Roj Bash Kurdistan

Relatives of the Anfal Victims Urge the KRG to Search for their Family Members



HAWLER, Kurdistan region- 27 years have passed since the 1987 uprising by the people of Rawanduz, 113 km from Hawler, against Saddam Hussein‌'s brutal regime and yet the location of 13 individuals from the city are still unknown.

On the 19th of May 1987, the Kurdish people of Rawanduz revolted against Saddam's dictatorial regime, yet they were viciously suppressed and Saddam‌'s forces murdered six people.

One year after the uprising, the Baath party imprisoned 150 individuals, most of whom have been found, but the fate of 13 victims are still unknown.

Ziad Jabar, who lost his brother and cousin in the 1987 Rewanduz uprising, told Sbeiy that the KRG - and particularly the Ministry of Martyrs and Anfal Affairs - have not responded to their needs. Ziad added, "We received some assistance, yet it is not sufficient."

Speaking about the KRG‌'s efforts, relatives of Anfal said KRG officials had not responded to their questions or assisted them to help find their family members. They asked the KRG to search for their relatives and bring them home.

The 13 missing individuals of Rewanduz is just one story from hundreds of other tragedies in the Kurdish genocide.

Every year on 14th April a commemoration of Anfal is held to remember the massacre caused by the Baath regime where they killed 180,000 civilians including children. Hundreds of relatives of the victims of the Anfal campaign gather to commemorate the event in Garmyan/ Kalar where most of the campaign was carried out.

In the late 1980s, hundreds of thousands of men, women and children in Iraqi Kurdistan were executed during a systematic operation known as the Anfal operations that were planned by Saddam's regime and aimed to exterminate the whole Kurdish population in Iraq.

The Black Anfal campaign was a genocidal campaign by Saddam Hussian's Baath regime against citizens of the Kurdistan region from 1986 to 1989 when 180,000 civilians were killed and 4000 villages were leveled to the ground, with more than a million people were forced to flee their homes.

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