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Let the world recognize Anfal as a
genocide
6.5.2008
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May 6, 2008
In remembrance of the Anfal campaign Kurdish Youth
Club held two seminars on this subject. The seminars
were held at two Prominent Atlanta universities:
Georgia State University on April 24 2008 and Emory
University on April 25 2008. Both seminars were
attended largely by students and faculty of the
schools. The audience ranged from,www.ekurd.net
undergraduate students,
graduate students, professors, journalist, war
veterans, lawyers and other citizens.
At both events the seminars started with a video
from National Geographic that showed an over view of
life under Saddam. At Gorgia State the event was
hosted by Brett Duval and at Emory University it was
hosted by Goran Sabir. Professor Benjamin from
Kennesaw University started the seminar by giving an
over view of who the Kurds are. Ara Alan then
presented a power point based on Human Rights watch
publication. In the presentation he explain why
Anfal is considered as Genocide by international
standards. The seminar also emphasized that Anfal
thus must be recognized by the world countries as an
act of Genocide.
Mr. Yunis Haji an eye wittiness in Saddam Hussein's
Anfal trial and a survivor of a massgrave execution
by the Baath government Shared his story of the
Genocide. Yunis had testified against Saddam for the
torture and summary execution that he faced.
Captured while injured during the Anfal campaign and
after questioning Yunis and his cell mates were
taken to a remote land outside of Kirkuk to be
executed. The prisoners with Yunis were not shot but
they were all hit on their head to loose conscious
to be buried alive. Yunis woke up in the massgrave
as they were being covered by dirt. Story of Yunis
is a story of Resistance,www.ekurd.net
and resilience of man
when all odds are against him. The seminars were
sponsored by Kurdish Youth Club, Amnesty
International, at Emory and Georgia State, and MEPSA.
Kurdish Youth Club, is making a pledge to work for
recognition of Anfal as a genocide in USA. We would
also like to extend an invitation to all other
Kurdish Organizations or capable individuals in USA
to be involved in this historical event. Let us get
organized and busy so that we can put our efforts to
honor the Anfal victims. Let us Honor them through
recognition of Anfal as a major crime of twentieth
century and as an act of Genocide against the
Kurdish people. |
Anfal Genocide
Anfal Survivor Yunis Haji left, Ara Alan Right
Yunis Haji Sharing his story
Photos: KurdishYouthClub.com |
Copyright, respective author or news agency, Kurdish
Youth Club
www.KurdishYouthClub.com
Promoting Kurdistan and Kurdish Culture in USA since
2003
kurdish.youth.club (at) gmail.com
Survivor Shares Genocide
Tale. By Nina Dutton
Yunis Haji Haji, a survivor of the late 1980s Anfal
genocide in Iraq who testified at Saddam Hussein's
trial, told his story of brutal treatment and a
narrow escape on Friday evening.
The event, held at the Rollins School of Public
Health and sponsored by Human Rights Action at Emory
and the Kurdish Youth Club of Atlanta, began with an
introduction to the Anfal campaign against the
Kurds.
Jesse Benjamin, a sociology professor at Kennesaw
State University, introduced the Kurdish people as
"a nation without a nation." An estimated 40 million
Kurds live in the Middle East, mainly in Iran, Iraq,
Turkey and Syria, while 30 million more have
dispersed around the world, he said. After World War
I, the Ottoman Empire was divided along ethnically
arbitrary lines, splitting the Kurdish population
into minorities in different countries, though
Woodrow Wilson had promised the Kurds their own
state, Benjamin said.
Ara Alan, a co-founder of many Kurdish Youth
organizations, said that in 1970, the ruling Ba'ath
party allowed the Kurds an autonomous region without
lucrative oil fields. The Ba'ath party pushed Kurds
out of oil-producing areas by luring poor Arabs
there with cheap housing. The peshmerga — fighters
for Kurdish independence — made an alliance with
Tehran and in the early 1980s, the Ba'ath party
started to move against the Kurds. The Anfal
campaign took shape in the mid-1980s, peaking in
1988.
The American government ignored the genocide as it
took place, Benjamin said.
"It is very rare that the world likes to acknowledge
that a genocide is a genocide, even after the fact,"
Benjamin said. This lack of recognition of the Anfal
campaign as genocide was a common theme throughout
the event.
An eight-stage Iraqi military operation against the
peshmerga and Kurdish civilians, the Anfal campaign
was characterized by the government's widespread use
of chemical warfare against its own people, the
systematic destruction of about 2,000 Kurdish
villages, the arbitrary arrests and forced
displacement, executions and disappearances of tens
of thousands of civilians of all ages, Alan said. In
some phases, men were specifically targeted, killing
all men found aged 15 to 70.
Alan passed photographs around the room, showing
mass graves and the skeletons of Anfal's victims.
Some bones still bore clothing, a shoe or a
wristwatch.
Haji then relayed his story, with Alan as
interpreter, to the crowd of 80 listeners.
"I don't remember the Kurds ever disturbing the
peace of our neighbors or other countries of the
world," Haji said. The Iraqi government responded to
attempted negotiations with "displacement of the
Kurds, annihilation of the Kurds, killing of the
Kurds."
"They did not care if you were a pershmerga or not.
They took everybody," he said.
In 1988, Haji was a 19-year-old peshmerga. His arm
was injured in fighting, so he was told to take
refuge in the mountains. The other injured
peshmergas with him went their own ways to find
protection, so Haji contacted his family and found a
place to hide. Haji found his way to the home of
someone in the Iraqi regime, who betrayed Haji and
sent him to jail.
"I did not come here to serve the Iraqi army," Haji
said he told the authorities.
At this refusal, Haji was tortured there and at a
jail in Kirkuk. One day he and some fellow prisoners
were blindfolded, hands tied, and loaded into a
truck. They were told they were being taken to
Baghdad's Iraqi Revolutionary Court.
But when Haji felt a dirt road beneath the truck
rather than the paved road to Baghdad, he realized
they were "actually heading to death."
Haji untied his hands and loosened the blindfold,
offering to do the same for the other prisoners so
they could attack the guard at the next chance. The
other prisoners refused the help, believing they
were on the way to Baghdad.
"They would not let me open their hands," Haji said.
He thought it better to take that chance than not at
all, positing that "even if we would die, we would
die a better death."
When the truck stopped and a guard checked on the
prisoners, the guard yanked on Haji's arm.
Discovering Haji's hands loose, the guard forced
Haji to his knees at the edge of a ditch like a
long, narrow grave. The guard struck Haji in the
head and Haji fell into the ditch, realizing that he
was about to be buried alive when he awoke. The dust
cloud from his fall provided Haji with enough cover
to escape, he said.
"Thirst was really breaking me down," Haji said,
describing his walk across desert and farmland to
find a highway and cars to take him to a city.
Haji stopped the second car he saw, which contained
a man in an Iraqi Populist Uniform and a mullah. The
mullah's presence, as a religious figure, put Haji
somewhat at ease, he said, and as he couldn't run
away, Haji told all. The uniformed man turned out to
be a Kurd too, and sympathized with Haji. Haji spent
the night at the man's home, and the next day the
man gave him a pair of shoes, directing Haji to a
bus to flee.
To cross the next checkpoint, Haji rode in a car,
which was not inspected at all, to Haji's great
relief, he said.
"I felt like the pedal and the clutch under the
driver's feet were under my feet," Haji said, noting
the freedom he felt as it seemed like he was the one
accelerating the car away from the checkpoint.
His family tried to find someone to hide him again,
but Haji told them he did not trust anyone and
wanted to leave the country. He returned to the Iran
border, continuing to fight as a peshmerga until an
uprising in Iraq in 1991.
Haji eventually told his story to an American human
rights organization. He accepted their offer to help
him leave Iraq.
In the question-and-answer session, Haji was asked
if he approves of the current war in Iraq and he
said he wished the invasion happened in 1991
instead. The speech also prompted an Armenian, an
Iraqi and a Kurd from Turkey in the audience to
discuss the necessity, or lack thereof, of
recognizing genocide as such.
Copyright, respective author or news agency,
Emorywheel com
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