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Hundreds protest as Kurds remember Halabja gas attack
Outraged at Kurdish government neglect hundreds of Kurdish demonstrators in Halabja yesterday set fire to a memorial to the 1988 poison gas attack by the Iraqi armed forces in which 5,000 people died.
Kurdish security forces shot dead one man and wounded at least eight others when they opened fire on protestors on the 18th anniversary of what became the most notorious atrocity of Saddam Hussein. "The Kurdish government exploited Halabja to draw attention to the plight of the Kurds and get donations that have never reached us," said one angry protestor.
Although the poison gas attack on Halabja is frequently invoked as a symbol of their people's suffering by Kurdish leaders the inhabitants of Halabja complain that their houses are dilapidated and supplies of water and electricity are poor. They had earlier announced that officials would be banned from attending the meeting commemorating the gas attack.
"We plan to block any official from entering because every year they came and make empty promises," said Zakaria Mahmood, a 22-year-old organizer of the protest, according a report by the Institute of War and Peace Reporting. "Officials visit Halbja just for publicity," said Mohammed Kareem, 61, a shopkeeper five of whose children were killed by the gas. "Halabja looks the same as the day it was attacked."
When the memorial meeting started at about 10am local people were infuriated when a Kurdish government official called Shahu Mohammed Saed tried to address the crowd. They shouted him down and stormed the one-storey circular museum where they set fire to displays reconstructing the gas attack on 15 March 1988 as well as photographs of victims and glass cases containing the clothes of the dead.
By the time the demonstration ended people in Halabja had a fresh victim to mourn. "We have received one body and eight wounded people," said a doctor in Halabja's Malabar hospital adding that the dead man was 18 years old.
Halabja, south east of the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah, was sealed off after the shooting by Pesh Merga and police of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. They confiscated video film showing what had taken place. Adnan Mufti, the Speaker of the Kurdish Parliament and a PUK leader, told The Independent in Arbil yesterday that part of the problem was that before 2003 Halabja was partly under the control of Islamic parties and had received little aid. Mr Saed, whose ill-timed speech provoked the riot, claimed that neighbouring states, presumably Iran or Turkey, were responsible for the violence.
More
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article351758.ece
Although the poison gas attack on Halabja is frequently invoked as a symbol of their people's suffering by Kurdish leaders the inhabitants of Halabja complain that their houses are dilapidated and supplies of water and electricity are poor. They had earlier announced that officials would be banned from attending the meeting commemorating the gas attack.
"We plan to block any official from entering because every year they came and make empty promises," said Zakaria Mahmood, a 22-year-old organizer of the protest, according a report by the Institute of War and Peace Reporting. "Officials visit Halbja just for publicity," said Mohammed Kareem, 61, a shopkeeper five of whose children were killed by the gas. "Halabja looks the same as the day it was attacked."
When the memorial meeting started at about 10am local people were infuriated when a Kurdish government official called Shahu Mohammed Saed tried to address the crowd. They shouted him down and stormed the one-storey circular museum where they set fire to displays reconstructing the gas attack on 15 March 1988 as well as photographs of victims and glass cases containing the clothes of the dead.
By the time the demonstration ended people in Halabja had a fresh victim to mourn. "We have received one body and eight wounded people," said a doctor in Halabja's Malabar hospital adding that the dead man was 18 years old.
Halabja, south east of the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah, was sealed off after the shooting by Pesh Merga and police of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan. They confiscated video film showing what had taken place. Adnan Mufti, the Speaker of the Kurdish Parliament and a PUK leader, told The Independent in Arbil yesterday that part of the problem was that before 2003 Halabja was partly under the control of Islamic parties and had received little aid. Mr Saed, whose ill-timed speech provoked the riot, claimed that neighbouring states, presumably Iran or Turkey, were responsible for the violence.
More
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article351758.ece
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Friday, March 17, 2006
Halabja Riot against AmericaKurds in Halabja went on a rampage on Thursday, protesting the Kurdistan Regional Government's inattention to social services. They assaulted the monument to the victims of Saddam's 1988 gas attack, an attack they said that the local government always used to excuse its ineptitude.
Security sources told al-Hayat that a boy was killed and six other persons were wounded by the bullers of the Peshmerga paramilitary, who opened fire to disperse the demonstrators. The source says that the situation got out of hand and that supplementary forces have now reached the city to restore order.
The demonstrators carried placards blaming America and its agents. These slogans raised suspicions in official Kurdish circles that the Kurdish Islamist were behind the incident.
Kurds accuse Saddam Hussein and Ali Hasan al-Majid--"Chemical Ali-- for killing 5,000 Kurds in a 1988 gas attack.
Al-Hayat says that in 1998, radical Kurdish Muslim groups such as the Army of Islam, the Army of the Ansar al-Sunnah, and the Islamic Group imposed on the people of Halabja and Taliban-like local municipal regime. Alcohol was forbidden, veiling imposed on women, religion education was substituted for secular schooling, and the shaving of the beard forbidden.
President Jalal Talabani, himself a Kurd, responded by insisting on the "need to continue the struggle against the criminal excommunicator (takfiri) gangs that have launched a war of extermination on all Iraqis."
Even if the riot was the work of local Muslim fundamentalist groups, it is not good news that even some of the people in Halabja are not "grateful" for being liberated by the US from Hussein, and even blame the US, apparently for collusion with the Baath regime in the gas attacks.
The Reagan and then Bush senior administrations allied with Saddam 1984-1990, until he invaded Kuwait. During the 1980s, as I showed in this Truthdig.com piece, the Reagan administration winked at Saddam's use of chemical weapons, and at his efforts to acquire more. Donald Rumsfeld met Saddam twice, the second time to mollify him over State Department condemnation of the chemical weapons. The Reagan administration also permitted private US companies to supply to Saddam chemicals and anthrax precursors. No senior Reagan administration official protested the Halabja gassings. So the Halabja demonstrations against Reagan administration complicity contain a kernel of hideous truth.
posted by Juan @ 3/17/2006 06:01:00 AM
By IWPR contributors in Halabja (ICR No. 168, 16-Mar-06)
The authorities in Iraqi Kurdistan faced a major challenge today, March 16, as residents of Halabja – scene of a chemical attack 18 years ago - took to the streets in anger at what they said was cynical exploitation of their plight by local politicians.
A 17-year-old boy was killed and dozens more injured in clashes with Kurdish security forces after around 2,000 locals – mostly young men – staged street protests to prevent officials getting into Halabja and taking part in ceremonies to mark the anniversary of the 1988 gas attack by Saddam Hussein’s military, in which 5,000 people died.
Officials from Halabja, in Sulaimaniyah province, had rolled out red carpets for the day of mourning. Earlier in the week, protest organisers had promised a peaceful sit-down action designed to embarrass the visiting dignitaries and block their access to the town.
But a build-up of security forces in the town suggested the authorities were determined to ensure everything went according to plan.
International delegates from Hiroshima and Italy visited the memorial on March 15, the day before the official anniversary.
On March 16, the ceremonies were called off after three hours of unrest during which demonstrators burnt tires, rolled rocks into the road or lay down there themselves to prevent officials driving into the town.
One group of stone-throwing demonstrators stormed the monument to the victims of the chemical attack, torching it and sending black smoke billowing over the town. Some said the memorial was no more than a “bank" which helped officials raise cash to line their own pockets.
More
http://www.iwpr.net/?p=icr&s=f&o=260384&apc_state=henh