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Kurdistan: Ceremony mourns victims of
Iraq's "Anfal" genocide
14.1.2008 |
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January 14, 2008
Erbil-Hewler, Kurdistan Region 'Iraq', --
A genocidal campaign under Saddam Hussein against
Iraq's Kurds must never be forgotten, officials said
on Monday at a ceremony for 371 victims, whose
grieving relatives demanded those responsible be put
to death.
Up to 180,000 people may have been killed as
chemical gas was used, villages were razed and
thousands of Kurds were forced into camps during the
1988 Anfal, or "Spoils of War", campaign.
Kurdish and Iraqi political leaders gathered for the
solemn ceremony as 371 flag-draped coffins were laid
out in neat rows in a large commercial warehouse in
Erbil in semi-autonomous Kurdistan in Iraq's north.
The wooden coffins contained the remains of Kurds
found in four mass graves near the northern cities
of Mosul,www.ekurd.net
Duhok and Sulaimaniyah
and the southern city of Samawa since 2004.
All have since been identified and will be reburied
in a cemetery in Sulaimaniyah on Wednesday.
"This ceremony makes us feel pain and happiness at
the same time," Iraqi Kurdistan President Massoud
Barzani told the ceremony.
"We feel pain because we find ourselves in front of
the bodies of innocent victims and happy because
they are back to the homes of their fathers and
grandfathers," he said.
Saddam's cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majeed, former
Defence Minister Sultan Hashem and former army
commander Hussein Rashid Muhammad have been
convicted of genocide over the Anfal campaign and
remain in U.S. military custody awaiting execution.
Majeed, widely known as "Chemical Ali", has also
gone on trial for his role in crushing a Shi'ite
rebellion in southern Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War.
EXECUTION CALL
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Honor guards carry coffins containing the remains of
Kurdish victims, killed in the Anfal campaign in
1988, during a ceremony in Erbil, , the Iraqi
Kurdistan's capital, about 350 km (220 miles) north
of Baghdad January 14, 2008. A genocidal campaign
under Saddam Hussein against Iraq's Kurds must never
be forgotten, officials said on Monday at a ceremony
for 371 victims, whose grieving relatives demanded
those responsible be put to death.
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Majeed, Hashem and
Muhammad are being held while officials squabble
over who has authority to transfer them for
execution despite an appeals court upholding the
death sentence last September and ordering that it
be carried out within 30 days.
The U.S. military has said it will not hand them
over until the Iraqi government resolves the
dispute.
"We want to execute 'Chemical Ali' and everyone
involved and we want to say to the people who object
to the executions that you are wrong," Kamal Mahmoud,
whose two nephews were killed during Anfal, told
Reuters.
Sewah Hassan, a 26-year-old woman who said she lost
her mother and two sisters, including an infant,
agreed.
"We remember the suffering and injustice ... we feel
neglected by the Iraqi and the Kurdish governments,"
she said.
Iraq's deputy prime minister, Barham Salih, a Kurd,
said the ceremony was another step in Iraq's
liberation.
"There are some voices who doubt that, but the
bodies of these victims remind us that (Iraq's)
liberation was done legally and pushed us to
investigate the ex-regime's crimes."
Massoud Barzani, who along with Kurdistan Prime
Minister Nechirvan Barzani laid a floral wreath at
the foot of one coffin draped in the red, white,
green and yellow flag of Kurdistan,www.ekurd.net
described the 371
victims remembered on Monday as martyrs.
"The next generation must know what happened in the
Anfal crimes and know what gains we have made
today," he said.
Reuters
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