Newsgroup: it.politica
Titolo: Separation of families and extermination

Da Iraq: continuous and silent ethnic cleansing
Displaced persons in Iraqi Kurdistan and Iraqi
refugees in Iran
[...]
3.1 The Anfalis: separation of families and extermination
Iraq is the country with the highest number of missing
persons (see Appendix E), estimated at over 200,000,
including between 7,000 and 10,000 Fayli Kurds who went
missing in 1980, 8,000 Barzanis who went missing in 1983,
and 182,000 people who went missing after the Anfal
operations according to the Kurdish authorities. Tens of
thousands of other people also went missing, especially in the
South, where Saddam Hussein's revenge after the 1991
uprising struck several towns, and also many villages that
were burned and shelled.
During the Anfal operations, the regime particularly targeted
men and their male descendants, but also, in some regions,
entire families including women and children as related by a
survivor: "In 1987, the region of Sangaw was destroyed,
including Turkai Shekha Sura, my village, where between 75
and 100 families lived. There were 11 of us in our family, my
parents and 9 children. 7 of us were "Anfalised". My 3 sisters
and I are the only 4 survivors, because we were outside
looking after the cattle. When the army arrived, we fled to the
mountains. My aunts, my uncles and my cousins all went
missing. In total, 30 family members living in the same village
went missing.
The village was controlled by the peshmergas and it was
destroyed one year later, in 1988, immediately after the war.
In 1987, they had built the collective "town" of Smood and we
went to live there until 1991.
We have reconstructed the village with our money and
friends' money. Nobody helped us. There was not enough
money, but with all the people who disappeared, the biggest
problem was the lack of labour."
Some interviewees report that, in 1987, in the Kalar region,
they saw military trucks packed with people from villages
arriving in the Liwa Bariq military camp (which included a
torture centre like every other military camp) where they were
executed. In several locations, the mission met families who
survived these Anfal operations that have been qualified as
genocide by several human rights organisations as well as the
United Nations' Special Rapporteur on Iraq.
There are no precise statistics on the Anfal victims but local
human rights organisations working with women and orphans
are trying to establish the list of missing persons (see
and women who do not have any relatives with them anymore.
The survivors were at the mercy of the guards, as a woman
who survived the operations recalled: "Sometimes the
soldiers took the pretty girls and brought them back after a
few hours. No one knew what was going on then."
The inhabitants of several villages were also exterminated by
chemical bombings or executed. A woman from the village of
Goptapa related: "20 relatives who lived in the same region as
I did were killed by the chemical attacks. During the Anfal
operations, families were killed in front of my eyes, and
survivors, like me, were forced to step on their bodies. The
Iraqi army took men, women and children, and even my
father-in-law, who was old".
In other cases, they were grouped in military camps and
sorted. All the witnesses confirm that many people went
missing and that the families were systematically separated.
The separation was sometimes planned step by step in
different locations and, in some cases the commanders of the
operations did as they wished.
In general, males over 10 years were separated from their
relatives, and then it was the young women's turn to be
separated from the group. The other family members were
often left for days in the big Kurdish cities such as
Suleimanya, probably to just frighten the population.
In the majority of cases, males over 10 years old and the
young women were never seen again, as stressed by a
witness: "The soldiers came to our village and took us all by
force to Milasura. They said that they were going to send us
to town and give us some land. I was ten years old at that time
and I remember that it was raining; it was in the winter of
1988. They took us in trucks to Kalar and then to Qoratu. The
inhabitants of many villages were taken at the same time on
the same day. From Qoratu, we were taken to Tobzawa, then
to Dubs. They kept on hitting us. The men, except the elderly,
and some women, were taken away from the others."
A man from the Kirkuk governorate recalls: "During the years
1986/87, we had already been warned on several occasions
that our village, named Khurmal and located close to the
main road, would be destroyed and that the villagers would
be transferred to collective towns. One day, the army came
and told us to pack our belongings in tractors and installed us
on the side of the main road. I was 9 years old at that time.
Then soldiers took us to Chemchamal in a military unit, where
we joined many people from other villages. My 5 year-old
AIJ - FIDH / P A G E 1 3
My 5 year-old
brother and my three sisters were present. My three other
brothers, aged respectively 14, 15 and 16, were separated
from us: they told us that they were taking them to Kirkuk.
The people from Kirkuk were taken to Dubs. There, they
separated the children from their mothers and they put them
in a room for 2 days without anything to eat or drink. The
young women were separated from the older ones and the
same went for the remaining men. Many young women
disappeared. Some survivors estimate their number at 200.
Many of the missing persons are said to have been taken to
Abu Greb while others were deported to Ramadia.
Finally, they transported us in trucks to a jail called Nuqrat
Salman. We didn't know what was going to happen to us, we
were terrorised. We stayed in this jail for five and a half
months with only three pieces of bread and a little bit of water
each day. My younger brother died of hunger. How many of us
were there? I don't know. Maybe 10,000. There were only
women, children and old people.
Four of my uncles are gone (he shows their pictures) as well
as my three brothers and the younger one who died in prison.
Then, they separated us into three groups. My group was
taken to Suleimanya, then to Bazian, then back to Suleimanya
where the let us free. We stayed there for a while because we
had parents there, then we came to this collective town. The
police was making intrusions all the time to verify that no one
was staying with us. We had a lot of health problems and we
were not allowed to go further than 1 km out of the camp."
3.2 Ethnic cleansing in the Kirkuk region: over
30 years of forced displacements and
Arabisation policy
Successive measures26 have been taken for the Arabisation
of Kirkuk. The destruction of villages and neighbourhoods
were not sufficient. Prohibitions and destruction are
increasing: Kurds are not allowed to work, to buy, sell, or
inherit; people are not allowed to teach in another language
than Arabic, to give Kurdish, Turkoman or Assyro-Chaldean
names to their children27, to send them to school, to have a
telephone, to cultivate. The streets were renamed and the old
citadel, as well as mosques, churches, etc. were destroyed.
The decisions of the Revolutionary Command Council often
remain secret before being brutally enforced by the various
security services. As a result, the people targeted are unable
to react.
With the current system of food ration cards, the regime has
better control over the families in the districts that are under
tight control. The regime knows who is Kurdish, who is
Turkoman and who is Assyrian. It uses every means of terror
against the population, especially at night. This is also the
case in Baghdad, where it must be more discrete because of
the international presence.
The Iraqi regime is waging a psychological war to force
families to leave, by cutting off electricity or water. The agents
of the various security services28, such as the Mukhabarat,
make incessant visits and telephone calls, to ask the people
to join the Baath party, to recruit for Saddam's Feddayis or Al
Qods, the new army by Saddam Hussein to control the
population. The families are then caught in a spiral of violence
that does not cease until they leave.
Relatives are threatened, arrested or abused, as was the case
for the family of a woman who arrived in the Kurdish
autonomous region in May 2002 with her six children. Her son
was arrested two years ago after an administrative demand to
show an identification card. Immediately after his arrival, he
was jailed in the building of the general security of Kirkuk,
which is located in the Shorija district. He was tortured for
three days and went mad as a result. The family lives under a
tent with the young man who has serious psychological
problems, remaining silent for long periods of time or moving
about for no reason.
Any attitude that is considered suspect by the regime leads to
deportation. For example, a taxi driver who lived in the Shorija
district and who arrived in February 2002 related: "One day, I
did not accept to take a member of the party for a ride. That's
why they deported me. All my family is Kurdish and was
deported 5 years before me. Kurds have no right in Kirkuk.
The authorities refused to issue identity papers to my family
and I wasn't allowed to send my children to school. Saddam's
Feddayis or members of Al Qods came at night to ask me to
join Al Qods' army, but I refused. So they sent me to jail for a
month.
A truck took my belongings and a member of the Mukhabarat
came with us to the checkpoint at the Kurdish autonomous
region. I had two houses in Kirkuk. The government has
confiscated them. I did not feel good here, so I decided to
return, but the Mukhabarat told me that if I came back, they
would put me in jail for 6 months. 5 families were deported at
the same time as mine. The others went to Suleimanya."
The families feel threatened and finally give up and leave,
often without anything, as a witness reported: "In 1995, I was
deported because I was Kurdish. My house was confiscated
and given to an Arab family. That was the decision. You can't
say anything. They had taken my 21-year old son as a hostage
until I left. They let him go once I was gone. It is mostly the
Kurds who are deported, and sometimes the Turkomans."
Those who resist undergo new types of pressure. It is only a
matter of days before those who refuse to change their ethnic
identity are deported: "I arrived in this camp in June 1999. I
come from the Leylan region close to Kirkuk.

 Da Iraq: continuous and silent ethnic cleansing
 
 
Sembrano proprio le stesse identiche cose che accadevano a Cuba ai tempi
di Fulgenzio Batista .... e dire che gli americani lo stimavano tanto :D
--
Massimiliano

 ha scritto
nel messaggio news:pan.2003.02.28.12...@renodemedici.it...

Sembrano proprio le stesse identiche cose che accadono a Cuba dai tempi di
Fidel Castro .... e dire che gli antiamericani lo stimano tanto :P