|
Monday, May 05, 2008 - 9:40 PM
Let the world recognize Anfal as a genocide
by Ara Alan
Pic from Iraqi Tribunal Court
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, undergraduate students, graduate students, professors,
journalist, war veterans, lawyers and other citizens.
The seminar at Georgia State University
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.
Anfal Survivor Yunis Haji left, Ara Alan Right
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, 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.
Yunis Haji Sharing his story
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.
Other Media Coverage
www.Emorywheel.com
Survivor Shares Genocide Tale
By Nina Dutton
Posted: 04/28/2008
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.
|