The video outraged Kurds as they strongly condemned the incident, some complaining that “chauvinistic” attitudes toward them persist in the country, decades after they suffered anti-Kurdish genocidal campaigns.
Soon after the video circulated on social media networks, Governor of Muthanna Ahmed Menfi released a statement officially apologizing for the incident.
He stated that the officer’s actions were those “of an individual” and did not reflect the governorate’s “attitude and thoughts toward the Kurds.”
“The officer is currently detained until further investigation into the matter,” Menfi added.
The Chief of Staff of the Kurdistan Region Presidency’s office, Fawzi Hariri, on Wednesday thanked Menfi for his apology and all those who stood against the act.
“We assert that such behavior reflects a lack of understanding and disrespect for the Constitution of Iraq, and that such individual actions will not be a cause for creating tensions and illegal reactions anywhere. Everyone must maintain the spirit of coexistence and tolerance, respect the Constitution, and the constitutional rights of all components,” Hariri said
The incident came hours before the 36th anniversary of the genocide that took place on July 31, 1983, against the Barzani tribe. The Ba’athist regime in Iraq at the time transfered around 8,000 members of the Barzani tribe, including men, women, and children, to deserts in southern Iraq, executing them indiscriminately before burying them in mass graves.
On July 23, a mass grave was unearthed in Iraq’s Samawa city that contained the remains of Kurdish civilians buried alive during the former Iraqi regime’s Anfal campaign.
In the 1980s onward, the Iraqi regime under Saddam Hussein undertook a campaign of genocide against the Kurds in the north. Led by the infamous Ali Hassan al-Majid, also known as “Chemical Ali,” the operation resulted in the deaths of up to 182,000 ethnic Kurds.
A large number of people, including women and children, were forcefully displaced and transferred to camps in southern Iraq, where the government eventually killed them and consigned them to mass graves, burying others alive in the desert.
Editing by Nadia Riva