Martyrs’ Affairs Committee commemorate World Genocide Remembrance Day

Kurdistan Parliament’s Martyrs’ Affairs, Genocide and Political Prisoners Committee commemorated World Genocide Remembrance Day on 9 December. 

At a press conference in Parliament, the committee issued this statement to the Kurdistan Regional Government, the Iraqi Federal Government, and the international community on the genocide against the Kurds:

The United Nations General Assembly has designated 9th December as the International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of Genocide. We commemorate all the massacres and crimes that have been committed against our nation, to honour the memory of the victims and to prevent such crimes from happening again. 

Kurds and all the communities of Kurdistan have been subjected to genocide continuously throughout our history. Tragically, previous Iraqi regimes have committed genocide by various means against the Kurdish people. 182,000 civilians were killed in the Anfal campaign, 5,000 civilians were killed in the chemical attack on Halabja, 8,000 boys and men of the Barzani tribe were abducted and disappeared, and 10,000 of Kurdish Failis are missing.

We call on the international community to recognize all of those crimes as acts of genocide and to prevent these crimes from being committed again, against Kurds or any nation.

We also call on the Iraqi federal government to fulfill its legal responsibilities to the victims of these acts of genocide, to compensate the victims, and to bring the criminals to justice.

We also call on the KRG to work with the Iraqi federal government, to impel the international community to recognize these crimes as genocide.

We honour the memory of all those who lost their lives in acts of genocide in Kurdistan and elsewhere in the world.