11-03-2010The conference is chaired by Rt Hon Ann Clwyd MP, Prime Minister’s Special Envoy on Human Rights in Iraq, Dave Anderson MP, President of the Labour Friends of Iraq, Eric Joyce MP, Vice-Chair of the APPG on Genocide Prevention.
On March 16th, 1988, the city of Halabja in Iraqi Kurdistan was bombed with chemical bombs, in which 5,000 people died, most of them women and children, as a result of the chemical attack and it has been estimated that a further 10,000 people were injured or suffered long-term illnesses. Still today, victims of the chemical weapons used in the region during that time continue to suffer decades after their exposure.
The attack on Halabja took place during Saddam Hussein’s infamous Anfal Campaign; a genocidal campaign designed to annihilate the Kurdish population in Iraq with details kept in thousands of Ba’ath regime documents. From 1986 to 1989, Saddam Hussein and his Ba’athist Regime attacked many villages and towns with chemical weapons.
The seminar will include eye-witnesses, journalists, international experts, political activists and Kurdistan representatives about Anfal and discuss how Iraq and the Kurdistan Region can move forward so that such atrocities are never repeated and the genocide in Kurdistan becomes internationally recognised.
