Let the world recognize Anfal as a genocide

For more pictures please visit KYC



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.

Read More......