Parliament marks International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime
Kurdistan Parliament Speaker Dr. Rewaz Faiq on 7 December 2022 led a ceremony marking the International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime.
Deputy Speaker Dr. Hemin Hawrami, Secretary Muna Kahveci, MPs, staff and the directors of martyrs’ monuments of different cities of Kurdistan Region participated in the ceremony.
The ceremony began with a minute’s silence in remembrance of the victims of genocide everywhere, and in particular the victims of the Anfal campaign and all the martyrs of Kurdistan.
The chair of Parliament’s Genocide, Martyrs and Political Prisoners Committee, Sawsan Muhammad Mirkhan (KDP), made a speech in which she said, "History has shown that the Kurds have always been a peace-loving people, and have always believed in peaceful coexistence between different nations and ethnic and religious communities. But in the last century several campaigns were perpetrated to cleanse and occupy them. The most well-known and heinous were the Anfal campaign and the chemical bombardments, where women, the elderly and children were not spared, nor plants, animals or villages. Unfortunately these crimes have not been formally recognized by the international community, even though by all legal, religious and logical standards they were crimes against humanity and acts of genocide.”
Ms. Sawsan Muhammad Mirkhan continued, "While we commemorate these tragedies, the victims of the Anfal have not yet been compensated, and the Iraqi Government has not been obliged to give compensation.”
She called on Kurdistani MPs in the Iraqi Parliament and the Kurdistan Regional Government to use legal and diplomatic means to oblige the Iraqi Government to compensate the victims, and to allocate a special budget for the areas where the genocide was committed.
The chair of the genocide committee pointed to the dangers facing the Kurdish people in the absence of an international guarantee to prevent the repetition of the genocide.
She said, "Only a few years ago, before the eyes of the international community, the US, Europe and our neighboring countries, our people from different communities and religions again suffered the crime of genocide, in Sinjar."
Ms. Mirkhan ended her speech by calling on the international community to recognize the genocide against the Kurds.
The ceremony ended with lighting of candles in remembrance of the victims of genocide.
Note: The International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime is 9 December. For practical reasons Parliament held the ceremony two days earlier.
