Human rights in Ba'athist Iraq

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Hangings in Saddam-era Iraq Baathist executions.png
Hangings in Saddam-era Iraq

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, [1] 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.

Contents

Documented human rights violations 1979–2003

Human rights organizations have documented government-approved executions, acts of torture and rape for decades since Saddam Hussein came to power in 1979 until his fall in 2003.

Mass grave. Iraqmassgrave3.jpg
Mass grave.
Mass grave of Anfal victims Iraqi mass grave.jpg
Mass grave of Anfal victims

'Saddam's Dirty Dozen'

Depiction of torture (falanga) at the Amna Suraka museum in Sulaimaniyya t`dhyb lm`tqlyn l'krd qbl qtlhm torturing the kurdish prisoner before killing them.jpg
Depiction of torture (falanga) at the Amna Suraka museum in Sulaimaniyya

According to officials of the United States State Department, many human rights abuses in Saddam Hussein's Iraq were largely carried out in person or by the orders of Saddam Hussein and eleven other people. The term "Saddam's Dirty Dozen" was coined in October 2002 [17] (from a novel by E.M. Nathanson, later adapted as a film directed by Robert Aldrich) and used by US officials to describe this group. [18] Most members of the group held high positions in the Iraqi government and membership went all the way from Saddam's personal guard to Saddam's sons. The list was used by the Bush Administration to help argue that the 2003 Iraq war was against Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party leadership, rather than against the Iraqi people. The members are: [17]

Other atrocities

Fifty-seven boxes were recently returned to the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya in Zeit trucks—large Russian military vehicles—by the Iraqi government authorities. Each box contained a dead child, eyes gouged out and ashen white, apparently drained of blood. The families were not given their children, were forced to accept a communal grave, and then had to pay 150 dinars for the burial. [19]

The destruction of Shi'ite religious shrines by the former government has been compared "to the leveling of cities in the Second World War, and the damage to the shrines [of Hussein and Abbas ] was more serious than that which had been done to many European cathedrals." [20] After the 1983–88 genocide, some 1 million Kurds were allowed to resettle in "model villages". According to a U.S. Senate staff report, these villages "were poorly constructed, had minimal sanitation and water, and provided few employment opportunities for the residents. Some, if not most, were surrounded by barbed wire, and Kurds could enter or leave only with difficulty." [21] After the establishment of republican rule in Iraq, enormous numbers of Iraqis fled the country to escape political repression by Abd al-Karim Qasim and his successors, including Saddam Hussein; by 2001, it was estimated that "Iraqi emigrants number more than 3 million (leaving a population of 23 million inside the country)." [22] Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times commented: "Police in other countries use torture, after all, but there are credible reports that Saddam's police cut out tongues and use electric drills. Other countries gouge out the eyes of dissidents; Saddam's interrogators gouged out the eyes of hundreds of children to get their parents to talk." [23]

Number of victims

In November 2004, Human Rights Watch estimated 250,000 to 290,000 Iraqis were killed or disappeared by the regime of Saddam Hussein including: [1]

The estimate of 290,000 "disappeared" and presumed killed includes the following: more than 100,000 Kurds killed during the 1987-88 Anfal campaign and lead-up to it; between 50,000 and 70,000 Shia arrested in the 1980s and held indefinitely without charge, who remain unaccounted for today; an estimated 8,000 males of the Barzani clan removed from resettlement camps in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1983; 10,000 or more males separated from Feyli Kurdish families deported to Iran in the 1980s; an estimated 50,000 opposition activists, including Communists and other leftists, Kurds and other minorities, and out-of-favor Ba'athists, arrested and "disappeared" in the 1980s and 1990s; some 30,000 Iraqi Shia men rounded up after the abortive March 1991 uprising and not heard from since; hundreds of Shia clerics and their students arrested and "disappeared" after 1991; several thousand Marsh Arabs who disappeared after being taken into custody during military operations in the southern marshlands; and those executed in detention-in some years several thousand-in so-called "prison cleansing" campaigns.

There is a feeling that at least three million Iraqis are watching the eleven million others.

— "A European diplomat," quoted in The New York Times , April 3, 1984. [24]

A January 2003 The New York Times article by John Fisher Burns similarly states that "the number of those 'disappeared' into the hands of the secret police, never to be heard from again, could be 200,000" and compared Saddam to Joseph Stalin, while acknowledging that "Even on a proportional basis, [Stalin's] crimes far surpass Mr. Hussein's." [25] The 1988 Al-Anfal campaign resulted in the death of 50,000-100,000 Kurds (although Kurdish sources have cited a higher figure of 182,000), while 25,000-100,000 civilians and rebels were killed during the suppression of the 1991 uprisings. [11] [26] In addition, 4,000 prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison were reportedly executed in a particularly large 1984 purge. [27] Far fewer Iraqis are known to have been executed during other years of Saddam's rule. For example, "Amnesty International reported that in 1981 over 350 people were officially executed in Iraq ... the Committee Against Repression in Iraq gives biographic particulars on 798 executions (along with 264 killings of unknown persons, and 428 biographies of unsentenced detainees and disappeared persons)." Kanan Makiya cautions that a focus on the death toll obscures the full extent of "the terror inside Iraq," which was largely the product of the pervasive secret police and systematic use of torture. [24]

See also

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References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 "Iraq: State of the Evidence". Human Rights Watch. 3 November 2004. Archived from the original on 2021-05-20.
  2. ↑ "UN condemns Iraq on human rights". BBC News. 2002-04-19. Retrieved 2016-12-11.
  3. ↑ "JURIST - Dateline". Archived from the original on 25 June 2010. Retrieved 30 October 2017.
  4. ↑ "From Crisis to Catastrophe: the situation of minorities in Iraq" (PDF): 5. Archived from the original (PDF) on 30 August 2020. Retrieved 23 May 2017.{{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  5. ↑ "Iraqi Kurds Seek Recognition of Genocide by Saddam". Al-Monitor (in Hebrew). 8 March 2013. Retrieved 23 May 2017.
  6. ↑ "جريمة إبادة الكرد الفيليين … والصمت الحكومي والتجاهل الرسمي عن إستذكار هذه الفاجعة الآليمة ! !" . Retrieved 23 May 2017.
  7. ↑ Jaffar Al-Faylee, Zaki (2010). Tareekh Al-Kurd Al-Faylyoon. Beirut. pp. 485, 499–501.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  8. ↑ Al-Hakeem, Dr. Sahib (2003). Untold stories of more than 4000 women raped killed and tortured in Iraq, the country of mass graves. pp. 489–492.
  9. 1 2 "Whatever Happened To The Iraqi Kurds?". Hrw.org. Retrieved 2009-09-25.
  10. ↑ "Iraq: 'Disappearances' – the agony continues". Web.amnesty.org. 2005-07-30. Archived from the original on 2007-10-27. Retrieved 2009-09-25.
  11. 1 2 "ENDLESS TORMENT, The 1991 Uprising in Iraq And Its Aftermath". Hrw.org. Retrieved 2016-08-21. An independent French organization called The Truth About the Gulf War reported in June 1991 after a trip to Iraq that authorities were vague about the toll of the uprising, but 'the figures given for those killed, most of them in southern Iraq and the overwhelming majority of them civilians, ranged from 25,000 to 100,000 dead.' ... The environmental organization Greenpeace estimates that 30,000 Iraqi civilians, including rebels, and 5,000 Iraqi soldiers died during the uprisings as a result of the clashes and killings, while acknowledging that 'little authoritative information is available.' ... A demographer at the U.S. Census Bureau, Beth Osborne Daponte, also arrived at the figure of 30,000 civilian deaths during the uprising.
  12. ↑ "Human Rights Watch, Iraq archive". Hrw.org. Retrieved 2009-09-25.
  13. ↑ www.qha.com.tr https://www.qha.com.tr/amp/turk-dunyasi/31-agustos-1996-saddam-rejimi-erbil-de-turkmenleri-katletti-477680 . Retrieved 2024-03-21.{{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  14. ↑ Jordan, Eason (April 11, 2003). "The News We (CNN) Kept To Ourselves". The New York Times. (requires login)
  15. ↑ "Mass Grave Discovery In Iraq Could Fuel Divisions". NPR . Retrieved 6 July 2016.
  16. ↑ Einolf, Christopher J. (2021). "How torturers are made: Evidence from Saddam Hussein's Iraq". Journal of Human Rights. 20 (4): 381–395. doi:10.1080/14754835.2021.1932442. ISSN   1475-4835. S2CID   237538201.
  17. 1 2 3 Harris, Paul; Heslop, Katy (16 March 2003). "Iraq's dirty dozen". The Guardian. Retrieved 30 October 2017.
  18. ↑ Weber, Bruce (7 April 2016). "E.M. Nathanson, Author of 'The Dirty Dozen,' Dies at 88". The New York Times. Retrieved 30 October 2017.
  19. ↑ Pryce-Jones, David (1989-01-01). "Self-Determination, Arab-Style". Commentary . Archived from the original on 2016-09-27. Retrieved 2016-09-27.
  20. ↑ Milton Viorst, "Report from Baghdad," The New Yorker, June 24, 1991, p. 72.
  21. ↑ "Kurdistan in the Time of Saddam Hussein," p. 15. See also "Civil War in Iraq," Staff Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations of the U.S. Senate, May 1991, pp. 8-9.
  22. ↑ Ghabra, Shafeeq N. (Summer 2001). "Iraq's Culture of Violence". Middle East Quarterly . 8 (3): 39–49.
  23. ↑ Kristof, Nicholas (2002-03-26). "Try Suing Saddam". The New York Times . Retrieved 2017-02-15.
  24. 1 2 Makiya, Kanan (1998). Republic of Fear: The Politics of Modern Iraq, Updated Edition. University of California Press. pp. 62–65. ISBN   9780520921245.
  25. ↑ Noting that the Iran–Iraq War cost approximately 800,000 lives on both sides and that—while "surely a gross exaggeration"—Iraq estimated there were 100,000 deaths resulting from U.S. bombing in the Gulf War, Burns concludes: "A million dead Iraqis, in war and through terror, may not be far from the mark." See Burns, John F. (2003-01-26). "How Many People Has Hussein Killed?". The New York Times. Retrieved 2020-10-05. Also writing in The New York Times, Dexter Filkins appeared to echo but misrepresent Burns's remark in October 2007: "[Saddam] murdered as many as a million of his people, many with poison gas. ... His unprovoked invasion of Iran is estimated to have left another million people dead." See Filkins, Dexter (2007-10-07). "Regrets Only?". The New York Times. Retrieved 2016-12-04. In turn, Commentary writer Arthur L. Herman accused Saddam of "kill[ing] as many as two million of his own people" in July 2008. See Herman, Arthur L. (2008-07-01). "Why Iraq Was Inevitable". Commentary. Archived from the original on 2016-12-20. Retrieved 2016-12-04.
  26. ↑ Johns, Dave (2006-01-24). "The Crimes of Saddam Hussein: The Anfal Campaign". PBS. Retrieved 2016-08-21.
  27. ↑ Chauhan, Sharad S. (2003). War on Iraq. APH Publishing. p. 65. ISBN   9788176484787.

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