The Anfal Campaign (Iraqi Kurdistan), 1988

[unitedkurdistan]

Helebce Campaign March 2012
Her Biji:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hA-j6W9fZ0&feature=relmfu&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&hd=1   

[alan131210]

[alan131210]

12/Jun/06

PNA-Erbil, Kurdistan Region, Iraq (KRG.org) – The KRG’s Head of Foreign Relations last week in Erbil welcomed the Deputy Speaker of the Norwegian Parliament, who came to learn more about the Kurdish genocide and strengthen relations with the Kurdistan Region.

Mr Akhtar Chaudry and Minister Falah Mustafa discussed opportunities for cooperation in the civil, economic and educational sectors between KRG and the Norwegian government.

The Norwegian Parliament’s Deputy Speaker highlighted the Kurdish genocide and said “We know what Kurdish people went through and today we are here to talk to those people and find out about their suffering“. He added “Today we have 15,000 Kurds in Norway, we are proud of them and they are part of our society”.

Minster Mustafa thanked the Norwegian Parliament for its support and collaboration with Norway’s Kurdish community and for its efforts to achieve international recognition for the Kurdish genocide. He said, “We want to forgive, but we don’t want to forget.” He added, “We want the international community to recognize the Kurdish genocide to prevent it from happening again to Kurds or to any other nations”.

They also discussed the need to strengthen bilateral relations not only between their governments but also between their people. Minister Mustafa encouraged the Norwegian delegation to establish a diplomatic presence in Erbil in order to provide a direct line of communication between their governments and help increase commercial and cultural ties.

The KRG’s Head of Foreign Relations also highlighted ways to benefit from the experience of Norwegian experts in various fields including democracy, rule of law, human rights and the empowerment of women. He added “The KRG is strongly committed to working with both the public and private sectors in order to ensure Kurdistan’s continued growth and the maximum benefit from it for our people.”

The Deputy speaker of the Norwegian Parliament said, “We know achieving democracy is a long process. We as Norwegians have worked 200 years to achieve a fully functions government that follows the principles of democracy”.

The delegation also discussed regional issues, such as the current political crisis in Iraq, the ongoing situation in Syria and the ongoing improvements in relations between Turkey and the Kurdistan Region.

Mr Chaudry was accompanied on his visit by Kurdistan Parliament MP Mrs Shillan Abdul Jabbar, and by Egil Thorsas, Deputy Head of Mission at the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Jordan. The meeting with Minister Mustafa was also attended by the Deputy Head of the DFR, Mr Karwan Jamal.

PNA

[alan131210]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVZIMfi_gf4&feature=g-all-f&hl=en&fs=1&rel=0&hd=1   

[alan131210]

18/06/2012 14:44

ERBIL, June 18 (AKnews) - The Kurdistan Region's Minster of Martyrs and Anfal Affairs Aram Ahmed is visiting the High Criminal Court in The Hague today to raise awareness and introduce the genocide against the Kurdish people.

AnfalMinistry spokesperson Fuad Hussein said the minister will meet Dutch MP Harry Van Bommel to strengthen the recognition of the Anfal Kurdish genocide.

Hussein added that Ahmed also expects to see the prosecutor of the Van In Art court case. The accused was sentenced to 15 years in the Netherlands for helping the former Iraqi regime

During his visit, Ahmed will also meet the Kurdish community in the country so that the genocide gets world recognition, said Hussein.

AKnews

[alan131210]

LONDON, England – On Tuesday, the Kurdistan Region’s Minister of Martyrs and Anfal Affairs Aram Ahmed visited Dutch State Secretary Fred Teeven. Ahmed thanked Teeven for his efforts as a prosecutor in the case against Dutch businessman Frans van Anraat, sentenced to 15 years for supplying Saddam Hussein’s regime with chemicals.

The Ministry of Martyrs and Anfal Affairs was established to raise awareness of the genocide against Iraqi Kurds during the notorious campaign of the 1980s in which 180,000 civilians were killed. The ministry focuses on helping victims and locating mass graves.

Ahmed is visiting the Netherlands and other European countries to lobby for recognition of the genocide against the Kurdish people. He met with members of Dutch Parliament from the Foreign Affairs Commission and with Frank Slijper, a senior researcher at the Dutch Campaign against the Arms Trade. Ahmed also visited the international criminal court in The Hague.

According to AKnews, Ahmed visited Dutch MP Harry van Bommel, who has been to the Kurdistan Region several times and lobbied for the establishment of a monument for victims of the 1988 Halabja chemical attacks. Ahmed also met with the Kurdish community to encourage efforts for raising global awareness of the genocide.

Ahmed will arrive in London on June 22 to speak at a conference organized by the KRG representative in the U.K.

Rudaw

[alan131210]

Kurdish artist depicts Anfal and Halabja in paintings put on show in UK



08/07/2012 16:38

Sulaimaniyah, July 8 (AKnews) – A Kurdish artist in UK is putting his works on the show to tell the story of former Iraqi dictator’s atrocities against the Kurdish people in painting.Mariwan Abo Zai

Mariwan Abu Zeid has put six of his paintings in Middleborough’s Cleveland College Gallery where about 100 artists are exhibiting their works.

Abu Zeid’s works depict the 1988 chemical attack on Halabja that killed about 5,000 civilian Kurds and injured about double the number, as well as the Anfal operation in which about 182,000 Kurds – mainly women and children – were rounded up by Iraqi forces, killed and buried in mass graves in southern Iraq’s deserts.

Abu Zeid told AKnews in a telephone interview that he chose the theme of Anfal and Halabja gas attack or his works in order to “better familiarize the UK citizens of the tragedies that came upon the Kurds” at the hands of the Iraqi regime.

The Halabja chemical attack and the Anfal Operations were recognized as genocide against the Kurds by the Iraqi Supreme Criminal Court that was set up after 2003 to try the former Iraqi leaders responsible for the massacres.

Among the high ranking Iraqi officials who were found guilty for ordering the attacks was Ali Hasan Majeed – Saddam Hussein’s cousin – who was executed in 2010.

[jjmuneer]

scars that won’t heal :Iraq recognizes fayli Kurd persecution as ‘genocide’

Sazan Mandalwi-At the beginning of this month, the Iraqi parliament declared the past regime’s persecution of Kurdish minority, the Faylis, genocide. Former victims recount deportation and torture but say this move by the government gives them hope for the future.

At the beginning of this month the Iraqi parliament voted to recognize what had been done to the Fayli Kurds under former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein as genocide. From 1980 onwards, the ethnic minority was horribly persecuted by Hussein’s regime.

The Fayli Kurds, who are an ethnic subgroup of Kurds and mostly Shiite Muslims, were subjected to all kinds of hardships under Hussein’s Sunni Muslim dominated government: imprisonment, torture, rape and deportation among them.

Many Fayli Kurds had active roles in Kurdish political movements that opposed Hussein’s ruling Baath political party. As a result, hundreds of Fayli Kurdish were systematically murdered, with an estimated half a million or more forcibly deported from Iraq to Iran.

Because many lived close to Iranian borders, Hussein accused them of being Iranian and tried to expel them from the country. However Iran also refused them, stating that the Fayli Kurds were not Iranians either. As a result the Faylis were often left without a nationality and became a stateless people. As well as facing deportation from Iraq and arbitrary arrest, Fayli Kurds were also used as human shields in Iraq’s battles with Iran during the war between the two nations.

Sadia Abdullah is one of those Faylis whose entire family was deported to Iran in April 1980. “And when I heard the news that the Iraqi parliament had recognized the Fayli Kurds’ case as genocide I called one of my sisters in Iran. She began to cry,” said Abdullah, who married in Iran and returned to Iraq after the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled the Hussein’s regime.

One thing mars the family’s happiness: Abdullah’s brother is still missing. He is one of many. Of 20,000 Fayli Kurds interned, there is still no trace of more than 5,000 individuals.

“We don’t know if he was killed in the mine fields during the Iraq-Iran war or if he was used in an experiment with chemical weapons. Maybe he was beaten to death,” Abdullah suggested – some of the youths separated from their families were reportedly executed in the basement of a building belonging to Iraqi military intelligence.

Reports also indicate that during the deportations a number of young girls were taken from their families and sold to neighbouring countries. And finally, those who were deported to Iran were forced to walk across the heavily mined borders. “The walk across the border was tough for the sick or elderly,” Abdullah recalled. “There was no access to any food or drink. Children also suffered immensely.”

The Fayli Kurds also lost all of their possessions. They left their homes with only the clothes upon their backs. Any documents of identity were destroyed by officials before they left.

In an interview with television channel KurdSat, based in Iraqi Kurdistan, Haidar Mohammed Ali, a Fayli Kurd originally from the district of Adhamiya in Baghdad told of his detention; he was imprisoned from 1982 until 2000. “Sometimes I would be taken upstairs from 5pm until 2am and subjected to continuous physical beatings. Other times, they’d tie our legs, pour cold water on us in extremely cold conditions and leave us without any blankets. It was usual to be beaten with an iron rod,” he continued. “Some prisoners were hit so hard that they died right then and there. They were taken away but we don’t know where they were buried.”

At one stage, one of the officers in the Iraqi military offered him a deal: that Ali donate his kidney to the officer’s sister and the officer would free him.

“I agreed, and I was taken to hospital where my kidney was taken out. A week later when I left the hospital I was just taken back to prison and put back into solitary imprisonment for an entire year,” Ali recounted, adding that he was threatened with further punishments if he told anyone else about his unwilling organ donation.

The Fayli Kurds who did make it to Iran safely were not entitled to citizenship there and had no right to do such things as study in institutes of higher education.

“As a result of the deportation we not only lost our dearest brother and all that we possessed, but we also couldn’t finish our higher education, our children couldn’t attend universities and now that we are all married, we all live in different countries,” Abdullah told NIQASH, adding that her brothers left the Middle East altogether to seek better, more secure futures in places like Europe.

As a result of their statelessness in Iran and elsewhere, many Fayli Kurds returned to Iraq after the fall of the Baath regime in 2003. However when they did return, they found it difficult to get their Iraqi citizenship back.

Abdullah was among these too: “Once again, I had to prove that I was an Iraqi without any documents,” she explained. “It was a long process that required back and forth travel and those who couldn’t do all the paper work paid a lot of money to get their identification cards back. Some of my siblings have still not been able to get them back.” In fact, Abdullah said, to this day, some of her siblings do not have either Iranian or Iraqi citizenship.

The recognition that genocide was committed has given the Fayli Kurds hope that they might be compensated for property which was confiscated from them and that they might regain their citizenship. As Batoul Musa, a Baghdad lawyer of Fayli Kurdish origin, noted, there are still a vast number of cases pending around the matter of confiscated property.

As for Abdullah, the declaration of genocide is an important recognition of all she and her family have suffered, as well as a memorial for her lost brother, whose picture is on display in all her siblings’ houses. The Fayli Kurds are among several minorities persecuted by Hussein’s regime and they often claim they are the forgotten victims, the last to receive justice.

“People don’t realize the hardships suffered by Fayli Kurds,” Abdullah said. “Now that this genocide has been recognized, maybe the government will prioritize our concerns.”

For Abdullah, and many other Fayli Kurds like her, the classification of their maltreatment as genocide is another step towards compensation, as well as the return of long separated families to Iraq, where Abdullah hopes, they can all begin a new life. niqash

[talsor]

Thanks for maintaining this thread Kak Alan and all those who participate . May they all rest in peace .

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[alan131210]

First Anfal Operation

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Second Anfal Operation

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Third Anfal Operation

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Fourth Anfal Operation

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Sulaimani Governor Bahroz Muhammad Salih received Sunday Aram Ahmad Minister of Martyr and Anfal affairs to urge the complete issuing of property before the end of the year to the survivors of the Halabja genocide who remain to receive land from the Kurdistan Regional Government.

According to statistics provided by the Ministry of Martyr and Anfal affairs 400 survivors of the Halabja genocide remain to receive property from the Kurdistan Regional Government. As well as the property, the Kurdistan Regional Government has issued 27 million dinars to the survivors of the Halabja genocide.

During the meeting, the Governor also urged the Ministry to send the victims remaining to receive medical care unavailable in Kurdistan to foreign countries for recovery.

Also in the sitting, Minister Aram Ahmad requested a larger and more elaborate ceremony next year marking the 25th anniversary of the Halabja genocide. The Governor reassured his assistance and showed his appreciation towards the Ministry’s efforts.

The Halabja poison gas attack was a genocidal massacre against the Kurdish people that took place on March 16, 1988, during the closing days of the Iran–Iraq War, when chemical weapons were used by the Iraqi government forces in the Kurdish town of Halabja in Iraqi Kurdistan.