“Disappearances” and political killings: human rights crisis of the 1990s – a manual for action (pre-publication version): Chapter C-1: Iraq: The world would not listen

This report examines the extensive use of “disappearances” and extrajudicial executions in Iraq as a means of suppressing all forms of internal dissent, and Amnesty International’s attempts to bring Iraq’s human rights record to the attention of the international community, especially at the UN Commission on Human Rights, and their failure to respond. Specific cases cited include the “disappearance” of an estimated 8,000 Kurds of the Barzani clan in August 1983; the arrest and subsequent “disappearance” of over 100,000 Kurdish civilians in the Spring of 1988, commonly referred to as Operation Anfal; and the use of chemical weapons against the civilian population, for example the killing of an estimated 5,000 civilians from the Kurdish town of Halabja in March 1988.

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