Saddam Hussein was
charged this week with genocide for attacks on Kurds that killed as
many as 100,000 in the 1980s.
HALABJA, KURDISTAN-IRAQ – The decision this week to charge
Saddam Hussein with genocide for the death of thousands of Kurds in
the late 1980s has been welcomed by Kurds across northern Iraq who
had previously worried that Iraq's Shiite government would try him
only for crimes against Arab Shiites.
Kurds "were subjected to forced displacement and illegal detentions
of thousands of civilians," said Raid Juhi, an investigative judge
at the Iraqi High Tribunal that charged Mr. Hussein and six former
members of his regime on Tuesday. "The villages were destroyed and
burnt. Homes and houses of worshppers and buildings of civilians
were leveled without reason or a military requirement."
Hussein again faced prosecutors in Baghdad this week for charges
that he was behind the 1982 massacre in the village of Dujail that
killed at least 148 Shiites. While that case has gone on for several
months, officials said a second trial based on the charges of
genocide in northern Iraq could begin in 45 days.
To many Kurds, however, and particularly young people brought up in
the Kurdish autonomous region that existed after the 1991 Gulf War,
the thirst for justice is increasingly overshadowed by daily
concerns of finding a job, getting educated, and receiving proper
medical care.
Every year the [local] government receives $4 to $5 billion [from
Iraqi's central government], and no one can see where the money's
going," says Mariwan Hama-Saeed, the Kurdish editor of the Institute
of War and Peace Reporting's (IWPR) Iraq Crisis Watch. "Every day
the government tells us that next year everything will be solved.
But each year nothing changes."
Last month Kurdish anger at the slow pace of reconstruction boiled
over. Protesters in Halabja destroyed the town's famous memorial to
5,000 civilians killed there in a chemical attack by Hussein's army
in 1988.
Sifting through the Halabja museum's ashes the following day, its
director, Ibrahim Hawramani, picked through burnt photos, torn
children's drawings, and smashed plaques listing the names of the
victims. "The people of Halabja shouldn't have done this," he said.
"This wasn't a symbol of any political party. This was a symbol of
everything in Kurdistan."
The shocking, but calculated, vandalism represents the rising anger
and resentment felt by many Kurds over widespread corruption, lack
of jobs, and fewer than expected reconstruction projects. Deepening
the mistrust between the Kurds and their leaders, now mostly in
Baghdad, is the heavy-handed approach of the security services
toward the protesters.
The March 16 demonstration at Halabja that began peacefully with
demonstrators trying nonviolently to block an official visit to the
Halabja monument on the 18th anniversary of the chemical attack
ended with troops firing shots into the crowd.
"At the beginning we were very positive, but when the policemen
started shooting, the people grew angry and started to throw
stones," says one university student who helped organize the
demonstration. "Then the police started to shoot."
In the resulting melee, a student protester, 17-year-old Kurda Ahmed
was shot dead. The outrage in Kurdistan has swiftly eclipsed any
anger at the demonstrators for burning Kurdistan's best known
monument.
"It is really shocking for young people to be fired on by the
peshmerga [Kurdish militia] who are meant to be protecting them,"
says Mr. Hama-Saeed, who witnessed the demonstration.
"We know that the reconstruction of Halabja is inadequate and that
we need to do more," says Azad Jundiani, head of the Patriotic Union
of Kurdistan's media office in Suleimaniya. The PUK is one of the
two largest Kurdish political parties. "But we need money and we
need time. We simply haven't got the funds right now."
"We have freedom to demonstrate in Kurdistan and we are proud of
that freedom, but there must also be responsibility," says Mr.
Jundiani. "Generally demonstrations in Kurdistan are a model of
peaceful protest."
Observers say, however, the recent protests and the government's
violent response are not isolated incidents. A March 8 protest in
the town of Koya, in which students demonstrated over not being paid
their stipend for the past three months, was also attacked by
police.
"The youth discontent has been going on for a while," says Tiare
Rath, international editor of IWPR's Iraq Crisis Report, adding that
the protests partly reflect Kurdistan's success in schooling young
people in freedom, democracy, and human rights.
"It's a generational thing," she says. "Young people here have grown
up under independence. But no one here understands why there is no
reconstruction up here in Kurdistan as the security situation is
good. And we don't get any answers because there is no
transparency."
Kurdish authorities have so far responded to criticism by blaming
Islamic parties for causing unrest and local journalists for
reporting it. In late March, Hawez Hawezi, a reporter from Hawlati,
Iraqi Kurdistan's largest independent newspaper, was arrested at his
home by the police and beaten before being released the next day.
Last December Kamal Khadir, a Iraqi Kurd holding Austrian
citizenship was sentenced to 30 years for writing articles
critically of the Kurdish government. Following an international
outcry, however, Dr. Khadir was retried for slander, sentenced to 18
months, and then pardoned and released on April 3.
"For more than a thousand years we have suffered, and been occupied
and exploited," says Farhad Auny, head of the Kurdistan Journalists
Syndicate in Arbil. "Now we want to establish a progressive new
country. And the government knows that this will not happen without
freedom of speech."
csmonitor.com Top |
® 