The heritage of the Ba’ath-Regime: Approximately a million citizens of Iraq of all national groups and religions fell victim to Saddam

The Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein now having been brought before a criminal court in Iraq, the Society for Threatened Peoples (Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker – GfbV) wants to call to public attention the heritage of the Ba’ath Regime and its leader. Approximately one million citizens of Iraq of all national groups and religions became their victims.

In Northern Iraq alone, over a period of 35 years, about half a million Kurds – including Christians of Assyrian-Aramaens origin, Yezidi and Turkmens were put to death. 182.000 of them were killed during the so-called Anfal attack in 1987/88: they either died a horrible death by poison gas attacks, or, in case they survived, they were killed by special squads in mass shootings. 8.000 of the dead were men and youths of the Barzani tribe. The person responsible for the Anfal attack, Ali Hassan Al-Majid, one of Saddam Hussein’s cousins, admitted to 100.000 victims. The administration, the army and the individual squads have each kept detailed records of the genocide. 14 tons of material were reviewed and analyzed in the United States by the human rights organization Human Rights Watch.

Shi’ite organizations in Southern Iraq mourn 300.000 dead since 1991, among them 9.000 religious leaders. The figures are confirmed by human rights activists. After the systematic draining of the delta marshes of Euphrate and Tigris, approximately 500.000 Ma´adan were expelled. Tens of thousands were killed during bomb attacks, by execution, and when fleeing their homes.

As early as the mid-seventies the Ba’ath party drove nearly the complete Jewish community, which had already dwindled to a mere 3.000 persons, from the country, after years of public executions and persecutions.

Representatives of all opposition parties, intellectuals, and supporters of workers’ and women’s groups became victims of massacres and individual or mass executions. Countless emigrants were killed by Iraqi agents in their host country. Thousands of members of Saddam’s own regime, including diplomats, members of the secret services, officers, and even members of his Republican Guards and his family were liquidated.

The Society for Threatened Peoples criticizes that the Western European countries, the United States, the (former) Soviet Union and its satellite states, in particular the GDR, were responsible for making these crimes possible by supplying weapons and military know-how to Iraq, and also by entertaining close diplomatic, economic and political ties with Iraq. 86 companies from the Federal Republic of Germany contributed heavily towards the setting up of the chemical weapons industry in Iraq.