Human Rights of Dead People

This text was published in Aso newspaper (in Sulaymania) the 12th April 2010.

”Human rights” is internationally one of the central terms when speaking about justice and development. They are considered to be a basic right for all people. Also for all living people. According to international law human rights end at the moment of death.

Finnish forensic odontologist Helena Ranta disagrees with this. According to her dead people have three basic rights: a grave, their name in it and funeral ceremonies according to their religion. This is reflected also in the Additional Protocol 1 of Geneva Convention from 1977. It is the most important international convention about warfare conditions.

According to Dr Helena Ranta the forensic expert community agrees that also dead have human rights.

Dr Helena Ranta says that it is the right of the families to know the cause of death of their beloved ones. Without this information it is very difficult for them to continue their own lives. The families have also right to bury their deceased.

Dr Helena Ranta is the head of the Finnish Forensic Expert Team. She has been surveying mass graves around the world over fifteen years.

She writes in an essay about the importance of the grave:
”At the grave the relatives can remember and pay tribute to them who have gone before them.”

In Kurdistan April is the month of remembering and mourning the victims of the Anfal. Last year there was funeral of Anfal victims in Kalar, this year similar ceremony was in Chamchamal.

When following such ceremonies in the grave yard or from mass media, one should keep in mind these three basic rights of dead people: funeral ceremonies, grave and name in it.

182 000 people disappeared in the Anfal. Only few thousand bodies have been found. The found victims have been buried to their home areas. But how many of them got all the three rights of dead people? Most of the buried victims have got the two first rights: Islamic funeral ceremony and a grave. But not their name in it. There are grave yards of the victims of the Anfal and the Barzan genocide but no one knows who are lying in the graves. In the graveyeard of the disappeared Barzanis near Bile no grave has a name. 8300 Barzanis disappeared 1983, only 503 bodies have been found.

Barzan genocide happened twenty seven years ago and the Anfal twenty two years ago. Most of us believe that no one of the disapperared persons is returning alive. But the mothers and fathers, wives and husbands – some of them, not all - refuse to believe the death of their beloved ones until they see the body. They wait for their return and spend their own life by dreaming. There are miracle stories like Ali who returned to Halabja twenty two years after his disappearance. Such returns are unique but they fuel the dreams of the families who have lost their members.

The Anfal happened more than twenty decades ago. Many of the elderly survived family members have suffered so much that their pain has had permanent effect on them. Maybe it is too late for them to return to normal life like Dr Helena Ranta says. But they get peace in their mind if they know what happened to their beloved ones and they have a grave where they can vein. The human rights of dead people and the
rights of their families belong together.

Anfal funeral in Chamchamal

106 Anfal victims were buried in their home region Chamchamal in South Kurdistan on Tuesday the 13th April 2010. Prime minister Dr Barham Salih and former prime minister Nechirvan Barzani attended the funeral.

Ba'ath party and Saddam Hussein committed Anfal, the Kurdish genocide in spring 1988. The amount of victims is 182 000. There is more information about it in Sahmaran blog under titles "Anfal"; "Genocide" and "Human Rights of dead people".





Photos: Kristiina Koivunen

This is Kurdistan: Picnic in Qaradagh

Spring is the season for picnics in Kurdistan. Especially in South Kurdistan people really love them. On Fridays cities and towns are empty when people go to the mountains.

I was on picnic in Qaradagh (south from Sulaymania) at the beginning of April. We grilled fish.

The Kurdish genocide is more than the Anfal

This text was published in Aso newspaper the 4th April 2010. Aso is the biggest newspaper in Kurdistan, it is published in Sulaymania.

The anniversary of the Anfal is soon. When Kurds speak about the Kurdish genocide they usually mean the Anfal. But it is only the peak of the genocide process, which is much bigger than the Anfal.

Ottoman Kurdistan was divided between Iraq, Turkey and Syria after the First World War. The process which led to the Anfal started in Lausanne in 1923. Arabs and Turks started to assimilate Kurds by all means. But Kurds resisted in many small revolutions. Usually historians speak about them as local uprisings without seeing the context. The uprisings were not separate incidents.

Arabization of Kurds started with milder forms like making education in Arabic language. But Kurds refused to give up their identity and they have defended it since those days. So oppression methods became harder.

Television programs and newspaper articles about the Anfal show horrible pictures of dead bodies and skeletons. This gives audience an image that genocide is same than killing. It is that but it is also other things.

There are many forms of genocide and various methods to make it. The aim of the perpetrators is to force the target group to change its identity. Cultural and linguistic genocides are methods for this. If Kurds forget their language, after some generations they will be Arabs. There is no need to kill them.

Well, Kurds have refused to forget their culture and identity. So the oppressors took harder methods. Local uprisings were ended brutally. The aim of brutalities was not to kill all of them but teach a lesson: you must accept to become Arabs! In the 1970s and 1980s Kurds still refused to do it. Men were fighting as peshmergas and women folk assisted them. All methods to change Kurds into Arabs had turned out to be in vain. So Ba'ath party decided to move to the final stage of the genocide process, the total annihilation of Kurds. The Anfal started.

The Iraqi Parliament has accepted the Anfal as genocide. It is a good start for the international recognition of the Anfal. It is important that especially the Arab World would understand that genocide happened in Iraq in 1988.

The Kurds themselves should understand whole the horrible process which their land has gone through during 87 years. It is necessary for the sake of understanding and solving the present problems.

The victims of massacres before the Anfal and victims of deportations and purposefully caused starvation are also victims of genocide. The amount of the victims of the Kurdish genocide is much more than 182 000 people. No one knows how many. Many Kurdish generations were suffering last century.

For the victims, of course, it does not matter what is the cause of their death. But for the survivors it is important to understand what really happened. They live in a post-genocide society. And the future generations need to know what atrocities happened to their ancestors.