18 Kurdish girls and women dragged to slavery in Egypt

Berlin/Göttingen, December 10, 2006

The initiative of the Society for Threatened Peoples for the 18 by Saddams war criminals kidnapped 18 Kurdish girls, sold to Egypt, was successful in so far as the president of the Society Tilman Zuelch and a Member of the Berlin Kurdish Woman Centre SOZIK passed the following letter to Mrs. Mubarak during the pricegiving ceremony in Berlin. Moreover Zuelch spoke to the former German Foreign Minister Dietrich Genscher and asked him to talk to the Egyptian Embassy about the lost women. In his speech to honour the wife of the Egyptian president Genscher mentioned the world wide problem of women, kidnapped and sold into slavery. During the Ceremony 10 Kurdish medical doctors and Pharmacists from Berlin stood with the banner (Mrs. Mubarak: "Please Save 18 Kurdish Women - sold to Egypt 1987!” in front of the Berlin Wall Museum at "Checkpoint Charlie". We shall now ask the members of the responsible Jury of this human rights price, Mrs. Mubarak received, to write to the Egyptian government as well, Mr. Zuelch said. Members of the jury are among others:

- Prof. Dr. Henry Kissinger, laureate of the Nobel prize, former United States Secretary of State

- Hans-Dietrich Genscher, former foreign minister of the federal republic Germany

- Lord James Douglas-Hamilton, member of the scottish parlament

- Prof. Dr. Avi Primor, former ambassador, director of the Trilateral Institute for European Studies at the Herzliya University in Israel

- Dr. h.c. Joachim Gauck, first federal commissioner for the safety of state (Stasi) documents

- Sara Nachama, Director of the Touro College Berlin

- Freya Klier, Producer, civil rights activist in the former DDR

- Rainer Haushofer, lawyer

- International Society for human rights (IGfM)

- Berlin Wall Museum, Museum at the Checkpoint Charlie

18 Kurdish girls and women dragged to slavery in Egypt - please find out their fate!

Open letter

To the First Lady

Of the Arabian Republic of Egypt

Ms Suzanne Mubarak

At present in Berlin

Dear Ms Mubarak,

Today, the international Human Rights Day you will receive the Rainer Hildebrandt Medal in Berlin at the Berlin Wall Museum at "Checkpoint Charlie". This is a high honour, on which we heartily congratulate you.

As a guest of the official presentation of this international human rights prize I should like to take the opportunity to draw your attention once more to the fate of 18 young Kurdish girls, who during the notorious Anfal Offensive in Iraq were not - like up to 182,000 other Kurdish, Yezidi, Turkmen and Assyro-Chaldaic children, women and men - deported, murdered or hastily buried , but abducted and sold to night-clubs in the "Arabian Republic of Egypt".

I should like here to give you the names of those girls and women. The ages given are those at the time of their abduction in 1987. It is possible that the abducted persons were later married by force. At the present time nothing is known about the fate of these unhappy people.

- Galawej Adel Rahim (14)

- Chiman Nazim Abas (22)

- Leyla Abas Jawhar (21)

- Lamiah Nazim Omar (19)

- Bahman Shukir Mustafa (26)

- Khusaran Abdulla Tawfiq (20)

- Qadriya Ahmed Ibrahim (17)

- Golmalek Ibrahim Ali (19)

- Khawla Ahmed Fakhradeen (25)

- Esmat Kader Aziz (24)

- Najiba Hassan Ali (18)

- Hasiba Amin Ali (29)

- Shiler Hassan Ali (20)

- Shukriya Rustem Mohammad (27)

- Habiba Hidayat Ibrahim (15)

- Kuwestan Abas Maulud (26)

- Serwa Othman Karam (17)

- Suza Majeed (22)

Since we are aware of the work you do for human rights and equal opportunities for women, not only in your country, we assume that you will exert your influence for these young Kurdish women from the present federal state of Kurdistan in Northern Iraq and will not rest until their whereabouts have been ascertained.

One cannot rule out the possibility that there are other survivors of the Anfal genocide, who were abducted or sold to Egypt by agents or employees of Saddam Hussein.

I should like to mention that the innumerable dead of the Anfal Offensive can now be found in mass graves in South Iraq. So far only 200 graves have been found. Mass graves have been opened, in which hundreds of women and children lay. Many of them had been shot, but experts in exhumation declare that a considerable number had been buried alive.

The Anfal Offensive began with gas attacks and was continued with mass deportations and mass murder. For a very long time the governments of Europe, also of Germany, kept silent, when in the early 80s European, but also leading German firms, built up the poison gas industry for Saddam Hussein. Estimates of our human rights organisation show that between 1968 and 2003 some 500,000 people from the Kurdish settlement area of North Iraq lost their lives.

Unfortunately in the Arab world also too often people keep silent when in this region minorities are persecuted: formerly about the crimes in South Sudan and in Kurdistan/Iraq, today about the genocide in Darfur.

For this reason we beg you all the more to make a special point of finding out what happened to these women.

Yours Sincerely

Tilman Zülch

for the Society for Threatened Peoples International

Copy to: