APPG Kurdistan

London, UK – (KRG.org) – Today the British parliament unanimously recognised the Kurdish genocide in Iraq while the government and opposition pledged to work together do more on acknowledging the genocide even though the government does not formally recognise it.

The formal recognition by the British parliament comes after a year-long campaign to raise awareness of the genocide in Britain and to gather signatures for a petition calling on Britain to formally acknowledge that the crimes committed against the Kurds amounted to genocide. Almost 28,000 people have signed the petition so far.

Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani welcomed the decision and thanked those who campaigned and the MPs who spoke in the debate. He said, “The British parliament’s recognition of the genocide follows similar acknowledgements by the Norwegian and Swedish parliaments last year. We thank them all and hope that this will inspire our friends and friends of human rights and freedom in other countries to do the same. We must all stand together against tyranny, wherever it may appear.”

The Kurdistan Regional Government’s Minister of Martyrs and Anfal Affairs Aram Ahmed said, “This was a milestone for the Kurdish people, especially the victims of the genocide, and we thank the British parliament for their support for those who suffered so much. The parliament’s decision and the government’s positive attitude means we are a step closer to wider international recognition and justice.”

Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, the KRG’s High Representative to the UK, said, “The recognition today was a major and historic step forward for all Kurds. Parliament unanimously recognised the genocide. The British government Minister for the Middle East was so moved by the passionate advocacy of the case for recognising the genocide that he moved away from his prepared speech and committed the government to work with the Labour opposition to work out how the British Government could make its position on the genocide more positive. This is a very unusual development. We must thank the Kurdish community and all those who signed the petition, and the members of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on the Kurdistan Region who spoke so compellingly in the debate.”

The debate was attended by the Minister, the High Representative, the chief of mission at the Iraqi Embassy Dr Muhiadin Hussein and over 100 members of the Kurdish community and British friends of Kurdistan.

Nadhim Zahawi, the first Kurdish-born British MP, put forward the motion that the British parliament recognises the Kurdish genocide and will encourage governments, the United Nations and European Union to do the same. He began the debate by speaking of his own family’s flight from Iraq for fear of being killed by the Baathist regime.

He and other members of parliament from the two main political parties, Conservative and Labour, spoke of the crimes committed against the Kurds over several decades, the chemical bombardment of Halabja, the disappearance of the Barzanis and the Anfal campaign in which 182,000 were killed.

They all called for recognition of the crimes committed against the Kurds as genocide. They also highlighted the good relationship between the Kurdistan Region and the UK and the Kurdish people’s hospitality and optimism. They pointed out that other European parliaments and the Iraqi courts had already recognised the genocide formally.

Ian Lucas, the opposition’s Shadow Middle East Minister, echoed the sentiments of the speakers and called for the MPs, the government, opposition and KRG to work together on the government’s position on the issue of recognition. The British government in February said that no one suffered more than the Kurds in Iraq but that it was not up to governments to recognise genocides, it was up to the international courts.

However, following the passionate speeches by several MPs, Alistair Burt, the Middle East Minister, said during the debate that the government will work with the opposition party to collectively find a way to do more on acknowledging the genocide even though the government does not formally recognise it.

He also spoke about the strong relations between the Kurdistan Regional Government and Britain, his two visits to the region and the many visits to the UK by Kurdish officials. He said he had listened to the debate carefully which included moving advocacy from MPs. He said he had great sympathy with the motion of the debate and the government would find the parliamentary debate helpful.

The motion was then put to a vote and was unanimously carried.

The speakers included Meg Munn, Robert Halfon, David Anderson, Ann Clwyd, Jeremy Corbyn, Mike Gapes, David Lammy, Stephen Metcalfe and Bob Stewart.

I have called for this debate to recognise the genocide committed against the Kurdish population of Iraq for a number of reasons.

I firmly believe that as the horrors of the holocaust pass beyond living memory there is a danger that we drop our guard. That we believe such terrible events are safely sealed in the history books and that they could never happen again.

But sadly the truth is that they already have, genocide did not end in 1945. We have seen this in the Srebrenica genocide of 1995 which saw 8,000 Bosnians murdered, the Rwandan genocide in 1994 where 500,000 people were killed in just 100 days and the campaigns of persecution unleashed by Saddam Hussein against the Kurdish population of Iraq ending in the 1990s.

During these years over a million Iraqi’s ‘disappeared’, most presumed dead, murdered by Government forces. In its final stages alone, the 1988 ‘Al Anfal Campaign’ over 182,000 Kurds are believed to have died. Thousands of men, women and children systematically murdered. All in all over 2,000 Kurdish villages and towns were destroyed including the town of Qla Dizeh which along with its 70,000 inhabitants was literally wiped off the map.

Yet while the terrible crimes in Kosovo and Rwanda have officially been recognised as genocide, those in Iraqi Kurdistan have not. No International Criminal tribunal has been convened to investigate the extermination of the Kurdish people. There has been no international campaign to bring those responsible for these atrocities to justice. The British government have not formally stated that the actions of Saddam and his lieutenants constituted genocide.

These unprovoked attacks also included the unspeakable horrors of the 1988 gas attacks on Halabja. Here five thousand civilians died in incredible agony and estimates suggest a further 7,000 were injured or suffered long term illness. Saddam had unleashed all the resources of a modern, industralised state on the Kurdish population of his own country. His forces used chemical weapons, concentration camps and aerial bombardment, all methods that were last seen during the Second World War. If it was not genocide then one has to ask what would be?

That is why I have called this debate, and why within it I will call for the Government to act on and state what is already clear; that these crimes were an act of genocide. Only then can they be treated as such by the international community.

By Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, High Representative to the UK Kurdistan Regional Government, Iraq

MPs in the House of Commons will today (Thursday February 28) take the unusual step of discussing an Iraq related issue in which it will be agreed that Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction did indeed exist and were in fact used.

The debate is not about the rights and wrongs of the intervention in Iraq in 2003 but a motion to formally recognise the genocide against the Kurds in Iraq which began 50 years and whose climax was Saddam’s use of chemical weapons to murder 5,000 civilians at Halabja in 1988.

Last year, the British-Kurdish MP Nadhim Zahawi launched an e-petition urging formal recognition by Britain. It said that recognition would enable Kurdish people, many in the UK, to achieve justice for their considerable loss. It would also enable Britain, the home of democracy and freedom, to signal support for international conventions and human rights.

It detailed how this genocide had, as with so many other genocides, begun with piecemeal measures before becoming meticulously murderous. The genocide began around 1963 with the arabisation of villages around Kirkuk, now a hotly contested oil-rich city sadly beset by terrorist attacks designed to push the area’s Kurds, Arabs, Turkmen and Christians into civil war.

The genocide involved the deportation and disappearances of Shia Faylee Kurds in the 1970s-80s, the abduction and murder of 8,000 men and boys as young as 12 from the Barzani clan in 1983, and then the deadliest part of the campaign, including Halabja and which killed up to 200,000 Kurds in the late 1980s through poison gas attacks and the mass disappearance of men, women and children.
Overall, hundreds of thousands of innocent people perished, families were torn apart and 4,500 villages were destroyed between 1976 and 1988 undermining the potential of Iraqi Kurdistan’s agricultural resources.
Yet we have found during the campaign around the e-petition that few in Britain now remember or know about these events. Many people only see Iraq through the prism of what we call the liberation of Iraq in 2003 but which is deeply and bitterly contested in Britain and more widely.

The major point of the campaign to recognise and mark the genocide is to make sure that it can never happen again by drawing a line under it and setting red lines for tyrants such as the Ba’athist dictator Assad in Syria. Saddam got away with it for years and would have continued the effort to eliminate the Kurds had the West failed finally to check him when he brutally invaded Kuwait.
This resulted in the British-policed no-fly zone over the Kurdistan Region which sheltered us from Saddam for 12 years. The fragile and reversible truce which we lived under was finally made more permanent with the 2003 liberation and the removal of Saddam, his sons and their regime from power. Both Sir John Major and Tony Blair are heroes for the Kurdish people. They saved us from extinction.

Recognition by the British Parliament, which follows similar decisions by the Swedish and Norwegian Parliaments, can encourage governments to follow suit.

The Kurds, through necessity, are a resilient and optimistic people but I cannot emphasise too much what a profound impact the genocide has had on Kurdistan. Nearly all of us were affected directly and indirectly and we live with the legacy of mass murder every day. We are unusual in that our regional government is one of the few if not the only government in the world that has a ministry of genocide and martyr affairs. That our story is untold adds to the injury.

Today’s motion in the Commons allows MPs to talk about the modern relevance of the genocide and about the growing links between Iraqi-Kurdistan and Britain. Last weekend, we organised, for instance, the second British Film Festival in our capital Erbil and thousands of people flocked to see a range of British movies, including Bond films. Last year, teenagers from a Bury St Edmunds’ school went to Kurdistan to teach sports leadership to their Kurdish counterparts. There are many other such people-to-people connections.

We thank our parliamentary supporters and believe that this historic debate will accelerate fruitful links between our peoples and will help the survivors of the genocide and victims’ families to realise that Britain does indeed take a stand against the mass murder of innocent people.

We are approaching the 25th anniversary of the attack in 1988 on the Kurdish town of Halabja where Saddam Hussein’s jets dropped nerve agents and mustard gas. This killed 5,000 people in one fell swoop. Halabja was itself one of the last atrocities of a 25 year campaign of increasingly brutal and systematic efforts to eliminate the Kurds of Iraq. Nearly 200, 000 people died in the last few months of this campaign alone and many more before. The Kurds of Iraq are rebuilding their society but the physical and psychological legacy of this genocide casts a long shadow. We believe it is morally necessary for the UK and the international community to recognise these tragic events as genocide. Failure to acknowledge such injustices makes them more difficult for survivors and relatives to overcome them. It also emboldens tyrants elsewhere to believe they can escape the consequences of further atrocities and genocides.

Designations for identification purposes only

Nadhim Zahawi MP
Meg Munn MP
Robert Halfon MP
Dave Anderson MP
Jan Kavan, Former Czechoslovak Foreign Minister and President UN General Assembly, Czech Social Democratic Party
Fabian Hamilton MP
Lord Clement-Jones
Stephen Metcalfe MP
Greg Mulholland MP
Ian Dale, LBC Presenter
Jonathan Fryer, LibDem politician
Nick Hopkinson, Liberal International
Toby Young, Journalist
Tom Newton Dunn, Journalist
Sarah Panizzo Gulan
David Lloyd Middle East Association
Prof Alan Johnson
Jonathan Danos, businessman
Henry Robinson, Human Rights Worker
Jim Killock, Rights Campaigner
Mike Harris, Index on Censorship
John Slinger, Labour activist
David Slinger
Mary Slinger
Tony Short, Labour
Catherine Atkinson, Labour
Larry Smith, Labour
Amanda Ramsay, Labour
Jonathan Todd, Labour Uncut
Denis Macshane, former Europe Minister
Jon Ridge, Labour
Feradoon Marookfi, KDP Iran
Mouloud Swara, KDP Iran
Khalid Azizi, KDP Iran
Khasnaf Al-Kadi KDP Iran
Rob Newbery Labour
Diane Viner Labour
Ayla Ozmen
Trevor Whitmore Labour
Andullah Muhsin NASUWT
Ian James Labour
Steve Batey Labour
Claire Sanders Labour
David Winston Labour
Tamer Yigit Dialogue Society
Harva Minat
Dr Graham Giles MBE, Labour
Graham Wildridge, Labour Friends of Iraq
Akam Rahimi
H Powazi KDPI
Cllr Naseem Ayub, Labour Luton
Richard Jarvis, Politics Home
Bob Glaberson, Labour
Gay Hollywall, Labour
Angela Wilkins, Good Governance Foundation
David Hencke, Tribune Journalist
Margaret Hencke Labour
Graham Nunn Labour
Emet Shahar GMB
Jessica Shahar Labour
Paul Richards, Labour
Tessa Tyler Todd Labour
Cllr Mary Foy Labour
Cllr Norma Stephenson Labour
Cllr Paul Foy Labour
Jin Kalkat Conservative
Stephen James Conservative
Cllr Bill Livesley Conservative
Ruthira Sakar, Transitional Govt of Tama Eelam
V. Jeyanthan Transitional Govt of Tama Eelam
Stephenie Blott Luther Pendragon
S Hoq
A Mahdi Student
Cllr Howard Murray Conservative
Paul Abbott Conservative
Victoria Thornton Conservative
Shah Malik
Emily Hilditch Conservative
Carole Edwards former FCO
Simon Saunders Conservative
Keith Best Freedom from Torture
Cllr Alan Donnelly Conservative
A Syed Conservative
Brian Weller Conservative

A personal view from Tom Hardie-Forsyth, senior adviser capacity building and a former Nato senior committee Chairman.

“A shocking crime was committed on the unscrupulous initiative of few individuals with the blessing of more, and amid the passive acquiescence of all.” These words were actually written by the Roman historian Tacitus nearly 2000 years ago. Unfortunately, things don’t seem to have changed very much.

As a British Army Captain, arriving in the spring of 1991 in the mountains of Kurdistan, I was greeted by what I can only describe as unimaginable suffering – the mud, the stink, children dying of dysentery, adults almost beyond despair. We had arrived, the British military and others, to try and put a stop to the inhuman manhunt of innocent civilians that had followed the failed uprising of persecuted peoples against Saddam Hussein’s regime and our disgraceful failure to support it; having called for it. Not only did we not support it but we actually gave Saddam the means to continue it by allowing his helicopter gunships to continue to fly ( ‘for internal security purposes’) and kill civilians en masse.

When I arrived, as a trained soldier I expected the sort of destruction on a scale that a short sharp conflict creates; but that isn’t what I saw. What I saw was much, much more, and what I heard was this word that was repeated everywhere by ordinary people in the mountains, terrified out of their lives to return back – “Anfal, Anfal, Anfal”. As I travelled around, I saw village after village (the final count was more than 4,000 villages and communities) that couldn’t have been destroyed in five minutes or even just a year, and when I say destroyed, I mean done so meticulously and with heartless industrial efficiency.

What really summed up the whole experience for me was, that, despite the suffering that people were going through in the mountains, there was complete reluctance, no matter how we tried to convince them it was safe, to come back down; not just reluctance, terror! They actually preferred, to stay and take the risk, even die in these inhospitable mountains, during a period when snow was melting and changing into a fetid quagmire, rather than go back down and face the possibility of the same thing happening to them again.

Frankly it was because they were used, by now, to casual betrayal by us. Casual betrayal. When we eventually did coax them down; rather than go to prepared UNHCR camps and promises of food and so on, they still preferred, and I witnessed this amazing exodus, to go back to their devastated villages, so that we were obliged to follow them and set up mobile teams to support them as best we could. So, why was this? The simple reason was that these people already had an insight that if they went into organised camps and they were disarmed in the usual way, they would again be sitting ducks for Saddam, no matter what we promised them.

Shockingly, they were right.! Because, just as they were coming down off these mountains at the end of spring, in May, having listened at last to our promises of protection, we were at a staff meeting at the military headquarters just outside Zakho being briefed by our American Commander in Charge of Operation Provide Comfort, where it was announced that all allied military forces who were involved in the operation were leaving by June and were going to be replaced by a United Nations Guards Contingent of Iraq – a unit which frankly was barely able to protect itself and in fact did not have any remit to protect anybody, just observe!

Fortunately, for once, this was too much for some of the officials at that meeting to swallow. I’ll say without any exaggeration, there was almost a punch up at the meeting. It was one silence too many for some officials, including this one! I went back to the UK and resigned my commission publicly in protest on the Newsnight programme on BBC, and the newspapers the next day carried the headline, “John Major’s Haven Plan in Tatters”

Now, I am not taking away from what John Major achieved, but what I am saying, however is, that the only reason that the scale of the problem was known was because the media and the cameras were rolling. As soon as they stopped rolling and went away it was going to be business as usual for Saddam. That, as far as he was concerned, this wasn’t a full stop. It might have been a comma, maybe a semi colon, but once we were gone, it would be business and ANFAL as usual. Fortunately, because of the decision – as a result of this protest and others – to mount operation “Poised Hammer”, he wasn’t allowed to do so.

I want to end by mentioning something which may not make me very popular in some places. As far as I’m concerned, there were two distinct phases in ANFAL. The first phase, as we know, was the very carefully organised destruction of villages, infrastructure, agriculture, the shipping of people to the desert, mass killings and so on. That was one aspect, carried out mainly by ground forces. The second phase, most of the gas bombing, VX, mustard and so on, was carried out by fixed wing aircraft. And it was only by having access to these aircraft and other sophisticated weapons that this part of the ANFAL could ever have been carried out.

Why is this important now? Simply this – We now have a government in Baghdad which has still got a long way to go to, in my view, prove their democratic, constitutional and human rights credentials.. And yet, at this very moment, the American government is going to sell them F-16 fighter bombers! Now, looking at what has been happening in Syria for example; what are these fighter bombers for? Are they to protect Iraq against Iran? I don’t think so. Are they to protect Iraq against Turkey, Syria or Jordan?

No! With these bombers, the only short to medium use for them would be to frighten and kill their own civilians when they protest against the government’s present dictatorial tendencies. I am really afraid that an American government, so strapped for cash because of the ‘fiscal cliff’, is prepared to allow us to sleepwalk into another possible mass tragedy. You see, ANFAL isn’t something in the past. It casts its cloud and its shadow now, and it requires us all to exercise constant, unending vigilance.

A personal view

Many people ask me whether the Kurdistan Region in Iraq will become independent. This could be done either by seceding if and when the moment is right, and thanks ironically to its warmer ties with Turkey, or by being pushed out of Iraq in order to enhance Shia domination of the country.

The Kurds have always made it plain that they have decided to remain part of Iraq but as long as it is a country based on democracy and federalism. Their bitter and bloody experience of the opposite, especially under Saddam Hussein, is becoming better known.

The constitution, agreed in a referendum in 2005, provides a federal model but is stalled. The central government in Baghdad, especially its Prime Minister and his allies, are dead set against allowing the Kurdistan Region the right, which they claim is constitutional, to make their own arrangements with oil and gas companies and to export independently.
The Kurds say this is necessary because their oil and gas fields are new and require greater incentives for foreign companies to explore and produce. The energy has always been there but was completely ignored for decades whereas the fields in the south of Iraq are long established.

There are other disputes concerning a reliable revenue sharing practice, the funding of the Kurdish military forces and the status of disputed territories.

Confrontation between the Kurdistan Region and some in Baghdad has been brewing for a long time. Shots have been fired and one person has been killed but full scale fighting has been averted. There is a war of words with the Kurds, and Sunnis on other issues, being deeply critical of the current Prime Minister who they wish to be replaced by a less divisive figure.

The Kurdistan President Massoud Barzani has reminded the country of the condition of their decision to stay in Iraq – that it should be democratic and federal in order to avoid the repetition of the genocide whose 25th anniversary is being marked next month and being debated in the Commons next week.

In these circumstances, people are reading the runes in different and sometimes apocalyptic ways. Some say that the Kurds’ game plan is to create the conditions for independence. Others believe that the prospects for Kurdish independence are talked about more in the Arab part of the country than in its Kurdistan Region.

Others think that the Kurdish leadership has no such strategy but is simply seeking the implementation of the Iraqi constitution and protecting their rights under it. The link with Turkey could allow an independent export capacity to the Kurdistan Region and also help end the war between the PKK and Turkey.

It could also be said that it would be unwise for the Kurds to jump out of the Iraqi fire into the Turkish frying pan. They could have the best of all worlds in a solidly autonomous region of Iraq.
In the meantime, the outstanding issues need to be resolved. Taking a step back from the current heat of the arguments it is, in my view, a storm in a tea cup for Baghdad to bang on so wildly about how the Kurds decide to handle their energy resources, given that it doesn’t alter the fact that all energy is the property of the Iraqi people as a whole and all revenues go to the central coffers.

These essentially arcane issues just obstruct the potential for Iraq to take back its rightful place at the centre of the Middle East. One exciting and potentially transformative possibility would, for instance, be the renaissance of rail travel in the Middle East. Cars and trucks damage the environment, planes are for the few but rail is for the masses. Rail is also better suited for a hot climate. David Cameron, on his recent visit to India, was almost certainly told of the vital role that British-built railways have had made in that country.

New freight and passenger lines between, say, Basra, Baghdad, Kirkuk, Dohuk and Ceyhan in Turkey would drive new markets and knit people together wherever the borders are. And Iraq would be the transport hub of the whole region.

Iraq has come a long way in just ten years but it could go much further if leading politicians could see the bigger picture and as new generations of activists make their mark.

Gary Kent

Writing in the Jewish Chronicle, Robert Halfon makes the case for recognising the genocide against the Kurds, February 22, 2013

Which people today has the most similarity with the modern Jewish story of marginalisation, demonisation, persecution, genocide, redemption and revival?
The answer is unexpected. It is a Muslim nation in the Middle East: Kurdistan.

The Kurds have faced their own Holocaust. I do not use that word glibly, but when you look at the similarities of what happened to the Kurds, the effect is not just chilling but a reminder that the Jews are not alone.

It is strange that whilst the world knows much about modern genocide – the Bosnians by the Serbs and the tragedy of Rwanda- little is known about the Kurdish story. In fact, their genocide, known as ‘Anfal’, is not even recognised as an international genocide by the United Nations – something that I, as chair of a committee of academics, lawyers and Parliamentarians, am trying to change.
The fact is that if you define genocide as scientifically planned mass murder then the Kurds suffered genocide.

Saddam and the Baathists were determined to ‘vacuum’ the Kurds from Iraq, partly because of Arab nationalism, partly a desire to gain full control over Kurdish lands.

Hundreds of thousands of Kurds were killed in a campaign that began in 1963, carried through to 1969, 1976 and 1988. Thousands of Kurdish villages were destroyed, prison camps built and torture chambers established. In one, known as the Red House, which I have seen for myself, there was even an Auschwitz-style incinerator. Women were raped in what was known as ‘the party room’. Their foetuses and babies were burnt in the incinerator.

As with every other genocide, the methods of killing became ever more sophisticated (think shooting in the woods by the Nazis and then the concentration camps).

The culmination of the Kurdish genocide came in 1988 when Saddam Hussein decided to drop mustard gas on the Kurds, including the city of Halabja. First, the planes bombed the houses, so windows and walls would break and leave no respite. Second, the pilots let loose the mustard gas. Five thousand Kurds died, almost instantly. Thousands more were disfigured. Even in 2011, recent diggers of mass graves have died from residual mustard gas.

If it were not for the safe havens over Kurdistan established by John Major in 1991 and Tony Blair’s determination to get rid of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi dictator would most likely have succeeded. There would be no Kurdish autonomous region in Iraq.

Unlike Nazi Germany, where many of those responsible for the Holocaust were tried, there has been little justice meted out to those responsible for the Kurdish genocide. It is said that organisers of the Anfal and some of the pilots remain at large, some even in Europe.

The Kurds have waited too long for justice. Iraq has now officially recognised the genocide. It is the duty of the rest of the world to do the same, to ensure that all the perpetrators are brought to the International Criminal Court and to help with education and remembrance, so that Saddam’s butchery can never be forgotten by future generations.

As a Jewish Parliamentarian, I believe that Jews especially have a moral duty to help other nations who have suffered from genocide. That is why I am actively participating in a historic Commons debate on the genocide of the Kurds in the Commons on 28 February. If the Motion that calls for recognition of the genocide is passed, then the UK, alongside the Swedish and Norwegian Parliaments, will have helped the world to advance a major step forward towards bringing the perpetrators to the ICC.

I have been to Kurdistan three times. On my last visit, the head of the Iraqi graves commission made a remark that has haunted me: “There is another Iraq, buried under Iraq.”

If we are to make ‘never again’ more than just a slogan, we have to mean it and ensure that the Kurdish genocide by Saddam is recognised as one of the world’s greatest crimes.

Robert Halfon MP for Harlow, is Vice Chairman of the All-Party Kurdistan Group and Chairman of the Committee to recognise the Kurdish Genocide

http://www.thejc.com/node/102652

Concerted efforts over the last year by Kurdish and British campaigners have scored a major result. The British Parliament will discuss the genocide against the Iraqi Kurds in a special and historic debate from about 2.15-5pm on Thursday 28 February.

The title of the debate is “the 25th anniversary of the Kurdish genocide and its contemporary relevance.” The motion says that Parliament “formally recognises the Genocide against the people of Iraqi Kurdistan and encourages governments, the EU and UN to do likewise.

It adds that “that this will enable Kurdish people, many in the UK, to achieve justice for their considerable loss” and also enable Britain, the home of democracy and freedom, to send out a message of support for international conventions and human rights, which is made even more pressing by the slaughter in Syria and the possible use of chemical arsenals.”

The motion will be moved by Nadhim Zahawi and other members of the all-party group will pitch in. The floor is also open to any other MP who wishes to argue for or against the motion.

MPs will outline how the genocide began 50 years ago and culminated in the obscenity of Halabja and also put on record the testimonies of survivors and witnesses.

The terms of the motion deliberately include the contemporary relevance of the genocide. This is to enable MPs to make the point that the end of the genocidal threat from Saddam, first through the uprising and the no fly zone in 1991 and then through the liberation of Iraq in 2003, have enabled the Kurdistan Region to rebuild its society and economy.

They can also point out that, while the Kurds are forward-looking, they are lumbered with a lethal legacy from the crimes of Saddam.

First, there are many survivors and relatives who need continuing support and who rightly demand that those who committed these crimes are brought to book.

Second, the physical legacy of the genocide can be seen chiefly in the under-development of agriculture, once such a bountiful resource. The British public and MPs can hear about how Saddam turned the countryside into a free-fire zone and forcibly removed people to concentration camps in the towns. They can be told about how thousands of villages were ground into the dust and wells capped or poisoned.

My hope is that this illustrates that agriculture should be revived and that foreign companies and institutes can play a major role in helping Kurdistan become self-sufficient.

The reference to Syria in the motion allows MPs to discuss the lessons of the no-fly zone and humanitarian intervention in Syria to stem the bloodshed of the Syrian people. MPs can bear witness to the slaughter and urge the international community to prevent another Ba’athist dictator using chemical weapons.

But the appetite for intervention has been reduced by the widespread notion that the intervention in Iraq was wrong or even not worth it. This debate is returning in force with the tenth anniversary of the invasion which, like the anniversary of Halabja, takes place a few weeks after this debate.

Some MPs will argue that the plight of the Kurds was sufficient to justify the intervention and indeed to ask why it took so long. It constantly amazes me how little many people know about the reality of fascism under Saddam and the scale of the slaughter of the Kurds and other Iraqis, as well as Iranian and Kuwaiti people.

All in all, this debate is a golden opportunity to vent all these issues and put the Kurdistan Region – past, present and future – on the map.

At the end of the debate there could be a vote but this seems unlikely as the Government will not want to oppose Parliament recognising the genocide. The standard procedure is that Parliament approves such a motion without a physical vote.

We can then say that Parliament has recognised the genocide. However, the motion is not binding on the Government whose current position is that it believes that it should wait for an international judicial body to recognise the genocide first.

However, the debate and parliamentary recognition provide a new impetus for a continuing campaign and for the Government to change its mind. It would also enable other Parliaments in the UK and more widely to follow the example of Westminster.

The continuing efforts by some in Baghdad to punish the Kurdistan Region for its success in becoming the oil exploration capital of the world and building a brand new and dynamic energy sector from scratch, after decades of wilful neglect as part of the genocide, beggar belief.

As this strong statement from the KRG puts it: “One would think that federal officials in Baghdad would embrace the progress made in the Kurdistan Region and value the contribution to the nation’s wealth. One would think that federal officials would recognize the use of the Regions’ natural gas to provide electricity to its people and those of hard-pressed neighbouring provinces. One would think that federal authorities would applaud the KRGs plans to create a northern energy corridor for Iraq, whereby up to 3 million barrels a day could soon be flowing through the north of Iraq to Turkey and international markets beyond, and the revenues are shared by all Iraqis.”

It is high time to restore sanity and dialogue to resolve this needless dispute.

See full statement at http://krg.org/a/d.aspx?s=010000&l=12&a=46337

Gary Kent

British Government responds to calls to recognize the genocide in Iraq, as more than 26,000 people sign e-petition

16 th January 2013, London:

Today, sustained efforts by British and Kurdish campaigners have harvested a formal British Government response to their calls to recognize the mass murder of Kurdish people in Iraq as genocide but it is disappointing and needs improvement. Ms Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman, Kurdistan Regional Government High Representative to the UK says: “Sandwiched between the very welcome acknowledgement of the specific suffering of the Kurds, the importance of minority rights and the strong relationship with the Kurdistan Region and Kurds in the UK is a frankly disappointing and weak view that the UK should wait for an international judicial body to act before it decides to define long-running efforts to eliminate the Kurds as a genocide, although, the Iraqi High Tribunal, the Iraqi Presidential Council and the Iraqi Parliament have endorsed its definition as genocide. We will continue to urge the UK Government to pull out all the stops and go the whole hog by taking a moral stand in defining our suffering as genocide so it becomes harder for it to happen again in Iraq or elsewhere.”

An e-petition urging the British Government to recognize the genocide now has more than 26,400 British signatures, demonstrating considerable support for the cause.

The Government response states that: The Iraqi regime under Saddam Hussein systematically persecuted and oppressed ethnic and religious groups over many years. No group suffered more than the Iraqi Kurds. This year we will remember, in particular, the atrocity of the attack on Halabja in 1988, when Iraqi planes used poison gas to kill thousands of Iraqi Kurds. However, the Government response goes on to say that: It remains the Government’s view that it is not for governments to decide whether a genocide has been committed in this case, as this is a complex legal question. Where an international judicial body finds a crime to have been a genocide, however, this will often play an important part in whether we will recognise one as such.

Tomorrow, Kurdistan Regional Government Foreign Minister, Mr. Falah Mustafa, will speak at an international conference in London, alongside genocide legal experts, humanitarians, parliamentarians and survivors of the genocide in Iraq. He will call for international recognition of the Kurdish genocide. The conference marks the 10th anniversary year of the international intervention in Iraq which ended Saddam Hussein’s brutal regime and the 25th anniversary of the chemical attack on Halabja, and the Anfal genocide operation during which 180,000 Kurdish men, women and children were brutally murdered.

Conference speakers will reflect on the brutal reality of what happened to the Kurdish people in Iraq and make the case for why it must be recognized in order to prevent it ever happening again.

Ms Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman says: “We are heartened by the public support for our cause shown by the e-petition and the British government’s recognition of the atrocities committed against our people and support for the Kurdistan Region in Iraq as well as the Kurdish community in Britain. Sadly, the response from the British Government doesn’t go far enough. It shows that we still have a long way to go to gain formal recognition of the atrocities suffered by our people. Our fight will continue and we urge people to show support by signing the e-petition, this is not over. We remain hopeful that there may be a debate in the British parliament in which these issues can be aired.”

“Recognition will help to prevent such atrocities happening again. Recognition will show other dictators that mass murder of a targeted group will not go unpunished. Saddam Hussein got away with genocide and the international community watched him do it. Even now, as the killing and threat of chemical weapons in Syria continues, and as 60,000 Syrian refugees flood into Kurdistan, we are reminded of what can happen to innocent people when the international community refuses to acknowledge and recognize the reality of what is happening in front of it.”