Coexistence of the nationalities works

Since 22nd January a delegation of the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) has been visiting the Iraqi state of Kurdistan. The delegation consists of: Tilman Zülch, President of the GfbV International, Fadila Memisevic, Director of the GfbV section Bosnia-Herzegovina, Dr. Heinz Nawratil, Emanuel Youkhana and Maria Sido.

Yesterday the GfbV delegation met 50 representatives of Kurdish, Turkmen and Assyrian organisations from the town of Kirkuk and six spokespersons of Syrian women’s organisations. Everyone with whom they have been speaking has emphasised that violence and terror have been brought into the controversial province from without, not least from al-Quaeda and Turkey. The great majority of the people living there are at peace with one another and have many organisations and institutions. The people want the implementation of the Paragraph 140 of the Iraqi constitution, which provides for a plebiscite on the affiliation of the province. Since the fall of the Baath regime more than 120,000 expelled Kurds, Turkmen and Assyro-Chaldaeans have returned to the town of Kirkuk and the surrounding towns and villages of the province. The security situation has improved steadily.

Today the delegation is visiting the Barzan Valley, which was for more than 50 years the crystallisation point of the Kurdish resistance against the Iraqi dictatorship. Like in Srebrenica in 1995 8000 boys and men from this region were deported and shot. The delegation will be speaking with the women’s movement „Rebirth” (Vejin) on the cooperation between the mothers’ movements of Srebrenica and Vejin. A visit by a delegation from the Barzan Valley to Srebrenica is planned for the spring. They will be thinking mainly about questions concerning the overcoming of genocide, the exhumation, identification and burial of the victims and the form of memorial and remembrance. Both movements want in future to work together.

The GfbV delegation will take part from 26 – 28th January at a congress on genocide against the people of Iraqi Kurdistan. Kurds (Muslims and Yezidi), Assyro-Chaldaeans and Turkmens suffered between 1968 and 2003 about 500,000 victims. Thousands of members of all other Iraqi nationalities and religious communities have been victims of the crimes of destruction and expulsion.