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.