A 14-year-old boy was killed when security guards fired into a massive crowd of Kurds protesting local corruption in Halabja on Thursday on the anniversary of Saddam Hussein’s gas attack on the Kurdish town.
About 7 000 demonstrators, including relatives of the 5 000 victims of the March 17, 1988 aerial poison gas attack on Halabja, set up road blocks to prevent local officials from entering the town and then set fire to a memorial built to honour the dead.
“We’ve had enough of these liars and we don’t want to see them in our town,” said Rizin Walid, a university student.
Most of the demonstrators were students from universities around the Kurdish region home for vacation and they expressed widespread anger over the lack of services and reconstruction in the impoverished town.
After blocking the roads into town with large rocks and burning tires, the mob converged on the memorial to the tragedy where a number of local officials were speaking and clashed with security guards who opened fire on the crowd, killing 14-year-old Kurda Ahmed and wounding six.
The site was eventually overrun by the mob and the museum and meeting hall of the memorial were set on fire.
“We burned this building because the local officials are making a lot of money from international organisations due to the attack against our town and pocketing it, we don’t see a penny of that money,” said Cardo Hassan, one of the demonstrators.
Dissatisfaction over local government, which is widespread in Kurdish areas, is compounded in Halabja by the perception that the government’s promises of compensation for the relatives of the victims of the gassing have not been honoured.
The demonstrators marched through the city chanting “we don’t want any government officials here” and waved banners saying “you have done nothing for the city” and “all government officials are corrupt”.
“Until now the government hasn’t given anything to our city — every anniversary the officials come and give many promises yet they do nothing. They are liars,” said Hamza Ali, a university student who lost his father and brother in the attack.
In the aftermath of the attacks, the people of Halabja have shown lingering effects of the poison gases, including a higher frequency of congenital defects, respiratory problems and cancer.
“It is our right to demonstrate, in the 18 years since the attack, nothing has been done for this town by the Kurdish authorities,” said Jaro Ali, a female student.
Her view was seconded by Qassem Laiq Salah, a 30 year old labourer who lost five members of his family in the attack.
“Halabja officials are the most corrupt in the entire Kurdish region,” he spat.
A member of the local government, which is administered by the Sulaimaniyah-based Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of two Kurdish parties controlling the region, said he was shocked by the students’ behavior.
“We are surprised by this demonstration and the fact that they burned down the memorial which is a symbol of the entire town,” he said. He did admit that only two days before a student delegation had presented a list of grievances to Omar Fatah, the head of the local government.
“He promised to address their demands,” said Mohammed.
The gassing of Halabja took place during the former Iraqi regime’s Anfal campaign, a systematic attack on the Kurdish population in the north of the country between 1986 and 1989 which left about 180 000 dead and 4 500 villages destroyed.
In December 2005, a court in The Hague trying a Dutch trader on charges of selling chemicals to Saddam’s regime in the 1980s, had to decide whether the Anfal campaign, and specifically Halabja, amounted to genocide.
The court concluded that according to the principles laid down in the 1948 Geneva Convention, the events amounted to genocide against the Kurdish people.
Saddam, who is currently on trial in Iraq for the massacre of Shi’ites from the village of Dujail after an assassination attempt in 1982, is expected to next face charges of crimes against humanity over the Anfal campaign. – AFP