Bakhtiar Amin | |
|---|---|
 | |
| 2nd Minister for Human Rights | |
| In office May 2004 –May 2005 | |
| President | Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer |
| Prime Minister | Ayad Allawi |
| Preceded by | Abdel Basset Turki |
| Succeeded by | Narmin Othman |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Kirkuk,Iraq |
| Spouse | Safia Taleb Ali al-Suhail |
| Alma mater | University of Paris |
| Occupation | Politician,Human Rights Activist |
Bakhtiar Amin (born 1959) [1] is a Kurdish Iraqi politician who was the Human Rights Minister in the Iraqi Interim Government from June 2004 to May 2005.
Amin was born in Kirkuk. He went to university in Sweden and the Sorbonne in France,where he received a master's degree in international affairs and a doctorate in political geography. [2]
In France,Amin was the secretary general of the Kurdish Institute and active in the International Alliance for Justice group that campaigned against Saddam Hussein's human rights violations. [3] In 2001 he was invited to give evidence to the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs and Human Rights as an expert on the political and human rights situation there. [4]
He condemned Saddam Hussein for creating a "museum of crimes,land of sorrow and hopelessness" and said that there will be "generations" of "genetic mutations suffered by the survivors of his chemical,biological and radiological attacks" in Halabja. He called for the creation of an International Court for Iraq,along the lines of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. [5]
Amin then went on to be the director of the Human Rights Coalition in the United States [2] He went on to found the Iraqi Democracy Institute in the US. [6]
Amin returned to Iraq following the 2003 invasion of Iraq and overthrow of Saddam Hussein. In September 2003 he was quoted supporting the decision to sanction Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya,saying they were "spreading sectarian and racial hatred" and saying a "western democracy would not allow masked gunmen to appear on TV and make direct threats against government officials" [7] In November he was quoted calling for a referendum to decide whether the death penalty should be restored. [8]
Amin was appointed as the Human Rights Minister in the Iraqi Governing Council in May 2004,following the resignation of his predecessor,Abdel Basset Turki. [9] He was reappointed to the Iraqi Interim Government when that was formed in June 2004. [10]
In September 2004 he was quoted saying that conditions at the Abu Ghraib prison had "immensely improved" since the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal. [11]
In May 2005,following the Iraqi legislative election of January 2005 and the formation of the Iraqi Transitional Government he was replaced by Narmin Othman.
Amin's wife,Safia Taleb Ali al-Suhail,is a prominent female Iraq politician who was appointed as Ambassador to Egypt in 2004 and elected to the Council of Representatives of Iraq in December 2005. [12]
In February 2006,Amin was asked,with two other Muslim former politicians,to select the board of directors for the Broader Middle East and North Africa Initiative's "Foundation for the Future". [13]
Ansar al-Islam in Kurdistan,simply called Ansar al-Islam,is a Kurdish Islamist militant and separatist group. It was established in northern Iraq around the Kurdistan Region by Kurdish Islamists who were former Taliban and former Al-Qaeda volunteers,which were coming back from Afghanistan in 2001 after the Fall of Kabul. Its motive is to establish an Islamic state around the Kurdistan region and to protect Kurdish people from other armed insurgent groups. It imposed strict Sharia in villages it controlled around Byara near the Iranian border.
Iraq under the Arab Socialist Ba'ath Party saw severe violations of human rights. Secret police,state terrorism,torture,mass murder,genocide,ethnic cleansing,rape,deportations,extrajudicial killings,forced disappearances,assassinations,chemical warfare,and the destruction of the Mesopotamian marshes were some of the methods Saddam Hussein and the country's Ba'athist government used to maintain control. Saddam committed crimes of aggression during the Iran–Iraq War and the Gulf War,which violated the Charter of the United Nations. The total number of deaths and disappearances related to repression during this period is unknown,but is estimated to be at least 250,000 to 290,000 according to Human Rights Watch,with the great majority of those occurring as a result of the Anfal genocide in 1988 and the suppression of the uprisings in Iraq in 1991. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International issued regular reports of widespread imprisonment and torture.
The following is a timeline of major events during the Iraq War,following the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Human rights in post-invasion Iraq have been the subject of concerns and controversies since the 2003 U.S. invasion. Concerns have been expressed about conduct by insurgents,the U.S.-led coalition forces and the Iraqi government. The U.S. is investigating several allegations of violations of international and internal standards of conduct in isolated incidents by its own forces and contractors. The UK is also conducting investigations of alleged human rights abuses by its forces. War crime tribunals and criminal prosecution of the numerous crimes by insurgents are likely years away. In late February 2009,the U.S. State Department released a report on the human rights situation in Iraq,looking back on the prior year (2008).
Abu Ghraib prison was a prison complex in Abu Ghraib,Iraq,located 32 kilometers (20 mi) west of Baghdad. Abu Ghraib prison was opened in the 1950s and served as a maximum-security prison. From the 1970s,the prison was used by Saddam Hussein to hold political prisoners and later the United States to hold Iraqi prisoners. It developed a reputation for torture and extrajudicial killing,and was closed in 2014.
Abu Ghraib is a city in the Baghdad Governorate of Iraq,located just west of Baghdad's city center,or northwest of Baghdad International Airport. It has a population of 189,000 (2003). The old road to Jordan passes through Abu Ghraib. The government of Iraq created the city and Abu Ghraib District in 1944.
During the early stages of the Iraq War,members of the United States Army and the Central Intelligence Agency committed a series of human rights violations and war crimes against detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. These abuses included physical abuse,sexual humiliation,physical and psychological torture,and rape,as well as the killing of Manadel al-Jamadi and the desecration of his body. The abuses came to public attention with the publication of photographs by CBS News in April 2004,causing shock and outrage and receiving widespread condemnation within the United States and internationally.
Hussain Ibrahim Saleh al-Shahristani is an Iraqi politician who served in different cabinet posts,including as Iraq's Minister of Higher Education.
The Iraqi Interim Government was created by the United States and its coalition allies as a caretaker government to govern Iraq until the drafting of the new constitution following the National Assembly election conducted on January 30,2005. The Iraqi Interim Government itself took the place of the Coalition Provisional Authority on June 28,2004,and was replaced by the Iraqi Transitional Government on May 3,2005.
The Iraqi High Tribunal (IHT),formerly the Iraqi Special Tribunal and sometimes referred to as the Supreme Iraqi Criminal Tribunal,is a body established under Iraqi national law to try Iraqi nationals or residents accused of genocide,crimes against humanity,war crimes or other serious crimes committed between 1968 and 2003. It organized the trial of Saddam Hussein and other members of his Ba'ath Party regime.
The Anfal campaign was a counterinsurgency operation which was carried out by Ba'athist Iraq from February to September 1988 during the Iraqi–Kurdish conflict at the end of the Iran–Iraq War. The campaign targeted rural Kurds because its purpose was to eliminate Kurdish rebel groups and Arabize strategic parts of the Kirkuk Governorate. The Ba’athist regime committed atrocities on the local Kurdish population,mostly civilians.
The trial of Saddam Hussein was the trial of the deposed President of Iraq Saddam Hussein by the Iraqi Interim Government for crimes against humanity during his time in office.
Kurdistan Region is a semi-autonomous administrative entity within the Republic of Iraq. It comprises four Kurdish-majority divisions of Arab-majority Iraq:the Erbil Governorate,the Sulaymaniyah Governorate,the Duhok Governorate,and Halabja Governorate. The KRI is bordered by Iran to the east,by Turkey to the north,and by Syria to the west. It does not govern all of Iraqi Kurdistan,and lays claim to the disputed territories of northern Iraq;these territories have a predominantly non-Arab population and were subject to the Ba'athist Arabization campaigns throughout the late 20th century. Though the KRI's autonomy was realized in 1992,one year after Iraq's defeat in the Gulf War,these northern territories remain contested between the Kurdistan Regional Government and the Government of Iraq to the present day. In light of the dispute,the KRI's constitution declares the city of Kirkuk as the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan. However,the KRI does not control Kirkuk,and the Kurdistan Region Parliament is based in Erbil. In 2014,when the Syria-based Islamic State began their Northern Iraq offensive and invaded the country,the Iraqi Armed Forces retreated from most of the disputed territories. The KRI's Peshmerga then entered and took control of them for the duration of the War in Iraq (2013–2017). In October 2017,following the defeat of the Islamic State,the Iraqi Armed Forces attacked the Peshmerga and reasserted control over the disputed territories.
Roj Nouri Shaweis 15 –1947 February 2021) was a Kurdish politician who served as the first Prime Minister of the KDP-controlled part of Kurdistan. After the invasion of Iraq that overthrew the Saddam Hussein regime,he served as one of Iraq's two vice presidents in the interim government established in 2004. Subsequently,he was a Deputy Prime Minister in the government headed by Ibrahim al-Jaafari and later held the same post under Nouri al-Maliki. He also served as Deputy Prime Minister under Haider Al-Abadi from 8 September 2014 to 9 August 2015. Previously,he served as speaker of the Iraqi Kurdistan National Assembly in the Kurdish autonomous region and was a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party.
In the runup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq,press stories appeared in the United Kingdom and United States of a plastic shredder or wood chipper into which Saddam and Qusay Hussein fed opponents of their Baathist rule. These stories attracted worldwide attention and boosted support for military action,in stories with titles such as "See men shredded,then say you don't back war". A year later,it was determined there was not enough evidence to support the existence of such a machine.
The 1991 Iraqi uprisings were ethnic and religious uprisings against Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq that were led by Shia Arabs and Kurds. The uprisings lasted from March to April 1991 after a ceasefire following the end of the Gulf War. The mostly uncoordinated insurgency was fueled by the perception that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had become vulnerable to regime change. This perception of weakness was largely the result of the outcome of the Iran–Iraq War and the Gulf War,both of which occurred within a single decade and devastated the population and economy of Iraq.
Safia Taleb Ali al-Suhail is an Iraqi politician who currently serves as an Ambassador of Iraq to Saudi Arabia,having previously served as the ambassador to Italy and Jordan. She was appointed the first female ambassador of Iraq in Oman in 2004,and she held important political and diplomatic positions in the country,including:a member of the Iraqi parliament for two parliamentary sessions on the capital Baghdad in the period 2005-2014,and the head of the Europe Department in the Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2014-2016,and the ambassador of the Republic of Iraq. To the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan in the period 2016-2019 ”,She was a former member of the Council of Representatives of Iraq who was elected in December 2005 for the secular Iraqi National List.
The status of women in Iraq has been affected by wars,Islamic law,the Constitution of Iraq,cultural traditions,and secularism. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi women are war widows,and Women's rights organizations struggle against harassment and intimidation while they work to promote improvements to women's status in the law,in education,the workplace,and many other spheres of Iraqi life. Abusive practices such as honor killings and forced marriages remain problematic.
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