ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The President of the Kurdistan Region. Nechirvan Barzani, on Monday, the International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide released a statement, condemning the terrible crime, of which the Kurds have been a prominent victim.
In September 2015, the United Nations General Assembly established December 9 as the International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and the Prevention of this Crime.
President Barzani, in his statement on Twitter, said: “We pay tribute to the victims of genocide in Kurdistan and the world.”
The president also called on the international community to do everything in its power to prevent the horrible act of genocide from taking place and urged them to hold anyone with a hand in genocide accountable for their crimes.
“We ask the international community to work tirelessly to prevent genocide and bring the culprits to justice,” he said.
The people of the Kurdistan Region suffered a terrible genocide at the hands of the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein. That regime conducted a brutal military operation, which it called “the Anfal campaign,” over a three-year period: from 1986 to 1989. It was a military operation that included the use of chemical weapons and aimed to exterminate the Kurdish population in Iraq.
The Anfal Campaign resulted in the killing and forced disappearance of at least 180,000 people. Huge numbers of people, including women and children, were forcefully displaced and transferred to camps in southern Iraq, where they were killed, consigned to mass graves or even buried them alive in the desert.
The Kurdistan Region has memorialized that dark chapter in the history of the Kurds, establishing April 14 as a day of mourning and commemoration for the lives lost and those still affected by the terrible events.
Editing by Laurie Mylroie