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Documenting Baathist Abuses
10.5.2006
By Frman Abdulrahman in Sulaimaniyah (ICR No. 176,
10-May-06)
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A group that documents past
misdeeds wants to expand work in Kurdish areas.
An Iraqi organisation dedicated to documenting
atrocities committed by the Baathist regime is
seeking to expand its work in Iraqi Kurdistan, a
region which suffered greatly under former leader
Saddam Hussein.
The Iraq Memory Foundation, based in Washington and
Baghdad, has created a network to document the oral
and written evidence relating to Saddam’s system of
repression and social control. Since its
establishment in 2003, it has gathered more than 11
million pages of records, with the aim of recording
Iraq's tortured past so that future generations can
learn from history.
After a four-day conference in Sulaimaniyah on May
5-8, foundation members said they were considering
opening an office in this Kurdish city.
The conference brought together 60 non-government
organisations from all over Iraq, as well as experts
from as far afield as Burma, Cambodia, Guatemala,
the United States and Serbia, to discuss the
importance of documenting memories of atrocities, as
well as practical methodologies.
Hassan Munaimina, the foundation’s director of
documentation, said Saddam’s 35-year rule was an
"era of tyranny". He said one of organisation's
primary aims is to place its documents, art and
literary works in a national museum.
The conference was held in Sulaimaniyah both because
it is Iraq's safest province and because it suffered
so much under the Baathist regime, said Munaimina.
Hundreds of thousands of Kurds were murdered,
displaced or went missing during Saddam’s campaign
against the Kurds.
"We document so that we can condemn past atrocities,
and so that they won't happen again," said Vahal
Abdulrahman, operations manager for the foundation.
The Iraqi non-government groups attending the
conference agreed to create a network to improve
communication between all the organisations that
work to document crimes committed between 1968 and
2003, when the Baathist regime was ousted.
Saddam and seven of his former deputies are on trial
for crimes against humanity for the 1982 killing of
148 men in the town of Dijail. Abdulrahman said the
foundation provided some documents to the Iraqi
special tribunal trying the case.
Rizgar Amin, who formerly served as a judge in the
trial, said such documentation could be admissible
as evidence if its authenticity could be verified.
He praised the conference as "a bridge for Iraqi and
international organisations to unite their
capacities to document Iraq’s tragedies".
Many of the participants from across Iraq were human
rights activists or victims of the former regime.
Some made the point that there is no universal
consensus that the Baath era was so bad.
"Unfortunately, some Iraqis and foreigners don't
believe Saddam Hussein was cruel," said Karima
Hassen, one of the participants.
On April 28, Saddam's 69th birthday, some residents
of Baghdad's Azamiyah neighbourhood reportedly
gathered to celebrate the event and kissed posters
of the former dictator.
"Some people want the Iraqi regime to return [to
power] because of the crises that Iraq is going
through," said Mahdi al-Tamimi, secretary-general of
the Baghdad-based Iraqi Political Prisoners’
Association.
Tamimi said the point of documenting Saddam's era is
to ensure it is not repeated.
"We want our children to grow up with love and
tolerance," he said.
Frman Abdulrahman is an IWPR trainee journalist
in Sulaimaniyah. Iraqi Crisis Report’s Arabic editor
Ferhad Murasil contributed to this report.
www.iwpr net
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