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BAGHDAD, 19 March
(IRIN) - The regional Kurdish parliament in
Kurdistan (northern Iraq) has formed a committee to
investigate recent protests in the city of Halabja,
in the Sulaimaniyah governorate, after hundreds of
residents took to the streets last week calling for
improved services.
More than half of Halabja's 60,000-strong population
depends on wells for their water needs and private
generators for electricity, say residents. In
addition, local doctors point out that area
hospitals lack modern medical equipment and
essential medicines. Roughly 90 percent of the
city's roads, meanwhile, remain unpaved.
On 16 March, security forces tried to break up a
demonstration by residents, who demanded a quicker
pace for urban reconstruction. A 17-year-old boy was
killed in the melee and nearly 10 others were
injured.
During the course of the fray, some 2,000 angry
residents damaged a monument commemorating those
killed in a 1988 gas attack on the city, launched by
deposed president Saddam Hussein.
Demonstrators claimed that the regional government
has done little to help survivors, and that
politicians have made money at the expense of
residents' suffering.
Since the disturbances, scores of protest
participants have fled the city, said locals, with
security forces arresting hundreds of residents in
the past three days. "Those behind the damage of the
monument must be arrested and interrogated," said
Emad Ahmed, deputy prime minister of the Kurdistan
government. "And those among the security forces
will be interrogated as well," he added, declining
to elaborate.
Ahmed went on to say that an official committee
would meet with Halabja dignitaries and residents to
discuss their complaints.
According to independent Kurdish MP Mahmoud Othoman,
both the international community and the Iraqi
central government have failed to honour their
promises to Halabja. This, he explained, has led to
"the failure of the regional government". Othoman
added, however, that the regional parliament would
try to address residents' demands.
Halabja suffered badly under the former regime. An
estimated 5,000 residents were killed in 1988, when
Hussein allegedly ordered a gas attack on the city
as part of a campaign to crack down on Kurds who he
claimed were supporting Iran in its 1980-88 war with
Iraq.
www.irinnews.org
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