Politics

40 years following Barzanis' genocide, chauvinistic mindset still exist, warns KDP leader

“We still notice chauvinistic mindsets and intentions in the behaviors of a number of people and entities to harm the Kurdish people,” Barzani said.

Kurdistan 24 2023/07/31 10:35

KDP President Masoud Barzani bowing his head in respect for the returned remains of the Barzanis in Erbil, July 31, 2022. (Photo: Barzani Headquarters)

Kurdistan KDP Barzani genocide

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Marking the 40th anniversary of the Barzanis' genocide, Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) President Masoud Barzani said Monday that the chauvinistic mindset based on which the genocide was committed still exists.

Barzani civilians, all male, were rounded up in camps by the former regime of Saddam Hussein on July 31, 1983, in Erbil. Eight thousand of them were murdered that year. A number of their bodies were found in Iraq's southern desert after that regime was deposed in 2003.

“We still notice chauvinistic mindsets and intentions in the behaviors of a number of people and entities that seek to harm the Kurdish people,” Barzani said in his statement, adding the mindset has been the source of instability in Iraq and the region.

The genocide was part of a “systemic” genocidal campaign committed against the Kurdish people, including forcefully disappearing 12,000 Feyli Kurds, Garmiyan’s Anfal campaign as well as the chemical bombardments of Halabja, the Kurdish leader said, who served as the Kurdistan Region president from 2005 to 2017.

The regime bombarded the Kurdish city of Halabja with chemical bombs, killing around 5,000 people and displacing thousands of others in the late 1980s. Thousands of other civilians were rounded up and displaced from their rural areas as part of the Anfal campaign.

Barzani hailed the generosity and support of the people in Erbil plains for the relatives of the Barzanis who were forcibly disappeared by the former regime.

Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani similarly marked the 40th anniversary of the genocide, calling on the Iraqi government to compensate the victims according to the constitution.

In 2005, a Kurdish team led by the former Kurdistan Region Minister of Human Rights visited remote areas close to Iraq's borders with Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. They were able to uncover the remains of 500 Barzani victims. Those bodies were brought back to Barzan in 2007 and, in the first funeral procession of its kind, reburied in graves there.

The Barzani genocide preceded the Anfal campaign mounted by the Saddam regime against the Kurdish people in the late 1980s.

At least 182,000 Kurdish civilians were killed in the Anfal campaign, and thousands of villages were leveled.

In July last year, at least 100 remains of human bodies were recovered from the southern desert region in Iraq and were buried in the Barzan area in northern Erbil province.