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NEW YORK
- The US-led coalition in Iraq failed to settle
property disputes between displaced Kurds and Arab
settlers in Iraq’s north, leaving a situation that
“could soon explode into open violence,” an
international human rights organization warned
Monday.
Human Rights Watch said in a 78-page report that
there was increasing frustration among thousands of
Kurds, Turkomans and Assyrians living in “desperate
conditions” as they wait for answers regarding their
property claims.
“If these property disputes are not addressed as a
matter of urgency, rising tensions between returning
Kurds and Arab settlers could soon explode into open
violence,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, executive
director of Human Rights Watch’s Middle East and
North Africa division.
Kurds, Turkomans and other non-Arabs were kicked out
of their homes under Saddam Hussein’s “Arabization”
program, which Human Rights Watch said was
“effectively an ethnic cleansing campaign to
permanently alter the ethnic make-up of northern
Iraq.”
The report describes how “the US-led Coalition
Provisional Authority failed to act even as the
situation grew more volatile,” the New York-based
organization said in a statement.
The rights group urged the interim Iraqi government,
which took over power from the Americans June 28, to
“urgently” implement a judicial system to resolve
the disputes and bring humanitarian aid to the
displaced Kurds and other non-Arabs.
Kurds and other groups have returned to Iraq’s north
to reclaim their properties since Saddam’s fall in
April 2003, the report said. Arab families who were
forced from their homes since last year also need
help, Human Rights Watch said.
Source : (AFP) Khaleej
Times Online
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