Halabja Memorial Day: Enough is enough, End Genocide Now.
On 16th of March 1988, the Iraqi Ba’ath regime indiscriminately targeted the Kurdish population of Iraq with a series of poison gas attacks. Over 5,000 civilians were killed instantly and between 7,000 and 10,000 were injured. The survivors and bereaved continue to suffer from the consequences of the chemical attacks until this day.
The Halabja poison gas bombings remain the single largest chemical weapons attack against a civilian population in history. In a 2005 ruling by the District Court of The Hague against Dutch trader Frans van Anraat, the court said that it must consider “legally and convincingly proven that the Kurdish population meets requirement under Genocide Conventions as an ethnic group. The court has no other conclusion than that these attacks were committed with the intent to destroy the Kurdish population of Iraq.”
This wasn’t a lone attack or merely a consequence of war. Rather, the Halabja bombings happened parallel to a broader campaign of genocide against the Iraqi Kurds throughout the 1980s called “Al-Anfal.” In several waves, the Ba’ath regime resorted to deportations, arbitrary arrests, mass executions, destruction of entire villages and the use of chemical weapons against the Kurdish people. Between the first systematic killings in the early 1980s and the end of the Al-Anfal campaign, hundreds of thousands of Kurds were killed by the Iraqi Ba’ath regime with many more internally or externally displaced.
Twenty-eight years later, the Kurdish people are still not safe. Genocide remains a real threat. In 2014, the Ezidis, a Kurdish ethno-religious group, were targeted by the so-called Islamic State (IS). Approximately 5000 Ezidis were executed; another 6,000 women and children were kidnapped and enslaved, while several Ezidi holy sites were destroyed. Many of the women and children remain captive. Mass graves of Ezidis are being discovered on a daily basis. These atrocities could have been prevented.
In memory of the victims of the Halabja chemical gas attacks, in memory of the victims of the Al-Anfal campaign, in memory of the Ezidis and Christians who were attacked by IS, in memory of every single victim of a genocide campaign, let us take a stand and say: Enough is enough, End Genocide Now. Join others across the globe on 16 March 2016 to spread the message “End Genocide Now” and to raise awareness about the Halabja victims and survivors.
Let us together put pressure on our governments to act and protect the people. It is 2016, and enough is enough.
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Here is a link where you may download a profile avatar, a header and two statements ready for social media use, to take a stand and to “End Genocide Now.”: http://we.tl/O7DhYjFUXJ.
Please sign-up to get involved andreceive updates as this campaign progresses: https://krgatmedia.typeform.com/to/JAGFqB
Nergiz Sidiq Abi currently works for the Kurdistan Regional Government Representation in Austria.
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Kurdistan24.
Editing by Delovan Barwari