, Shiites and rival political factions used the turmoil to settle scores.
It could take decades to find names for the bones from Iraq, but it will contribute to peace, said Adam Boys, the deputy head of the commission, who sees his work as "not for the dead but for the living."
"We see the issue of missing persons as something that stops reconciliation, that contributes to conflict," he said.
In Bosnia, two-thirds of the victims — a total of some 20,000 sets of remains — have been found and identified. Some 10,000 remain missing.
Munira Subasic, a Bosniak woman who lost her son, describes the effect this way: "Multiply that number by at least four family members and that's how many people are crying every day in Bosnia."
In Iraq, there are likely to be millions enduring that fate.
The current situation "has catastrophic effects on Iraqi society and politics," said Baghdad political analyst Hadi Jallu. "The missing people are from Iraqi sects, and unless this problem is solved these sects will still continue to mistrust and still seek revenge from each other."
Jonathan McCaskill, the International Commission for Missing Persons chief in Iraq, said locals are being taught about forensic archaeology, anthropology, and databases created to store genetic information and match it with living relatives.
Iraqi archaeologists, anthropologists, forensic experts, nurses, doctors and lawyers have been visiting Sarajevo for courses on excavating bones, DNA extraction, and taking blood samples. Software the commission has developed is being translated into Arabic and Kurdish.
In Baghdad, thousands of remains have been collected at the morgues of the Medical Legal Institute, brought in during the months after the April 2003 invasion. Iraqi experts have extracted DNA from many of the remains but so far have nothing with which to match them.
Dr. Munqith al-Dezali, the head of the Medico-Legal Institute in Baghdad, said each set of remains needs blood samples from three or four relatives to yield a positive identification.
Boys said much education is needed before the work of collecting those samples can even start. He cited the case of a Kurdish village where some villagers had reservations about the procedure.
When an International Commission for Missing Persons representative told them that DNA extraction was necessary to help find missing loved ones, they asked how long one can live without DNA, thinking it was an organ.
"It is a monumental task," Boys said.
Associated Press writers George Jahn in Vienna, Kim Gamel in Cairo and Sameer N. Yacoub in Baghdad contributed to this report.
By AIDA CERKEZ-ROBINSON (AP) |
| Celebrating 22nd Anniversary day of Anfal process |
Celebrating 22nd Anniversary day of Anfal process
The 22nd anniversary day of the so-called “Anfal” process has taken place today, and attended by senior government officials and leaders, together with Victim families in Debna Graveyard in Rezgari town, 3 km away from Kalar city, The Correspondent of the Independent National News Agency of Kurdistan reported on Wednesday.
The 22nd anniversary day of the tragic massacre process has taken place under the auspices of Kurdistan Prime Minister, Dr. Barham Saleh and the number of local, foreign officials and seniors in Rezgari town.
According to the ceremony, Prime Minister Saleh decided to grant 50 young Anfal family boys wedding party allocations in the Oscar Hall, together with commencing the number of public projects, such as the University of Garmian, a football play ground and hospitals in the city of Kalar.
The former Baath regime had established Smood compass to collect innocent people forcefully and killing them in mass graves, but the Kurdistan Regional Government has changed the name to "Rezgari" after the national uprising process in 1991.
The previous Baath rule killed thousands of innocent Kurdish people under motto “Anfal” process and the process had passed into 8 stages which the first one had taken place in Jafayati area on Feb. 22, 1988.
The second Anfal process had taken place in both Qaradagh and Garmian area, which were considered as the biggest operation against humanity on Mar. 22-30, 1988 in Iraqi Kurdistan.
The third, fourth, fifth and sixth stages of Anfal process had covered the villages around the small river, as well as the locations around the province of Erbil.
The last one had taken place in Badinan area and killed the massive people in those locations on Aug. 25, 1988.
Today, the government is returning 106 victims’ dead bodies to their homeland in Kirkuk area, 45 km east of Erbil city
The Iraqi former Baath regime killed nearly 200,000 innocent Kurdish people, including women and children, in the so-called "Anfal" process, in all locations of Kurdistan Region: the process is considered as a tragic massacre against humanity in the Iraq of the 20th century.
-AKnews- |
| Intellectuals condemn Baath atrocities against Kurdish people |
Intellectuals condemn Baath atrocities against Kurdish people
Sulaimaniyah, April 6, 2010 (AKnews) – A group of Iraqi and Arab personalities, intellectual and academic figures have submitted a declaration to the other Arab intellectuals and personalities to lay off the chauvinist attitudes and make public the former Baath regime’s ill-treatments against the Kurdish people in Iraq.
According to the issued declaration: “close to 205 Arab and Iraqi intellectual figures have declared that the former Baath regime performed several aggressive processes to kill thousands of innocent Kurdish people since 1963.”
The declaration, at the meant time, has shed light on Anfal process as a former Baath regime’s tragic anti-human-being massacre which killed 182,000 innocent people, who are buried in mass graves, including a huge number of children and women among the victims.
However, the statement deals with the above intellectual and academic concerns according to the former regime’s daily brutal acts on the views of the Arab media channels and the political figures without any reactions.
The statement has taken into consideration the Anfal process, criticising silence by the Arab media channels towards the tragic process, and thus indicating their disagreement by collecting signatures against Arab and Iraqi zip mouths.
The Iraqi former Baath regime had implemented the Anfal process against the Kurdish people in northern Iraq, that reached 182,000 people, including thousands of women and children. The process is considered one of the most brutal anti-human process in the 20th century |
| Daniel Mitterrand statue unveiled in Halabja Town |
Daniel Mitterrand statue unveiled in Halabja Town
In a ceremony on Sunday that was attended by some former Iraqi MPs and citizens, the statue of Daniel Mitterrand was unveiled at Halabja Town.
"It was very proper a brave and struggler woman such as Mitterrand to be honored. She is one of the foreign personalities who have supported the Kurds in the past, she deserves that", Halabja deputy mayor Kwestan Akram said.
The project was funded by some former Iraqi MPs: Alla Talabani, Rabi'a Muhammad, Parwin Salih, Sozan Muhammad, Tnia Tal'at, and Leila Muhammad.
The statue was produced by the Kurdish sculpture Hamdi Muhammad.
Mitterrand was born 1924 to a family who would defend the high values of French republic and revolution. She married Francois Mitterrand, the former French president. She has raised the issue of Kurds at some international conferences and congresses. The president Mitterrand proposed a safe haven for the Kurds after the Kurdish forced migration by the Saddam's regime in 1991. Sometimes Mitterrand is called as "the mother of Kurds" for her appreciated attempts to save the Kurds as a devoted mother.
Halabja is 81km south east of Sulaimaniyah, 364km north east of Baghdad. It was subjected to an aerial-borne chemical weapons attack in March 1988 by the former Iraqi regime. The death toll was widely estimated as 5000, with more than 10,000 injured. The first session of Halabja trial, with some of the alleged planners and perpetrators of the attacks in the dock, took place on 21 December 2008.
-AKnews- |
| LA museum of tolerance exhibit recalls gassing of Kurds |
LA museum of tolerance exhibit recalls gassing of Kurds
An exhibit at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles (LA) recalls one of worst atrocities of the late 20th century, the gassing of 5,000 Kurdish men, women and children in the town of Halabja by former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein. The exhibit opened this week, on the anniversary of the March, 1988 massacre.
The gas attack was orchestrated by Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein and his cousin, Ali Hassan al Majid, known as Chemical Ali, and was aimed at the civilian Kurdish population of northern Iraq in the closing days of the Iran-Iraq war. Saddam planned to repopulate the area with Arab settlers from other parts of Iraq and he embarked on a policy of forced resettlement and mass murder.
Five thousand people died in the attack on Halabja on March 16, 1988. More than 100,000 Kurds would die in the following months as 4,000 villages were destroyed in what was known as the Anfal campaign.
The exhibit recalling the massacre was created for display at the United Nations in New York, where it was first shown. It was designed in conjunction with the Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq, and can now be seen at the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.
Rabbi Abraham Cooper is associate dean of the museum and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human rights organization. "What happened to the people in Halabja on March 16th, 22 years ago, should never have happened to begin with, should never happen again to anyone else, and we have learned from our own experience that silence is admittance. If you do not speak up, even in a case here where our community is not involved, then the world becomes complicit," he said.
He recalls that Simon Wiesenthal, the famous Nazi hunter after whom the Los Angeles center is named, warned of future genocides if the world stood by in silence in the face of atrocities. Rabbi Cooper says Wiesenthal, who died five years ago, spoke out against the killing of Kurds and other groups.
"You have a special moral obligation to speak out and do what you can when others, in this case, the people of Halabja and other Kurdish communities, were gassed by Saddam Hussein and his regime so many years later," he said.
Today, Kurdistan is an autonomous region within Iraq. The U.S. cultural attaché for the Kurdistan regional government, Najat Abdullah, says that Kurdistan has recovered. "And as we expect, day by day, Kurdistan grows and Kurdistan becomes more democratic, Kurdistan becomes more the safest place in Iraq," he said.
But he says that this atrocity needs to be remembered.
Saddam Hussein was sentenced to death by an Iraqi court and hanged in December, 2006. Ali Hassan al Majid was executed this January.
(VOAnews.com) |
| Canada recognizes Halabja Crime as Genocide |
Canada recognizes Halabja Crime as Genocide
In the presence of the Kurdish Diaspora, the Parliament of Canada in its session on Tuesday March 16, decided to recognize the Halabja Massacre as Genocide.
At the beginning of the session, the member of the Canadian Parliament Jim Carajiates in a speech, shed light on Halabja Catastrophe, he said: “During my visit to the Martyr City of Halabja in 2009, I promised the citizens there, to convey their voices and sufferings to the Parliament of Canada and this was fulfilled and we will continue until we internationally recognize the crime against Halabja as Genocide.”
Reported by: Othman Ali (PUKmedia Arabic Version) |
| Pictorial Report on the Halabja Massacre in March 16,1988 |
| Link |
| World personalities to attend 1988 Halabja massacre |
World personalities to attend 1988 Halabja massacre
Mayor of Halabja announced that on the 22nd anniversary of Halabja poisonous gas attack on March 16, a number of international personalities will attend a commemoration ceremony.
"We have invited a number of personalities and mayors across the globe, a number will attend but others will not, however their statements will be read at the ceremony", Khdr Karim said.
Head of World Municipalities for Peace Akiba Tushi has replied that he can't attend the ceremony, but his message will be read, Karim added.
The representative of the Italian premier will attend to read the message of his country's PM and 25 personalities representing the World Municipalities for Peace will visit Halabja town to attend the commemoration", Khdr said.
It was expected that also mayor of Gaza to attend, but he has announced that he can't attend the ceremony for Gaza is under siege but he has sent a message that will be read by mayor of Halabja. Also head of the International Peace Bureau (IPB) will attend the commemoration, according to Khdr.
Khdr commended the participation of the world personalities and described that as hopeful for globalizing the March 16th event and the crime to be recognized as "genocide" on an international scale.
World Municipalities Organization for Peace is an international organization that has a number of mayors as its members across the globe.
Halabja office of the organization is its only office in the entire Middle East that was opened on Augusts 5 2009. Mayor of Halabja Khdr Karim heads the office; meanwhile he is the vice president of the organization and ambassador of the International Peace Organization in the Middle East.
Halabja is located 81km south east of Sulaimaniyah, 364km north east of Baghdad. It was subjected to an aerial-borne chemical weapons attack in March 1988 by the former Iraqi regime. The death toll was widely estimated at 5000, with more than 10,000 injured. The first session of Halabja trial, with some of the alleged planners and perpetrators of the attacks in the dock, took place on 21 December 2008.
The Iraqi High Criminal Court held the first session to discuss the file of Halabja case defendants on December 21st 2008.
The court reached its final verdict on the file on January 17th 2010 that sentenced the major criminals to different jail terms and Ali Hasan Majeed (dubbed to chemical Ali) was sentenced to hang penalty.
The Iraqi appeal commission recognized Halabja's poisonous gassing as "genocide" on March 1st 2010.
-AKnews- |
| The village of Sayw Senan, Kurdistan- (DEMOTIX) |
The village of Sayw Senan, Kurdistan- (DEMOTIX)
The chemical attacks against the Kurds were part of the ANFAL campaign mounted between February and September 1988 by the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. Nearly 4,500 villages were destroyed and an estimated 100,000 Kurds were killed in the 1987-1988 offensive known as Operation Anfal, or Spoils of War
The village of Sayw Senan (Sewsenan) came under attack from mustard and nerve gas by Iraqi planes at dinner time on March 22, 1988 the day after Nawroz, the Kurdish New Year and 6 days after the attack on Halabja,
Six separate estimates given to Middle East Watch by local villagers and PUK officials place the total number of dead in the chemical attack on Sayw Senan at between seventy eight and eighty seven. Among the dead were thirteen people from one family.
The photographs were taken at the memorial service on the 21st Anniversary of the attack.
-DEMOTIX- |
| Iraqi Tribunal recognizes Halabja case as genocide |
Iraqi Tribunal recognizes Halabja case as genocide
A source from KRG Ministry of Martyrs and Anfal Affairs told PUKmedia correspondent “the ministry appealed for cassation to the Iraqi High Tribunal to amend the description of Halabja case from crimes against humanity into genocide. Today, the tribunal officially agreed to name Halabja crimes as genocide.”
Adham Goran, the head of Halabja Victims Defense Committee told PUKmedia “we won this case legally, where we appealed for cassation to the Iraqi High Tribunal regarding our case. The tribunal officially agreed to amend its decision from crimes against humanity into genocide.”
Bearing in mind, the Iraqi High Tribunal ordered in January 17, 2010 to execute Ali Hassan al-Majid (Chemical Ali) and sentenced the former minister of defense Sultan Hashim Ahmed and head of military intelligence Sabir al-Duri to 15 years in prison, while the military commander of the area Farhan Mutlaq al-Juburi was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Reported by: Fuad Othman, Safin Ahmed (PUKmedia-Arabic version |
| 3 mass graves containing 272 children found in Kirkuk |
3 mass graves containing 272 children found in Kirkuk
On Friday, Feb. 19, the Ministry of Martyrs and Anfal Affairs has started to excavate three mass graves in Dubz town in Kirkuk province.
Experts saying that the graves contain the remains of 272 children faced mass killing in the Anfal campaigns against Kurds in 1988 in the area. |
| Viewpoint: Halabja's unfinished business |
Viewpoint: Halabja's unfinished business
Mariwan Hama-Saeed is an Iraqi Kurdish journalist who, as a child, survived the 1988 Halabja poison gas massacre in which some 5,000 people died. Here he argues that the execution on Monday of Saddam Hussein aide Ali Hassan al-Majid, who was convicted of ordering the bombardment, is not enough to heal the wounds Halabja left.
I remember 16 March as if it was yesterday.
I remember the roar of military aircraft overhead, hiding in my family's shelter with family and friends, and emerging hours later to find twisted, deformed bodies lying in the street. I remember people crushed under buildings and crying for help. And I remember the black smoke from the napalm bombs, which billowed into the sky as we fled on foot to Iran.
I was eight years old.
When I was a child, the name Ali Hassan al-Majid always scared me. It reminded me of the horror I witnessed and the relatives I lost. In Halabja, we so feared "Chemical Ali" that no one dared mention his name in public until after the 1991 Kurdish uprising, when Kurdish fighters gained control of three provinces in northern Iraq.
Political capital
When Chemical Ali was arrested by US troops in August 2003, I was in shock for days. I could not believe that the man responsible for our atrocity, and also for killing so many Iraqi Shia Muslims, would actually be brought to justice.
I was just as shocked by his hanging this week. He was executed quietly and without much fanfare. I learned of his hanging from a local radio announcer who screamed over the airwaves: "Congratulations to you, the people of Halabja! Chemical Ali has been brought to justice."
I had wanted Majid to pay for his crime but the hanging seemed more of an ambush than an execution. It will likely be used to stir up more sentiments against the remnants of Saddam Hussein's Baath party, ahead of the March parliamentary election but will not bring Halabja residents justice in the true sense of the word.
Halabja's survivors continue to suffer health problems and live in poverty more than 20 years after the chemical attack. They have died of cancer and respiratory problems, and given birth to children with deformities which doctors say were caused by the chemicals.
The town has long been considered a symbol of Kurdish suffering and the atrocities of the Baathist regime. Since the attack, politicians have used Halabja as a political card, with Kurdish, Arab and American leaders parading through to express their utmost sympathy. They then drive away, leaving behind their unfulfilled promises to help my people.
Majid's hanging seems equally political. Prior to the Halabja trial, he was given four death sentences for killing thousands of Shia Muslims and Kurds in the 1980s and early 1990s.
I have no doubt that his hanging will be used as political capital by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki's Shia Dawa Party. As we approach the election, Shia parties are competing over who is the toughest on Baathists.
The campaigning, which has yet to officially launch, is revolving around anti-Baath rhetoric, especially in the Shia-dominated south.
A committee tasked with rooting out Baathism from Iraqi politics recently banned more than 500 candidates for having ties with or promoting the Baath party.
In this climate, Mr Maliki's party can boast that during his era two of the most notorious figures in Baathist history - Chemical Ali and Saddam Hussein - were hanged. And since the anti-Baath rhetoric has never been higher in the south, the embattled prime minister will stand a good chance of winning the election there.
Still suffering
As a survivor of the chemical attack, I am no fan of the Baathists. I and other victims feel relieved that the man responsible for the death of their loved ones and the source of their pain is gone.
But we are living in the present, not the past. Chemical Ali's execution will be trumpeted by political parties but it will not bring Halabja the healthcare, jobs and basic services that it needs. His arrest and trial have done nothing to improve the quality of life of the survivors.
The authorities can claim that Chemical Ali's execution brought justice to Halabja but the reality is that our pain and struggle is far from over.
The victims are left suffering, those who helped the regime produce chemical weapons may get away with their crimes and some political parties may rise to power because of it.
Mariwan Hama-Saeed is an editor and online training coordinator with the Institute for War & Peace Reporting's Iraq programme. His view does not necessarily represent the views of IWPR or the BBC.
-BBC- |
| 4200 signatures to recognize Halabja as genocide |
4200 signatures to recognize Halabja as genocide
A support group for recognizing Halabja gas attack as genocide in its signature collection campaign has managed to collect more than 4200 signatures to support the case of Halabja.
This voluntary group presented these signatures to the ministry of Martyrs and Anfal affairs. The group announced that it has collected signatures from all ethnics inside and outside Iraq via a special website.
On his part, Dr. Majid Amin applauded this initiative by the team, stressing his confidence to Iraq high tribunal court’s decision regarding the criminals. He also expressed his disappointment because it was supposed to recognize Halabja case as genocide not just as a crime against humanity since Halabja case has all the foundations to be recognized as genocide. |
| The IHCC set session to Barzani People's tragic massacre |
The IHCC set session to Barzani People's tragic massacre
The Iraqi High Criminal Court (IHCC) is commencing its sessions for discussion of the Barzani butchery case in Baghdad, Dossier Chief Researcher reported on Tuesday.
“The State High Criminal Trial, together with the Defense Jurist Commission has set its session to shed light on the Barzani’s brutal massacres, today in Baghdad,” the official of the Ministry of Anfal and Martyr Affairs, Haval Rahman told the Independent National News Agency of Kurdistan (AKnews).
“The session is going to focus on the 700 Document pages about turning up the Barzanis' mass graves which is estimated to have buried together 513 people in the Southern Provinces of Iraq,” Rahman Said.
“The former Baathists intelligent foundation had captured and transported more than 8,000 Barzani’ people, with ages that ranged between 12-85 to unknown places in July 1983, and then buried them alive in the mass graves forcefully, after the several transparency stages that followed the vague treaty, signed between former President Saddam Hussein and the Late Shah of Iran, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, in Algeria in 1975,” he added.
“The Jurist Defense Commission members are collecting themselves to show up some evidences and documents of the formal State intelligent foundations to prove the Barzanis’ massacre, including indicating two single documentary films which Saddam Hussein had confessed himself to have attacked, arrested and killed Barzani people in Barzan area, in Kurdistan Region,” He noted.
The High Criminal Court had set its first session to discuss on the Barzani massacre case against seven formal regime leaders, including former intelligence leader, Ali Hasan al- Majid, former member of Iraq's previous ruling Revolution Command Council Member, Tariq Aziz, Saddam's step-brother, Watban Ibrahim al-Hassan, the former Minister of Culture & Information, Hamid Yousif Hammadi, former Interior Minister, Saadoun Shaker, as well as the former Finance Minister, Hikmat al-Azzawi and the Special Guards Forces Commander, Brigadier Sifian Maher Hassan.
-AKnews- |
| Breaking the circle of silence about Anfal women |
Breaking the circle of silence about Anfal women
By: Choman Hardi
The term ‘Anfal’ which means ‘spoils of war’ is the name of the eighth chapter of the Qura’an which came to the prophet in the wake of his first jihad against the non-believers.
The Iraqi government used this word to refer to a series of military operations which targeted Kurdish Muslims in the north of Iraq from February to September 1988. By using this word the government intended to mobilise support from within the country and to legitimise the operations in the Muslim world, portraying the Kurds as non-Muslims.
Anfal took place in eight stages, targeting six geographically identified areas (see map below). In this process over 2600 Kurdish villages were destroyed and an estimated number of 100,000 civilians ended up in mass graves. Many more died as a result of bombardment, gas attacks, exodus to Iran and Turkey and life in the camps (Topzawa, Dibis, Nugra Salman, Nizarka, Salamya).
At the beginning of each Anfal stage chemical attacks were used to kill, terrify and destroy the morale of the people. After the air raids and alongside conventional bombing the ground attacks started. The attacks were designed to steer civilians towards certain collection points near main roads where they were awaited by the army and the jash forces (Kurdish mercenaries who worked for the Iraqi government). The civilians were then taken in coaster busses, trucks and military vehicles (IFA trucks) towards the forts and army camps which acted as assembling and processing centres (Suleimanya Emergency Forces (Tawari), Chemchemal Brigade Headquarters (Liwa), Qoratu Fort, Tuz Khurmatu Youth Centre, Aliawa jash headquarters, Laylan Animal Pen, Taqtaq Military Garrison and Fort, Harmouta Army camp, Qadir Karam Elementary School and Police Station) and then to the temporary holding centres (Topzawa Popular Army Camp (Anfals 1-7) and Qala’t Dohok (Anfal 8)). They were then divided into three main groups: the men and teenage boys, the women and their children, and the elderly. The women were transferred to Dibis prison (in the Soran region, Anfals 1-7) and Salamiya near Mousel (in the Badinan region 8th Anfal). The elderly were taken to Nugra Salman on the border of Saudi Arabia. The men were stripped down to their vests and sharwal (Kurdish baggy trousers). Their hands were tied behind them and they were blindfolded and taken to the mass graves. Most of the men were executed within days of their capture but some are reported to have been alive a few years after Anfal. After the September 1988 General Amnesty large parts of Iraqi Kurdistan remained ‘prohibited for security reasons’ and the surviving inhabitants (mostly women, children and the elderly) were forcibly relocated to housing complexes near the main cities. The survivors were left to fend for themselves without support or compensation. They were not entitled to food coupons and their children were not allowed to go to school because they were not considered Iraqi citizens.
Tuz Khurmatu Youth Centre (looking down from the roof). This is a large one storey building with a courtyard in the middle. This was one of the assembling centres during the 3rd Anfal (the Germian region). The people of Tuz Khurmatu demonstrated against the government when the villagers were being brought to this Youth Centre. The chaos helped some people to escape. A mustashar (jash leader) who is known to have helped many women and children escape was called Jabara Drej (Jabar the Tall). According to many women he had been deceived about the purpose of the Anfal campaign, believing that it was a deportation campaign. Once he realised that the people will be annihilated he quickly switched his loyalty and urged his jash and the general public to help the villagers escape. He was allegedly killed by the Iraqi government in 1991.
One of the halls in Tuz Khurmatu Youth Centre. Women and children were helped to escape from the high windows. Members of the jash forces dangled their Kurdish belts (pishten) to pull out women and children. Tuz Khurmatu Youth Centre is now occupied by dozens of internally displaced families who have built mud brick walls to divide up the large halls. It is also full of abandoned furniture, chicken and children.
Topzawa Popular Army Camp is a large one storey building spreading over two square miles. The camp was surrounded by barbed wire during Anfal. The majority of the people who were captured during Anfals 1-7 were processed through Topzawa. For most of the men this was their last stop before execution. In the large courtyard hills of men’s clothes, their rosaries, knives, mirrors, combs and ID cards were piled up. Women repeatedly talked about the piles of clothes, ID cards and men’s belongings soaking in the rain and mud.
The remains of one of the halls in Topzawa. There were around 30 large halls each 25-30 meters long. The windows were barred and netted but had no glass. It was from these windows that the women watched the blindfolded and handcuffed men who were forced to run around the blocks before they were shoved into the closed military trucks (described as large ambulances or windowless busses) which took them to their death.
Qala’at Dohok at Nizarka (Dohok Castle). This is a gigantic two storey building which became the temporary holding centre during the final Anfal (the 8th). Thousands of people from the Bahdinan region were taken there. As was the custom in Topzawa the men were immediately separated from the rest of the villagers, blindfolded and handcuffed. A number of men were killed by being hacked in the head with concrete blocks on the day of their arrival. The rest were soon taken to the mass graves leaving behind all their personal belongings.
Qala’at Dohok. Like many other buildings of oppression and brutality now the Dohok castle is buzzing with life as displaced and homeless families have made their homes there. In the large courtyard in the middle of the building there are dozens of children playing.
My research about Anfal women
I am grateful to the Leverhulme Trust for a two year scholarship which allowed me to research about the women survivors of Anfal. Here I will present a selection of the data collected between October 2005 and June 2006. In this period I travelled to the remote Kurdish villages and housing complexes where the Anfal survivors live. The dominant Anfal narrative speaks of 182,000 civilians who were shot in the mass graves, the destruction of 4000 Kurdish villages, the extensive use of chemical weapons, the crushed Kurdish liberation movement, and the fact that genocide was carried out against the Kurds. The plight of women during Anfal, how they coped during the campaign and in its aftermath is not part of the dominant narrative. My objective has been to find out about how women experienced the mass violence and its aftermath, in particular the issues of coping with loss, the burden of silence about sexual abuse, and rebuilding life after the atrocities.
I am not arguing that women are not present in the Anfal commemorations. On the contrary, women are regularly interviewed by the media and spoken about by Kurdish politicians. What I am interested in is how women are represented by the media and politicians. A particularly popular image in the media is that of women lamenting their ‘disappeared’ husbands and children by crying and singing a lullaby. The image of women inflicting pain on themselves and lamenting the loss of their loved ones became a typical image of the Anfal women, an image which they are expected to sustain every time they are visited by journalists. These images have been repeatedly used by the Kurdish media to convey the horrors of Anfal. Later they were used by the Kurdish Regional Government during the election campaigns to urge people not to forget what happened to them under a non-Kurdish government and to encourage people to vote for them. Over the years this expectation to talk and cry and portraying women like hopeless victims became a form of abuse by journalists who wanted to make sensational documentaries. Through this research I have also found that for the women survivors Anfal did not end in September 1988. The poverty, deprivation, stigmatisation and lack of support that followed are as much part of the Anfal story as the gas attacks, disappearances and destruction. These experiences, however, and the women’s complaints about the Kurdish authorities are not part of the dominant Anfal narrative.
Here, I don’t intend to reject the facts that make up the Anfal narrative in favour of another version based on women’s experiences. I merely want to question the accepted narrative and to expand it so that it includes women’s experiences. Butalia (1997:93), when talking about women’s silence about abduction and rape during the partition of India, points out that ‘in recovering histories of those who are relegated to the margins, we have little option but to look at sources other than the accepted ones, and in doing so to question, stretch and expand the notion of what we see as history.’ This is because memory is elusive and not without ‘contradictions’ and ‘ambivalences’ (Butalia, 1997:94). Recreating the Anfal narrative based on the facts and the sidelined experiences and memories of women will only enhance our understanding of Anfal.
The interviews presented here were all conducted in Kurdish, recorded on camera and then translated and transcribed by myself. The testimonies are divided into different sections: Camp survivors, Gas Survivors, Those who managed to hide during Anfal, Refugees, and the testimony of activists and politicians. I hope that this data will be useful to researchers and other people who want to find out more about this genocide campaign.
For more details visit
http://www.chomanhardi.com/research.html
-ChomanHardi.com- |
| Chemical Ali: Saddam’s merciless henchman |
Chemical Ali: Saddam’s merciless henchman
Few will mourn the passing of Iraq’s Ali Hassan al Majid, whose moniker “Chemical Ali” stood grisly testament to his brutal gassing of thousands of Kurds during his governorship of the country’s northern province in the 1980s. Since 2007, three times he avoided the death sentence for his atrocities; only when served with a fourth was he finally brought to justice.
One of Iraq’s most feared bogeymen, al Majid held office under his cousin Saddam Hussein, to whom he bore a striking physical resemblance. When Saddam came to power in 1979, al Majid proved himself a loyal supporter. His appetite for applying the president’s diktat that all who opposed his rule be eliminated ran unchecked. Trade unionists, shopkeepers, Kurds, Shia Muslims; all were mown down in Saddam’s name under al Majid’s direction.
Born in Saddam’s hometown of Tikrit in 1941, al Majid received a basic education and came to serve as his cousin’s primary henchman by way of working as a messenger in the Iraqi army. Like Saddam, he was a member of the Bejat clan of the Albu Nasir tribe whose members filled the crucial security posts of the Baath regime. As a policy, Saddam staffed his general security with relatives, members of the Tikriti clan, or members of Sunni tribes and he appointed al Majid as its director in 1980 to instil the ideology of the Baath party into the agency.
By 1984, al Majid was in control of the secret police. The next year, he was appointed head of the dreaded general intelligence unit, the Mukhabarat, a vast labyrinth of security organisations pervading all layers of Iraqi society.
His infamy derived, in large part, from his orchestration of the genocide in Kurdistan in 1988, known as the Anfal campaign (“spoils of war” in Arabic). It resulted in the death of an estimated 180,000 Kurds over three years. Many were killed, many hideously disfigured by the cocktail of mustard gas and nerve agents that issued over the villages of the north. In the gas attack on the town of Halabja alone, where Kurdish and Iranian forces had made a stand and where the campaign began on March 16, 1988, 5,000 people were said to have died.
Torture, massacre and deportations had long been used against the Kurds, but under al Majid these various methods of oppression were given coherence. The motive of the sustained offensive, stated in his 1987 decree, was to “kill any human being or animal present in these areas”. The justification behind it – if the Baathist government had acknowledged that any should exist – was the persistent agitation for autonomy by the Kurds from mainly Arab Iraq. Kurdish forces had staged a guerrilla war against Saddam’s military for many years, and allied themselves with the Iranians during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
For as long as Saddam was in power, the Anfal campaign served as a potent example to others of what happened to those who rebelled against Baathist policy. It also illustrated bluntly to the world what Saddam was capable of. The reward for al Majid’s butchery was his appointment as minister of local government. Following the annexation of Kuwait in August 1990, he effectively became “governor” of what Baghdad called “Iraq’s 19th governorate”. At his discretion, the Gulf state was plundered. Kuwait City was stripped of medical and educational supplies, cars and luxury goods were transferred to Iraq, and the Kuwaiti citizens suffered horrific abuses at the hands of the invading forces.
When al Majid was recalled to Baghdad in 1991, Saddam elevated him to the position of minister of the interior, where his first significant task was to quash rebellions by the Shia in the south and the Kurds in the north of Iraq that had arisen after the Iraqi army’s expulsion from Kuwait. Some 30,000 people were alleged to have been killed or “disappeared” as he dispensed with his task with characteristic bloodthirstiness.
Relieved of his ministerial duties in 1995, having held the position of defence minister for four years, he remained a prominent figure in the Baath party. His mercurial nature was tempered by nothing, even the ties of family allegiance: when two of his nephews, Hussein Kamil al Majid and Saddam Kamil al Majid, Saddam’s sons-in-law, defected to Jordan in 1995, al Majid’s machinations led to their murder when they unwisely returned to Iraq, lured by the promise of forgiveness. His hand was also thought to be behind the murder of their father, his brother.
In 1998, he returned to Iraq’s sensitive border with Kuwait, charged with co-ordinating the intelligence services and the Baath party apparatus in central and southern Iraq. It was a role he assumed again in 2003 on the eve of the US-led invasion. Dispatched to defend Basra, he was killed in an air strike, the UK claimed. In fact, he survived, but was arrested on August 21 that same year.
Ali Hassan al Majid was born on November 30, 1941, and died on January 25.
- The National- |
| Mass grave uncovered in Chamchamal town |
Mass grave uncovered in Chamchamal town
In an exclusive statement to PUKmedia, the head of directorate of martyrs and Anfal affairs said that a mass grave which included the remains of several bodies was found during working on a sewage project at (Aswda) neighborhood in the town .later the work on the project is stopped and a committee was formed for further investigation.
He noted that the place of the mass grave was a former Iraqi military camp.
|
| Kurdish Genocide Survivor Sues Iraq |
Kurdish Genocide Survivor Sues Iraq
WASHINGTON (CN) - An Iraqi Kurd, who says he is the only survivor of Saddam Hussein's genocidal poison gas attacks, sued the Republic of Iraq for war crimes in a federal class action. Ironically, the complaint was filed on the day that Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as "Chemical Ali," was hanged in Iraq for war crimes.
Taimour Ahmad, who says he testified at Saddam's 2004 trial under U.S. protection, was 12 years old in 1988 when Saddam launched a series of chemical and biological attacks against the Kurds in northern Iraq, which became known as the Anfal, or "Spoils of War."
Iraqi paramilitary forces known as Jahsh captured and deported Ahmad and his family to a prison in Kirkuk.
Ahmad says he was taken with truckloads of Kurds to a place near the Saudi Arabian border, where they were unloaded and led, blindfolded, to several 5-foot-deep pits dug into the desert.
Ahmad and his family "were tossed into the pit like cattle," and two Iraqi soldiers, armed with automatic weapons, "began shooting at the blindfolded defenseless women and children," including Ahmed and his family.
Ahmad was shot in the shoulder, he says. He ran from the pit and begged an officer to spare his life, but the officer threw him back into the pit and shot him again, Ahmad says.
Though wounded and bleeding, Ahmed lived, and waited until the soldiers stopped shooting and walked away. He says he hid in an empty pit where he watched bulldozers cover up the pits "with the bodies of his family and others around him."
Ahmed escaped the pits and was taken in by a Bedouin Arab family who risked their lives to hide his Kurdish identity.
Ahmed says he constantly fled capture until he was "saved by U.S. government personnel" just after the first Gulf War.
Years later, he says, he testified in Saddam Hussein's trail that 110 members of his extended family were missing and considered dead.
Ahmed says he no longer has any immediate family left, due to "the extreme systematic barbaric conduct" of Iraq.
Ahmed seeks damages for violation of international law, assault and battery, and infliction of emotional distress. Although the United States is not listed as a defendant, Ahmad's complaint says the United States assisted Saddam's government with money and military support.
He seeks $20 million for each member of the class. He is represented by Athan Tsimpedes.
-Courthouse News Service-
By RYAN ABBOTT |
| Case Study: The Anfal Campaign (Iraqi Kurdistan), 1988 |
Case Study: The Anfal Campaign (Iraqi Kurdistan), 1988
Case Study:
The Anfal Campaign
(Iraqi Kurdistan), 1988
Summary
The anti-Kurdish "Anfal" campaign, mounted between February and September 1988 by the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, was both genocidal and gendercidal in nature. "Battle-age" men were the primary targets of Anfal, according to Human Rights Watch/Middle East (hereafter, HRW/ME). The organization writes in its book Iraq's Crime of Genocide: "Throughout Iraqi Kurdistan, although women and children vanished in certain clearly defined areas, adult males who were captured disappeared en masse. ... It is apparent that a principal purpose of Anfal was to exterminate all adult males of military service age captured in rural Iraqi Kurdistan" (pp. 96, 170). Only a handful survived the execution squads.
The background
The Kurds are considered the world's largest nation without a state of their own. Numbering approximately 20-25 million people, their traditional territory is divided among the modern states of Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and Syria, with a small number in the states of the former Soviet Union. Just over four million of these Kurds live in Iraq, constituting about 23 percent of the population.
In the wake of World War I, with U.S. President Woodrow Wilson's call for "self-determination" echoing loudly, the Kurds were promised a homeland -- Kurdistan -- in the Treaty of Sèvres (1920). However, the victorious allies backed away from their pledge in an attempt to court the new Turkish regime of Kemal Ataturk, and in fear of destabilizing Iraq and Syria, which were granted to Britain and France, respectively, as mandated territories. The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne thus reneged on Kurdish independence and divided the Kurds among Turkey, Iraq, and Syria. Ataturk's discrimination against Turkey's Kurdish population began almost immediately, with Kurdish political groups and manifestations of cultural identity banned outright. In the immediate aftermath of the Second World War, the Kurds of Iran, with Soviet support, succeeded in establishing the first independent Kurdish state (the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad). But this was quickly crushed by Iranian troops.
In 1946, an Iraqi Kurd, Mustafa Barzani, founded the Kurdistan Democratic Party - Iraq (KDP). Barzani died in 1979, but the KDP remains one of the most prominent Kurdish resistance organizations. Its more radical rival, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), was founded in 1975 by Jalal Talabani. It was the PUK that would bear the brunt of the Anfal campaign in 1988.
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
The ascent to power of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein in 1968 (though he did not become president until 1979) at first seemed to augur well for the Iraqi Kurds. In 1970, Saddam's Ba'ath Party reached a wideranging agreement with the Kurdish rebel groops, granting the Kurds the right to use and broadcast their language, as well as a considerable degree of political autonomy. But the agreement broke down when the Ba'ath Party "embarked on the Arabization of the oil-producing areas in Kurdistan, evicting Kurdish farmers and replacing them with poor Arab tribesmen [and women] from the south, guarded by government troops." In March 1974, the KDP rose up against Saddam, sparking a fullscale war the following year, when some 130,000 Kurds fled to Iran. "In March 1975," writes Khaled Salih, "tens of thousands of villagers from the Barzani tribes were forcibly removed from their homes and relocated to barren sites in the desert south of Iraq, where they had to rebuild their lives by themselves, without any form of assistance." (Khaled, "Anfal: The Kurdish Genocide in Iraq".)
It was these displaced populations of Barzani tribespeople who, after the onset of the Iran-Iraq war in 1980, would fall prey to one of the largest gendercidal massacres of modern times. Martin van Bruinessen writes:
In [July-]August 1983, Iraqi security troops rounded up the men of the Barzani tribe from four resettlement camps near Arbil. These people were not engaged in any antigovernment activities. ... Two of Barzani's sons at that time led the Kurdistan Democratic Party and were engaged in guerrilla activities against the Baghdad government, but only a part of the tribe was with them. ... All eight thousand men of this group, then, were taken from their families and transported to southern Iraq. Thereafter they disappeared. All efforts to find out what happened to them or where they had gone, including diplomatic inquiries by several European countries, failed. It is feared that they are dead. The KDP [Kurdish Democratic Party] has received consistent reports from sources within the military that at least part of this group has been used as guinea pigs to test the effects of various chemical agents. (van Bruinessen, "Genocide in Kurdistan?," in George J. Andreopoulos, ed., Genocide: Conceptual and Historical Dimensions ([University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994], pp. 156-57, emphasis added.)
One Barzani woman described the roundup of the menfolk: "Before dawn, as people were getting dressed and ready to go to work, all the soldiers charged through the camp [Qushtapa]. They captured the men walking on the street and even took an old man who was mentally deranged and was usually left tied up. They took the preacher who went to the mosque to call for prayers. They were breaking down doors and entering the houses searching for our men. They looked inside the chicken coops, water tanks, refrigerators, everywhere, and took all the men over the age of thirteen. The women cried and clutched the Qur'an [Koran] and begged the soldiers not to take their men away." In 1993, Saddam Hussein strongly hinted at the final fate of the Barzani men: "They betrayed the country and they betrayed the covenant, and we meted out a stern punishment to them, and they went to hell." As Human Rights Watch noted, "In many respects, the 1983 Barzani operation foreshadowed the techniques that would be used on a much larger scale during the Anfal campaign." (Human Rights Watch, Iraq's Crime of Genocide, pp. 4, 26-27.) Khaled Salih notes that "No doubt, the absence of any international outcry encouraged Baghdad to believe that it could get away with an even larger operation without any hostile reaction. In this respect the Ba'ath Party seems to have been correct in its calculations and judgement of the international inaction." (Khaled, "Anfal: The Kurdish Genocide in Iraq"; see also "Who was responsible?," below.)
Aftermath of Iraqi chemical attack on Halabji, March 1988.
Among the most horrific features of the Iraqi campaigns against the Kurds in the 1980s was the regime's resort to chemical weapons strikes against civilian populations. On April 16, 1987, a chemical raid on the Balisan valley killed dozens of civilians; in its wake, "some seventy men were taken away in buses and, like the Barzanis, never seen again. The surviving women and children were dumped on the plain outside Erbil and left to fend for themselves." (Jonathan C. Randal, After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness?, p. 230.) Less than a year later, on March 16, 1988, a far more concentrated chemical attack was launched on the town of Halabji, near the Iranian border, which had briefly been held by a combined force of Kurdish rebels and Iranian troops. Thousands of civilians died, and with the town still under Iranian occupation after the raid, journalists and photographers were able to reach the scene. "Their photographs, mainly of women, children, and elderly people huddled inertly in the streets or lying on their backs with mouths agape, circulated widely, demonstrating eloquently that the great mass of the dead had been Kurdish civilian noncombatants." (Iraq's Crime of Genocide, p. 72.) Although it took place during the Anfal campaign, however, the attack on Halabji is not normally considered part of that campaign.
The gendercide
The male is born to be slaughtered.
- Kurdish proverb
Your men have gone to hell.
- Iraqi soldier to a survivor of the attack on Qaranaw village, Fourth Anfal, May 1988
In March 1987, Saddam Hussein's cousin from his hometown of Tikrit, Ali Hassan al-Majid, was appointed secretary-general of the Ba'ath Party's Northern Region, which included Iraqi Kurdistan. Under al-Majid, who "even by the standards of the Ba'ath security apparatus ... had a particular reputation for brutality," control of policies against the Kurdish insurgents passed from the Iraqi army to the Ba'ath Party itself. This was the prelude to the intended "final solution" to the Kurdish problem undertaken within months of al-Majid's arrival in his post. It would be known as "al-Anfal" ("The Spoils"), a reference to the eighth sura of the Qur'an, which details revelations that the Prophet Muhammad received after the first great victory of Islamic forces in A.D. 624. "I shall cast into the unbelievers' hearts terror," reads one of the verses; "so smite above the necks, and smite every finger of them ... the chastisement of the Fire is for the unbelievers." Anfal, officially conducted between February 23 and September 6, 1988, would have eight stages altogether, seven of them targeting areas controlled by the PUK. For these assaults, the Iraqis mustered up to 200,000 soldiers with air support -- matched against Kurdish guerrilla forces that numbered no more than a few thousand.
On June 20, 1987, a crucial directive for the Anfal campaign, SF/4008, was issued under al-Majid's signature. Of greatest significance is clause 5. Referring to those areas designated "prohibited zones," al-Majid ordered that "all persons captured in those villages shall be detained and interrogated by the security services and those between the ages of 15 and 70 shall be executed after any useful information has been obtained from them, of which we should be duly notified." However, it seems clear from the application of this policy that "those between the ages of 15 and 70" meant "those males" in the designated age range. HRW/ME, for example, takes this as given, writing that clause 5's "order [was] to kill all adult males," and later: "Under the terms of al-Majid's June 1987 directives, death was the automatic penalty for any male of an age to bear arms who was found in an Anfal area." (Iraq's Crime of Genocide, pp. 11, 14.) A subsequent directive on September 6, 1987, supports this conclusion: it calls for "the deportation of ... families to the areas where there saboteur relatives are ..., except for the male [members], between the ages of 12 inclusive and 50 inclusive, who must be detained." (Cited in Iraq's Crime of Genocide, p. 298.)
Accordingly, when captured Kurdish populations were transported to detention centres (notably the concentration camp of Topzawa near the city of Kirkuk), they were subjected to the classic process of gendercidal selection: separating adult and teenage males from the remainder of the community. According to HRW/ME,
With only minor variations ... the standard pattern for sorting new arrivals [at Topzawa was as follows]. Men and women were segregated on the spot as soon as the trucks had rolled to a halt in the base's large central courtyard or parade ground. The process was brutal ... A little later, the men were further divided by age, small children were kept with their mothers, and the elderly and infirm were shunted off to separate quarters. Men and teenage boys considered to be of an age to use a weapon were herded together. Roughly speaking, this meant males of between fifteen and fifty, but there was no rigorous check of identity documents, and strict chronological age seems to have been less of a criterion than size and appearance. A strapping twelve-year-old might fail to make the cut; an undersized sixteen-year-old might be told to remain with his female relatives. ... It was then time to process the younger males. They were split into smaller groups. ... Once duly registered, the prisoners were hustled into large rooms, or halls, each filled with the residents of a single area. ... Although the conditions at Topzawa were appalling for everyone, the most grossly overcrowded quarter seem to have been those where the male detainees were held. ... For the men, beatings were routine. (Iraq's Crime of Genocide, pp. 143-45.)
After a few days of such treatment, without a single known exception, the men thus "processed" were trucked off to be killed in mass executions. According to HRW/ME, the "standard operating procedures" of the gendercidal killings (extended, in some cases, to other segments of the population -- see below) were "uncannily reminiscent of ... the activities of the Einsatzkommandos, or mobile killing units, in the Nazi-occupied lands of Eastern Europe":
Some groups of prisoners were lined up, shot from the front, and dragged into predug mass graves; others were made to lie down in pairs, sardine-style, next to mounds of fresh corpses, before being killed; still others were tied together, made to stand on the lip of the pit, and shot in the back so that they would fall forward into it -- a method that was presumably more efficient from the point of view of the killers. Bulldozers then pushed earth or sand loosely over the heaps of corpses. Some of the grave sites contained dozens of separate pits and obviously contained the bodies of thousands of victims. (Iraq's Crime of Genocide, p. 12.)
Excavating the skeleton of a Kurdish man
killed at Koreme, final Anfal.
The genocidal and gendercidal focus of the Iraqi killing campaign varied from one stage of Anfal to another. No mass killings of civilians appear to have taken place during first Anfal (February 23-March 19, 1988). The most exclusive targeting of the male population, meanwhile, occurred during the final Anfal (August 25-September 6, 1988). This was launched immediately after the signing of a ceasefire with Iran, which allowed the transfer of large amounts of men and matériel from the southern battlefronts. It focused on "the steep, narrow valleys of Badinan, a four-thousand-square mile chunk of the Zagros Mountains bounded on the east by the Greater Zab River and on the north by Turkey." Here, uniquely in the Anfal campaigns, lists of the "disappeared" provided to HRW/ME by survivors "invariably included only adult and teenage males, with the signal exception of Assyrian and Caldean Christians and Yezidi Kurds," who were subsidiary targets of the slaughter. Many of the men of Badinan did not even make it as far as "processing" stations, being simply "lined up and murdered at their point of capture, executed by firing squads on the authority of a local army officer." (Iraq's Crime of Genocide, pp. 178, 190, 192; on the fate of the Christians and Yezidi Kurds, see pp. 209-13.) The best-known case is the assault on the village of Koreme, where a forensic investigation conducted by Middle East Watch and Physicians for Human Rights in May-June 1992 uncovered the bodies of 27 men and adolescent boys executed on August 28. (See Middle East Watch/Physicians for Human Rights, The Anfal Campaign in Iraqi Kurdistan: The Destruction of Koreme [Human Rights Watch, 1993].)
Even amidst this most systematic slaughter of adult men and boys, however, "hundreds of women and young children perished, too," though "the causes of their deaths were different -- gassing, starvation, exposure, and willful neglect -- rather than bullets fired from a Kalashnikov [rifle]." (Iraq's Crime of Genocide, p. 191.) The fate of other segments of the Kurdish community throughout Anfal receives attention in the following section.
Genocide against women,
the elderly, and children
In its landmark study of the Iraqi genocide in Kurdistan, HRW/ME calls the decisions surrounding the deaths of thousands of women, children, and elderly Kurds "one of the great enigmas of the Anfal campaign." "Many thousands of women and children perished," the organization notes, "but their deaths were subject to extreme regional variations, with most being residents of two distinct 'clusters' that were affected by the third and fourth Anfals." One factor apparently was "whether the [Iraqi] troops encountered armed resistance in a given area," something which characterized "most, but not all, the areas marked by the killing of women and children." (Iraq's Crime of Genocide, pp. 13, 96.)
The hardest-hit area of all appears to have been the region of southern Germian, abutting the Arab heartland of Iraq, which was targeted during the third Anfal (April 7-20, 1988). Southern Germian was apparently a special focus for "root-and-branch" genocide because it was the heartland of the PUK resistance and strongly supportive of the Kurdish PUK rebels. "Although males aged fifteen to fifty routinely vanished from all parts of Germian," writes HRW/ME, "only in the south did the disappeared include significant numbers of women and children. Most were from the Daoudi and Jaff-Roghyazi tribes," and they accounted for more than half the "disappeared" in the affected regions. Mass executions involving "an estimated two thousand women and children" took place at a site on Hamrin Mountain, between the cities of Tikrit and Kirkuk. (Iraq's Crime of Genocide, pp. 115, 171.)
Taimour being
interviewed.
One such execution left a survivor, a young boy named Taimour Abdullah Ahmad, "the only eyewitness to the mass killing of women and children" (Iraq's Crime of Genocide, p. 171). His account received extensive attention in the western press, and describes scenes virtually identical to the Einsatzgruppen-style massacres of "battle-aged" males which preceded the killing of women, children, and the elderly from southern Germian. For a lengthy interview with Taimour, see "An Interview with the Anfal Survivor, Taimour".
Most members of the Kurdish community who remained after "battle-age" men had been "disappeared" were trucked off to resettlement camps to the south. To the extent that women, children, and the elderly were killed in mass executions, these were usually perpetrated after a period of detention in such camps. Those not slaughtered in this fashion were usually transported to relocation camps where conditions were squalid and unsanitary; thousands -- especially children -- died from deprivation and neglect.
The infrastructure of life in Iraqi Kurdistan, meanwhile, was left almost totally destroyed by the Anfal campaign and its predecessors. "By the time the genocidal frenzy ended, 90% of Kurdish villages, and over twenty small towns and cities, had been wiped off the map. The countryside was riddled with 15 million landmines, intended to make agriculture and husbandry impossible. A million and a half Kurdish peasants had been interned in camps. ... About 10% of the total Kurdish population of Iraq had perished [since 1974]." (Kendal Nezan, "When our 'friend' Saddam was gassing the Kurds", Le Monde diplomatique, March 1998.)
How many died?
According to HRW/ME, "at least fifty thousand rural Kurds ... died in Anfal alone, and very possibly the real figure was twice that number ... All told, the total number of Kurds killed over the decade since the Barzani men were taken from their homes is well into six figures." "On the basis of extensive interviews in Kurdistan and perusal of extant Iraqi documents, Shoresh Resoul, a meticulous Kurdish researcher ... conservatively estimated that 'between 60,000 and 110,000' died during [al-]Majid's Kurdish mandate," i.e., beginning shortly before Anfal and ending shortly afterwards. (Randal, After Such Knowledge ..., p. 214.) Other Kurdish estimates are even higher. "When Kurdish leaders met with Iraqi government officials in the wake of the spring 1991 uprising, they raised the question of the Anfal dead and mentioned a figure of 182,000 -- a rough extrapolation based on the number of destroyed villages. Ali Hassan al-Majid reportedly jumped to his feet in a rage when the discussion took this turn. 'What is this exaggerated figure of 182,000?' he is said to have asked. 'It couldn't have been more than 100,000' -- as if this somehow mitigated the catastrophe that he and his subordinates had visited on the Iraqi Kurds." (Iraq's Crime of Genocide, pp. 14, 230.)
It is impossible to state with certainty what proportion of the victims of Anfal were adult men and adolescent boys. The most detailed investigation, conducted by HRW/ME, tabulated the number of "disappeared" from the various stages of Anfal, based on field interviews with some 350 survivors. The organization gathered the names of 1,255 men, 184 women, and 359 children -- "only a fraction of the numbers lost during Anfal." This would suggest that some 87 percent of the adults "disappeared," all of whom were apparently executed, were male; and that about 70 percent of all those who "disappeared" were "battle-age" males. (See Iraq's Crime of Genocide, pp. 266-68.) These calculations do not, however, include the large number of Kurdish civilians killed indiscriminately in chemical attacks and other generalized assaults.
Most recently, Kenneth Roth, director of Human Rights Watch, has referred to "100,000 Kurdish men and boys machine-gunned to death during the 1988 Anfal genocide." (Roth, "Show Trials Are Not the Solution to Saddam's Heinous Reign", The Globe and Mail, 18 July 2003.)
Who was responsible?
The tens of thousands of Anfal deaths, according to HRW/ME,
did not come in the heat of battle -- as 'collateral damage,' in the military euphemism. Nor were they the result of acts of aberration by individual commanders whose excesses passed unnoticed or unpunished by their superiors. Rather, these Kurds were systematically put to death in large numbers by order of the central Iraqi government in Baghdad days or weeks after being rounded up in villages marked for destruction or while fleeing army assaults in "prohibited areas." ... Documentary materials captured from the Iraqi intelligence agencies demonstrate with great clarity that the mass killings, disappearances, and forced relocations associated with Anfal and the other anti-Kurdish campaigns of 1987-89 were planned in a coherent fashion. Although power over these campaigns was highly centralized, their success depended on the orchestration of the efforts of a large number of agencies and institutions at the local, regional, and national level, from the office of the president of the republic down to the lowliest jahsh [pro-Iraqi Kurdish] unit. (Iraq's Crime of Genocide, pp. xvii, 9-10. For more on the role of the pro-regime Kurdish forces, which were crucial in the Anfal roundups, see pp. 109-12, and Kanan Makiya, Cruelty and Silence, pp. 143-45.)
Noam Chomsky called Saddam Hussein's Iraq "perhaps the most violent and repressive state in the world." (Quoted in Makiya, Cruelty and Silence, p. 273; see also the analysis of Iraqi conscription policies elsewhere on this site.) Atop the state structure stood the murderous dictator. In classic "patrimonial" fashion, Saddam constructed a brutal one-party regime consisting largely of his relatives from Tikrit and surrounding areas. (For a powerful description of Saddam's rule-by-terror, see Kanan Makiya, Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq.) The Ba'ath Party's "point man" during the worst of the atrocities in Iraqi Kurdistan was, as noted, Ali Hassan al-Majid. After Anfal, he was transferred from his post, to become -- in August 1990 -- the governor of Iraqi-occupied Kuwait.
Saddam Hussein admires portraits of himself.
Saddam's dictatorship reached to the grassroots of Iraqi society through the intertwined institutions of the Ba'ath Party and the Iraqi army and security forces. At every level, its violence exhibited strong patriarchal overtones. Jonathan Randal describes the "perverted form of male bonding" evident in an internal purge that Saddam carried out in 1979, in which "surviving ministers and senior party officials [were obliged] to join the firing squad which executed the condemned men." The "pattern [was] repeated throughout the chain of command: from the lowliest secret-police operative on up they shared responsibility in the executions, thus enforcing loyalty and subservience to Saddam Hussein." Such practices "were also useful in intimidating anyone less inclined to terror and cruelty." (Randal, After Such Knowledge ..., p. 208.)
The international community must accept a share of the blame for Saddam's genocide against the Iraqi Kurds. For the duration of the Iran-Iraq war -- which also witnessed most of the horrors against the Kurds -- Saddam was considered an important bulwark against the spread of Iranian-style Islamic fundamentalism to the strategic and oil-rich countries of the Middle East. Accordingly, the West supplied and armed him throughout his campaigns against both the Iranians and the Kurds, eventually providing the critical intelligence information that allowed Iraq to emerge victorious in the war against Iran. In August 1988 -- with the Anfal campaign nearly over, and in the wake of a year-and-a-half of vicious chemical attacks on civilian populations -- "the United Nations Sub-Committee on Human Rights voted by 11 votes to 8 not to condemn Iraq for human rights violations. Only the Scandinavian countries, Australia and Canada, together with bodies like the European Parliament and the Socialist International, saved their honour by clearly condemning Iraq." (Nezan, "When our 'friend' Saddam was gassing the Kurds".)
The aftermath
Kurdish rebels seize control in 1991.
In August 1990, the Iraqi regime finally overreached with its invasion of neighbouring Kuwait, sparking the Gulf War, in which a U.S.-led coalition succeeded in expelling the Iraqi occupying forces. At the tail end of the war, in March 1991, the Kurdish population of northern Iraq launched a general uprising against the Iraqi regime, and briefly managed to expel it from the region. When the Iraqis counterattacked, nearly half a million Kurds fled to Turkey and Iran; the resultant humanitarian crisis led the members of the Allied coalition to declare a "safe haven" in the northern part of Iraqi Kurdistan. A coalition of seven Kurdish parties then established authority over the enclave, which exists to the present day -- despite the outbreak of serious fighting between the PUK and KDP in May 1994, which killed an estimated 1,000
people. In September 1998, the two rebel groups forged a new power-sharing agreement brokered by the United States.
During the March 1991 uprising, Kurdish forces managed to seize some four million documents from Iraqi archives in the region, and transported these to safe areas. These documents, combined with the investigative missions undertaken in the Kurdish zone by HRW/ME and other organizations, allowed a definitive reconstruction of the events of Anfal. As HRW/ME noted, "To have the opportunity to speak to survivors of human rights violations, to dig up the bones of those who had not survived, and then to read the official account of what had taken place -- all while the regime that had carried out the outrages was still in power -- was unique in the annals of human rights research." (Iraq's Crime of Genocide, p. xx.) In light of this mountain of documentation, eyewitness testimony, and forensic data, the organization announced its "confidence" that "concerning the crucial 1987-1989 period ... the evidence is sufficiently strong to prove a case of genocidal intent on the part of the Iraqi Government," and has called for the creation of a war-crimes tribunal at the Hague such as those established for Bosnia-Herzegovina, Rwanda, and Kosovo. (HRW/ME, Bureaucracy of Repression: The Iraqi Government in Its Own Words [Human Rights Watch, 1994], p. x.)
A number of observers have noted the still-visible evidence of gendercide among the Kurdish population of northern Iraq. In September 1988, as Anfal was officially winding down, U.S. ambassador to Iraq, April Glaspie, "recalled travelling westward from Sulaimaniyah ... and coming across large groups of disconsolate women and children standing next to their meager bundled belongings on the roadside. 'They were obviously without menfolk. I suspected the authorities meant me to see them.'" (Randal, After Such Knowledge ..., p. 223.) In 1999, the Christian Aid organization noted that "Many Kurdish households are headed by widows -- their husbands have disappeared." ("Working in Iraq: Christian Aid's Experience 1990-98".) Retired U.S. Brigadier-General Jeffrey Pilkington, who commanded the relief campaign "Operation Provide Comfort" in 1993-94, reported from a trip to the Kurdish zone that
The signs of almost total economic stagnation were everywhere. Fields were mostly bare -- for lack of fertilizer or insecticide or because there was no market for the wheat grown or no-one who could afford to buy it. Factories which had employed hundreds of workers were now deserted. ... Many villages were populated by only women and children, the majority of men having been detained or killed. (Pilkington, "Beyond Humanitarian Relief: Economic Development Efforts in Northern Iraq", in Forced Migration Review.)
Likewise, the Iraq Assessment undertaken by the Country Information and Policy Unit of the British Home Office (April 2000) stated that "there is an unusually high percentage of women in the Kurdish areas, purportedly caused by the disappearances of tens of thousands of Kurdish men during the Anfal Campaign. The Special Rapporteur reported that the widows, daughters, and mothers of the Anfal Campaign victims are economically dependent on their relatives or villages because they may not inherit the property or assets of their missing family members." (On the plight of the widows of the Anfal victims, see also Teresa Thornhill, "Anfal Widows: Saddam's Genocide," New Internationalist, no. 247 [September 1993].)
In March 2003, the United States launched its long-threatened invasion to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein, which collapsed after only brief resistance, although substantial guerrilla resistance was continuing at the time of writing. In the wake of the regime's disappearance, Iraqis across the country began digging up mass graves of those executed by Saddam's forces. According to the Baltimore Sun (6 May 2003), "Human rights groups estimate up to 300,000 Iraqis disappeared over the past 23 years, the vast majority of them men and teen-age boys." However, Sun reporter Todd Richissin noted noted that early exhumations showed that "Hussein's deadly sweeps took in mothers [and] sisters, too," in the words of the article's headline, which cited "female victims ... [found] in unexpected numbers." With regard to Anfal, it was a poignant fact that, as of December 2003, "in the eight months since the Iraqi dictator was deposed, not a single person who disappeared during the Anfal military campaign of 1988 has returned alive." (Richard C. Paddock, "An Awful Truth Sinks In", Los Angeles Times, December 5, 2003.)
In December 2003, U.S. forces announced the capture of a dishevelled Saddam (see photo), hiding in a hole at a farmhouse along the Tigris River, within sight of one of his former palaces. It was unclear what type of tribunal he faced for his crimes, but there was now the possibility of administering justice for some of his many atrocities, including the genocidal ravages of the Anfal Campaign against Iraqi Kurds.
Note: New Zealand scholar and Gendercide Watch affiliate Heval Hylan has contributed a powerful dissertation on "Genocide in Kurdistan" to this site. |
| Prayer calls in Halabja mosques for executing Chemical Ali |
Prayer calls in Halabja mosques for executing Chemical Ali
The mosques of Halabja Town started their prayer calls on the occasion of executing Ali Hassan al-Majid, known as “Chemical Ali”, on Monday January 25, 2010.
Bearing in mind, jubilant crowds rushed into the streets of Halabja following announcing the news of executing Chemical Ali.
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| Kurdish child of 15 and man arrested, detained and disappeared in Syria |
Kurdish child of 15 and man arrested, detained and disappeared in Syria
Filed under News, Syria
According to Syrian Committee for Human Rights – MAD, Kurdish teenager Shahab Othman, known as Iden, born 15 April 1994, aged 15 years old was arrested and detained after being summoned by Political Security on 1 August 2009. He is a student from Derbazin Voqani village, in the Qobani area. No-one has seen him since that date and his whereabouts remain unknown.
On 17 November 2009 Aziz Khalil Abdi was arrested by Political Security while he was working. His whereabouts are still unknown, and there is no information about why he was arrested.
Syrian Committee for Human Rights – MAD views with grave concern the increasing incidents of arrest without warrants, the disappearance of detainees within the prison system of Syria, and the lack of information about the reason for the arrests. Shahab is just a child. The families of these detainees are also punished by the withholding of this information, and have the right to know where these people are and what they are accused of. Shahab Othman and Aziz Khalil Abdi should be released immediately if they have not committed a crime.
Syrian Committee for Human Rights – MAD calls on the Syrian Government to restore the basic human rights of these people, to stop arbitrary arrests, to release all political prisoners, and to abolish the State of Emergency and the martial law that is in operation.
Syrian Committee for Human Rights –MAD
23 December 2009 |
| An announcement on the anniversary of (14 / 4) for Kurdistan Anfal and the third stage of Garmeeans Anfal operation |
An announcement on the anniversary of (14 / 4) for Kurdistan Anfal and the third stage of Garmeeans Anfal operation
• The honorable families and relatives of Anfal victims.
• The Organization Centers of human rights, civilian society and the concerned authorities
The process of Anfal was an outrageous operation which were executed by the hateful Baathist government with an obsolete planning and prior designation in which it contained of eight successive stages from 18/ 2 to 6/ 9 /1988 under the direct supervision of the extinct criminal Ali Hassan al-Majid and others, for the purpose of distortion and destabilize the social, psychological, and economic circumstances of the Kurdish people and to erase them culturally and nationally, all this by the implementing the plans and principles which is inserted under the genocide, which they ar (identification, collection, and mass murdering ), so the flood of Anfal was applied directly against the Kurds by a racial politics bases, so in that stage 4500 villages were demolished, beside 4 districts, 30 districts, hundreds of mosques, churches and schools were destroyed too, after they did plunder their wealth and then they burned farmers fields and orchards either, so thousands of villagers were taken to the concentration camps, also more than 182,000 people were lost, so the Anfal had left a bad effect on the Kurdish society, because thousands of children were excluded from the parents love and tenderness, hundreds of families were separated from each other for many years, and they still waiting to meet them, and as a result of that most of the Kurdish citizen got shocked, depressed and they lived in grief and sorrow.
to day and after 22 years of the third Anfal operation Garmeean, which lasted from 7/ 4, to 20 /4/1988 in the regions of (Chamchamal, Sankao, Qadrkaram, Douz, Kifri, Kalar, Bebaz, Tilako) whom located in Kirkuk and Sulaymaniyah and Diyali provinces.
in 13 and 14 April 1988 The government has attacked the border areas of Garmeean and arrested the majority of its residents, so the 4 districts and 500 villages from the Garmeean area including 3000 people from women, elders, young and children were fallen into the malevolent government armies hand and they send the prisoners to the military castles in Korato, then the top Anfal criminals as (Ali Hassan al-Majid, Bariq Abdullah wheat and Hashim Sultan) went to meet them after putting them in Qadrkaram, after they showed up in the national TV for a few days but after they were sent to their unknown fate and they are missing now.
Therefore, the Council of Ministers in the Kurdistan Regional Government had defined the day of 14/4/2007 in each year as a day of the Anfal of Kurdistan.
We as Anfal center consider this occasion as a funeral day across the Kurdistan,
because the Baathist government, and under the sight of the international community and a few of the organizations whom concerned in human rights and some other countries had killed thousands of people, neglecting the legal rules and principals, also he despise International community and the principles of law in addition to the international
agreements whom appeals to stand against the ethnic and sectarian cleansing of mankind in which they are published and signed by the Iraqi government itself, but, the Council and the UN, and because of their political interests with the Iraqi government so they kept silent about that crime.
On the other hand, we express our joy for the return of the remains of 104 Anfal children and two women to the land of parents, which were buried in a private graveyard which is located in the district of Chamchamal, we also congratulate and assess the Ministry for the Anfal and martyrs affairs of Kurdistan Regional Government for their hard work in returning the Anfal remains.
The fingers today is not pointed to the Baathist government alone, but it also is point to the international community and all the organizations, bend to be silent towards such a crimes, in addition to all those who have contributed with the government and participated in the mentioned processes.
After the spring uprising in 1991, and after the political governance of the Baathist government were collapse in 2003 and after a political change in Iraq and the establishment of the Kurdish parliament so the world had informed about the specific problems of our people, therefore, and from now on, we call on both the Security Council and the United Nations and EU to not stand silent towards the demands of Kurdish people anymore, also they have to recognize and consider the chemical bombing and Anfal crimes as a genocide and to stand with a row of the Kurdish people so as not to be subjected to genocide again and they have right to live, like all other peoples, and nations, thus and at the domestic level, we demand the Iraqi Federal government to yield for the implementation of all the articles and paragraphs which are contained in the Iraqi constitution, especially Article 140 and to return those areas whom in the Middle of disputation an join them to Kurdistan provinces and return all displaced people to their own land and compensate all Kurdistan and Iraq's citizens for the physical and moral damages, and to strengthen the confidence of Kurdish citizens with the new Iraqi government, especially after the decision of the Iraqi Supreme Criminal court on the definition of the Anfal and chemical bombardment of Halabja, as a genocide.
Finally and on behalf of all Kurdish Anfal and missing victim families call on both the Government of Iraq and the federal government of the Kurdistan Region to:
1 – Built all the villages that have signed under the Anfal, in amodern way.
2 – Give an attention to the agricultural sector to help the farmers to get benefits and stop the migration of villagers to the city.
3 – Compensate the Anfal victims against material and moral damages.
4 - To use the Kurdish Anfal crimes as teaching materials in a study stages.
5 – Define and publish the Kurdish genocide to the world with more serious attempts.
Center Anfal
14/04/2010
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| Zaynab Jalalian’s Letter to the world’s Conscience |
Zaynab Jalalian’s Letter to the world’s Conscience
The Kurdish woman, Ms. Zaynab Jalalian, who has been sentenced to death by the Iranian government, spends her remaining time at a prison in Sanandaj in Kurdistan-Iran. In the letter Ms. Jalalian secretly sent out on Friday, November 27, 2009, asks human/women’s rights activists to campaign on her behalf and support her. Below is her letter translated into English.
Dear…
I am a twenty-seven year Kurdish woman who has been sentenced to death by the Iranian Judiciary authority for my political activities. After I was given death sentence last year I appealed and my case was reviewed by the Iranian High Court. The High Court sustained the lower court’s decision.
I am under constant torture and humiliation. I was put on an orchestrated trial without a legal representation and after a few minutes I was sentenced to death. I don’t have a lawyer to defend me. The Court only dedicated a few minutes to my case. The Court told me that I was an “Enemy of God,” and in a short period of time all enemies of God would be hanged. All the judges in my trial voted for my execution.
I asked the Judge if I could say good-bye to my mother. He told me “shut up.” The Judge rejected my appeal and refused to let me to see my mother. Since I cannot defend myself, I ask all advocates and activists of human/women’s rights to campaign on my behalf and support me. I need your help.
Zaynab Jalalian |
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