Human rights situation in Saddam's Iraq
The
human rights situation in
Iraq under
Saddam Hussein was notorious for the use of
torture and
murder to maintain
Ba'ath Party rule.\nThe total number of deaths related to torture and murder during this period are unknown. However, there were countless reports of
human rights violations, notwithstanding the government prohibiting the establishment of independent human rights organizations within the country and rarely permitting foreign human rights watchers inside.\n
Human Rights Watch and
Amnesty International issued regular reports of widespread imprisonment and torture, the majority of the cases being in the
1980s and after the rebellion that followed the
1991 Gulf War.\nThe more gory reports of human rights abuses which often came from members of
Ahmed Chalabi's
Iraqi National Congress, while possibly true, have not had evidence turn up to support them.
Documented human rights violations 1979-2003
Human rights organizations have documented government approved executions, acts of torture, and rape for decades since Saddam Hussein came to power in 1979 until his fall in 2003.
In 2002, a resolution sponsored by the European Union was adopted by the Commission for Human Rights, which stated that there had been no improvement in the human rights crisis in Iraq. The statement condemned President Saddam Hussein's government for its "systematic, widespread and extremely grave violations of human rights and international humanitarian law". The resolution demanded that Iraq immediately put an end to its "summary and arbitrary executions... the use of rape as a political tool and all enforced and involuntary disappearances".
Two years earlier, two human rights organizations, the International Federation of Human Rights League and the Coalition for Justice in Iraq released a joint report, accusing the Saddam Hussein regime of committing "massive and systematic" human rights violations, particularly against women. The report spoke of public beheadings of women who were accused of being prostitutes, which took place in front of family members, including children. The heads of the victims were publicly displayed near signs reading, "For the honor of Iraq." The report documented 130 women who had been killed in this way, but stated that the actual number was probably much higher. The report also describes human rights violations directed against children. The report states that children, as young as 5 years old, are recruited into the "Ashbal Saddam," or "Saddam's Cubs," and indoctrinated to adulate Saddam Hussein and denounce their own family members. The children are also subjected to military training, which includes cruelty to animals. The report also describes how parents of children are executed if they object to this treatment, and in some cases, the children themselves are imprisoned.
Other Documented Violations
- Full political participation at the national level was restricted only to members of the Arab Ba'ath Socialist Party, which constituted only 8% of the population. Therefore, it was impossible for Iraqi citizens to change their government.
- Iraqi citizens were not allowed to assemble legally unless it is to express support for the government. The Iraqi government controlled the establishment of political parties, regulates their internal affairs and monitors their activities.
- Police checkpoints on Iraqi's roads and highways prevented ordinary citizens from traveling abroad without government permission and expensive exit visas. Before traveling, an Iraqi citizen had to post collateral. Iraqi women could not travel outside of the Country without the escort of a male relative.
- The activities of citizens living inside Iraq who received money from relatives abroad were closely monitored.
- In 1988, the Hussein regime began a campaign of extermination against the Kurdish people living in Northern and Southern Iraq. This is known as the Anfal campaign. The attacks resulted in the death of at least 50,000 (some reports estimate as many as 100,000 people), many of them women and children. A team of Human Rights Watch investigators determined, after analyzing eighteen tons of captured Iraqi documents, testing soil samples and carrying out interviews with more than 350 witnesses, that the attacks on the Kurdish people were characterized by gross violations of human rights, including mass executions and disappearances of many tens of thousands of noncombatants, widespread use of chemical weapons including Sarin, mustard gas and nerve agents that killed thousands, the arbitrary imprisoning of tens of thousands of women, children, and elderly people for months in conditions of extreme deprivation, forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of villagers after the demolition of their homes, and the wholesale destruction of nearly two thousand villages along with their schools, mosques, farms, and power stations.
- In June of 1994, the Hussein regime in Iraq established severe penalties, including amputation, branding and the death penalty for criminal offenses such as theft, corruption, currency speculation and military desertion.
- On March 23, 2003, during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Iraqi television presented and interviewed prisoners of war on TV, violating the Geneva Convention.
- In March of 2003, Britain released video footage of Iraqi soldiers firing on fleeing Iraqi citizens near the town of Basra in southern Iraq.
- In late March, 2003, an Iraqi lawyer, credited with helping coalition forces rescue POW Jessica Lynch, said that he had witnessed Iraqi soldiers violating the codes of the Geneva Convention by torturing and beating her. However, Lynch later refuted this account, stating that she had been well treated by her captors.
- Also in April of 2003, CNN admitted that it withheld information about Iraq torturing journalists and Iraqi citizens that were interviewed by CNN in the 1990s. According to CNN, the channel kept the information secret because they were afraid that their journalists would be killed if they reported it.
- After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, several mass graves were found in Iraq containing several thousand bodies total. While most of the dead in the graves were believed to have died in the 1991 uprising against Saddam Hussein, some of them appeared to have died due to executions or died at times other than the 1991 rebellion.
- Also after the invasion, numerous torture centers were found in security offices and police stations throughout Iraq. The equipment found at these centers typically included hooks for hanging people by the hands for beatings, devices for electric shock, and other equipment often found in nations with harsh security services and other middle eastern nations.
Collusion of foreign powers in Saddam-era human rights abuses
Foreign powers at times colluded in Iraqi state oppression, including France, the Soviet Bloc and the United States, all of whom helped arm the Baathist regime throughout the 1980s. Also, Saddam's bloody purges of communists were undertaken with the help of intelligence provided by the CIA [1].
As late as July 25, 1990, a week before the invasion of Kuwait, the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, April Glaspie, assured Saddam Hussein that the U.S. "wanted better and deeper relations." [1]
Involvement of 'Saddam's Dirty Dozen' in abuses
According to officials of the United States State Department, many human rights abuses in Saddam Hussein's Iraq were largely carried out in person by Saddam Hussein and eleven other people.\nThe term "Saddam's Dirty Dozen" was coined in October 2002 and used by US officials to describe this group. Most members of the group held high positions in Iraq's regime and membership went all the way from Saddam's personal guard to Saddam's sons. The list was used by the Bush Administration to help argue that the 2003 Iraq war was against Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party leadership, rather than against the Iraqi people.
The phrase "Dirty Dozen" comes from a novel by E.M. Richardson, later adapted as a film directed by Robert Aldrich, celebrating a group of heroic U.S. soldiers.
Members
\n*Saddam Hussein, Iraqi President, accused of many torturings, killings and of ordering the 1988 cleansing of Kurds in Northern Iraq.\n*Qusay Hussein, son of the president, head of the elite republican guard, believed to be chosen by Saddam as his successor.\n*Uday Hussein, son of the president, accused of having a private torture chamber and of the rapes and killings of many women. He was partially paralyzed after a 1996 attempt on his life, and is the leader of a paramilitary group named Fedayeen and of the Iraqi media.\n*Taha Yassin Ramadan, Vice-President. He oversaw the mass killings of a Shi'a revolt in 1991, and he was born in Kurdistan, north Iraq.\n*Tariq Aziz, Foreign minister of Iraq, supposedly backed up the executions by hanging of political opponents after the revolution of 1968.\n*Barzan Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Hussein's half brother, leader of the Iraqi secret service, Mukhabarat. He was Iraq's representative to the United Nations in Geneva.\n*Sabawi Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Hussein's half brother, he was the leader of the Mukhabarat during the 1991 Gulf War. Director of Iraq's general security from 1991 to 1996. He was involved in the 1991 suppresion of Kurds.\n*Watban Ibrahim al-Tikriti, Hussein's half brother, former senior Interior Minister who was also Saddam's presidencial adviser. Shot in the leg by Uday Hussein in 1995. He has allegedly ordered tortures, rapes, murders and deportations. \n*Ali Hassan al-Majid, Chemical Ali, alleged mastermind behind Saddam's lethal gassing of rebel Kurds in 1988. A first cousin of Saddam Hussein Majid had vast scientifical knowledge.\n*Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, military commander, vice-president of the Revolutionary Command Council and deputy commander in chief of the armed forces during various genocide campaigns.\n*Aziz Saleh Nuhmah, appointed governor of Kuwait from November of 1990 to February of 1991, allegedly ordered looting of stores and rapes of Kuwaiti women during his tenure. Also ordered the destruction of Shi'a holy sites during the 1970s and 1980s as governor of two Iraqi provinces.\n*Mohammed Amza Zubeidi, alias Saddam's shi'a thug, prime minister of Iraq from 1991 to 1993 - ordered many atrocities.
See also
External links
- Amnesty International report on torture in Iraq (2001)\n*US State Department report: 'Iraq: Crimes Against Humanity' (2002)\n*INDICT - campaign to prosecute human rights abusers from the Hussein regime\n*Iraq's dirty dozen\n* Women recall terror, yet yearn to return, Washington Times March 7, 2003\n* Human Rights Archive 1999-2001 The Iraq Foundation\n* UN condemns Iraq on human rights, BBC April 2002\n* PM admits graves claims untrie As of July 18th, 55 of 270 suspected mass grave sites have been exhumed, revealing approximately 5,000 bodies.\n* [1] More info on mass grave excavation, including the use of satellite spectral imaging to detect suspected gravesites, the order of priority excavation, and details of the largest single gravesite (3,100 remains from the 1991 Shia uprising).\n* Medical Action Alert #47: Iraq, Physicians for Human Rights\n* Iraq 1984-1992, Human Rights Watch\n* Reports on Human Rights Practices, U.S. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
