Senior Kurdistan Region officials highlight Baghdad’s responsibility to compensate Anfal victims

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – In commemoration of the former Baathist regime's genocidal Anfal program against ethnic Kurds, top Kurdistan Region officials on Tuesday stressed that the current Iraqi government is still responsible for the reparations to survivors and victims’ families.

“Though much has been done in previous years toward international recognition of the Anfal Campaign as well as to compensate and repatriate its victims and survivors, unfortunately, it has not been successful yet,” Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) leader Masoud Barzani said in a statement on the 32nd anniversary of the genocide.

“The Iraqi government is obliged to compensate the Anfal victims’ families,” Barzani said on Tuesday.

In a statement on the official website of the Kurdistan Region Presidency, President Nechirvan Barzani said, “On this day, we honor the victims of the Anfal, all the fallen heroes of Kurdistan, and we pay tribute to their families and loved ones.”

President Barzani also urged all members of the international community to formally recognize the Anfal campaign as genocide, especially following the Iraqi Supreme Court’s declaration of it as such. He also pledged to continue efforts to locate and return the remains of Anfal victims, thousands of which have been found in various mass graves across Iraq, to the Kurdistan Region.

In another statement, Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Prime Minister Masrour Barzani said the commemoration of the horrors perpetrated against the people of Kurdistan in front of the world’s very eyes does not have to be reduced only to a “regular commemoration of our sufferings.”

“However, the KRG is always committed to serve the Anfal survivors and the victims’ families, the Iraqi state should carry its moral and constitutional responsibilities in compensating those grave crimes and give guarantees such crimes will not happen in the future,” the prime minister added.

“That chauvinist and racist ideology that motivated the Anfal Campaign has to be eradicated in every form,” Prime Minister Barzani stressed.

The Anfal was comprised of a series of ethnic cleansing campaigns perpetrated against the Kurds in rural areas of Kurdistan by the government of Saddam Hussein in the 1980s in which as many as 180,000 Kurds were systematically killed.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany