The world-renowned Iranian musician and Tar virtuoso, Keyvan Saket is planning to compose a symphony on the Halabja massacre of 1988.
Saket who visited the Iraqi Kurdistan for a concert earlier this month said his visit to Halabja had inspired him to write the piece, ISNA reported.
The veteran artist and Iranian pianist Saman Ehteshami performed a duet in the Kurdish city of Sulaymaniyah on July 7, 2012.
Saket’s symphony will be an epic composition with a sad ambiance and a combination of Persian and Kurdish musical elements.
The 52-year-old musician plans to stage his symphony in Sulaymaniyah.
Iranian musician Houshang Kamkar has also paid tribute to Halabja victims in his Khorramshahr and Halabja Symphonis, which were released in 2011in Tehran.
More than 5,000 people, mostly Kurds, were killed after Iraqi planes dropped chemical bombs on Halabja and its suburbs under the leadership of Ali Hassan al-Majid, Saddam’s cousin on March 16, 1988.
The attack killed tens of thousands of people as part of a genocidal campaign, known as the al-Anfal Operation, launched against the Kurds and other ethnic groups in Northern Iraq.
Another 7,000 were injured, crippled, or suffered long-term health problems in Halabja poison gas attack.
Although Halabja massacre was the most heinous part of the al-Anfal Operation, it was not the end of it.
The Iraqi army also systematically destroyed villages, incarcerated in concentration camps, starved, and executed thousands of people between 1986 and 1989 in an attempt to quash an uprising in the north.
Arab countries and the West turned a blind-eye to the atrocities committed by the Saddam regime against a civilian population.
On 5 November, 2006, three years after US-led occupation of Iraq, Saddam Hussein was found guilty for crimes against humanity and sentenced to death. He, however, was not tried for the Halabja genocide.
Ali Hassan al-Majid, nicknamed Chemical Ali, was convicted of crimes against humanity, and sentenced to death for his involvement in the chemical bombing of Halabja in 2010.
