Hinweis zum Sprachgebrauch in älteren Beiträgen
Der folgende ältere Beitrag kann Sprache und Formulierungen enthalten, die heute nicht mehr den Ansprüchen einer diskriminierungsfreien und sensiblen Ausdrucksweise entsprechen. Er wurde im historischen Kontext verfasst und bewusst unverändert gelassen, um unsere jahrzehntelange Menschenrechtsarbeit zu dokumentieren.
The Mayor of the Kurdish town of Halabja in northern Iraq , Kheder Kareem, will be received this Friday, 12th December at 2 p.m. at the Marburg town hall by Mayor Egon Vaupel. We cordially invite you and your colleagues from the picture desk to this event.
Mr Karem will then be meeting the managers of the firms Aquis GmbH (water purification and wound irrigation solutions) and Agos AG (computer) and conducting talks with representatives of the Marburg Foundation for Enterprise Promotion at the University of Marburg (Mafex) and also at the Behring works.
Kareem was invited to Germany by the Society for Threatened Peoples (GfbV) in Göttingen. He took part in the memorial service of the human rights organisation on the 60th anniversary of the signing of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide in Berlin and is now looking for partners to cooperate in the reconstruction projects in his town.
Halabja was attacked on 16th March 1988 by Iraqi warplanes. The squadron of seven or eight planes flew in several waves on three consecutive days over this town with over 80,000 inhabitants and bombed all the approach roads with poison gas with the object of killing as many people as possible. At least 5000 died within a few hours. German and European firms were involved in the building up of Saddam Hussein’s poison gas industry.
In the autonomous Iraqi federal state of Kurdistan a great deal has been undertaken to guarantee the rights of the smaller peoples and religious minorities. They now have their own culture institutes, schools and media and are represented in Parliament and the government. Destroyed villages are being rebuilt step by step. Iraqi Kurdistan could be a model for cooperation between the nationalities in the Near East and perhaps also an advocate not only for Kurds, but also the smaller peoples and minorities in the neighbouring countries.
Kheder Kareem has been mayor of Halabja since 2005 and a member of the committee of the international initiative „Mayors for Peace”.
Gemeinsam handeln – Newsletter abonnieren
Bleiben Sie informiert über unsere Menschenrechtsarbeit, Erfolge und aktuelle Kampagnen. Unser Newsletter bringt Ihnen Stimmen unserer Partner*innen, Analysen und Möglichkeiten zum Mitmachen direkt ins Postfach.