We Do Remember the Halabja Massacre!
No More Halabjas!
16 March 2024
Today, March 16, is the day of commemoration of the Halabja Massacre, the genocide committed by Saddam Hussein’s regime in Kurdish cities, particularly Halabja, as part of Operation Anfal in Iraqi Kurdistan.
Operation Anfal was launched on 29 March 1987 and continued until 7 June 1989. Within the scope of this operation, Saddam Hussein’s nephew, Ali Hassan Majit, nicknamed Chemical Ali, was authorized by the Iraqi Revolutionary Committee Council to purge Iraq of Kurds. In fact, more than a hundred thousand Kurds were massacred as a result of the “purification” policy pursued by the Saddam regime against the Kurds between 1983 and 1991.
On March 16 March 1988, the town of Halabja in the Federated Kurdistan Region of Iraq and its surroundings were bombed with chemical weapons and around five thousand people were killed within the scope of Operation Anfal.
While the pain of Halabja was still fresh, ISIS/ISIL carried out a genocidal attack against the Yazidis in the Shengal region of Iraq in August 2014, kidnapping, murdering and selling thousands of Kurdish women as slaves. ISIS/ISIL was not satisfied with this and attacked everyone in Iraq, especially the Kurds, who did not belong to its sect. In 2015, the ISIS/ISIL attack was first repelled by the Kobani resistance in the Rojava Region of Syria, Kobani was liberated, followed by Shengal, and a historical resistance was shown. ISIS, which declared the Syrian city of Raqqa as its capital, was defeated and important gains were achieved for humanity. The Kurdish people developed their own defense and eliminated the threats of genocide against them at that time. However, the threats of genocide against the Kurds are still not over.
After the 24 September 2017 referendum in the Federated Kurdistan Region of Iraq, the Iraqi Central Government and the Iranian-backed Hashd al-Shaabi militia organization attacked many settlements, especially Kirkuk, and forced the Kurds living there to migrate, which shows that the threat continues. According to the reports of international organizations, dozens of civilians have lost their lives and tens of thousands of civilians have been displaced in Turkey’s military operation in Syria’s Afrin region, which was launched in January 2018 and ended in March 2018, with paramilitary groups, citing border security as the justification, showing how serious and grave the situation was. On 9 October 2019, Turkey launched a military operation against northern Syria with the same justification, which resulted in dozens of civilian deaths and displaced tens of thousands of civilians. Similar situations occurred in the following years. This was discussed in detail in the report of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic dated 28 January 2020, prepared by UN independent experts. It is also covered in Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch reports.
İHD decided to recognize March 16, the day known in Turkey as the commemoration day of the Halabja Massacre, as the “Kurdish Genocide Day” and demands that the Turkish state recognize this genocide. The crime of genocide is defined in the UN Rome Statute as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
The crimes that Saddam Hussein’s regime aimed and committed, especially within the scope of Operation Anfal, are crimes of genocide. Therefore, it is necessary to call what was done as genocide. Indeed, on 1 March 2010, the Iraqi Supreme Criminal Court recognized the Halabja Massacre as genocide. Recognizing the commission of the gravest crime such as genocide will play a deterrent role in preventing similar crimes in the future. In addition, sharing the pain of the relatives of those who lost their lives in the genocide and of a people who were subjected to genocide will contribute to their mourning process.
To date, Iraq and the Federated Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have recognized the crimes committed during the Anfal Operation as genocide. It would be meaningful and important for Turkey, where the largest number of Kurds live in the Middle East, to recognize the crimes committed during the Anfal Operation as genocide. However, the armed conflict that started in Turkey on 24 July 2015 has turned the conflict situation inside Turkey into a hot war outside Turkey, especially in Syria, and has gradually spread to the north of Iraq. İHD tirelessly and relentlessly calls on the Turkish political power to resolve the Kurdish issue politically and peacefully. İHD also calls on the UN and the Council of Europe to implement coherent policies to end the ongoing armed conflicts and war.
İHD will continue its struggle for Turkey to recognize the Kurdish Genocide as it is against genocide wherever and whenever it is committed due to its principled stance set forth in its charter.
İHD once again commemorates the memory those who lost their lives in the genocide in Operation Enfal and says “never again.”
Human Rights Association