Ministry asks for funds to compensate victims of former regime

 

By Sadeq Rahim

 

Azzaman, 2005-03-20

 

The Ministry of Human Rights wants to set aside 5% of oil revenues to compensate families of victims of the former regime.

 

A ministry statement, obtained by the newspaper, said the money should be deposited in a fund to be set up specifically to look after those still suffering from the regime’s atrocities.

 

The statement comes as the country marked the 17^th anniversary of the chemical attack on the Kurdish city of Halabja in which 5,000 Kurds were killed.

 

“The money in the fund should be used to help the victims of Halabja and Anfal and those with diseases as a result of the use of chemical weapons,” the statement said.

 

In Anfal operations conducted before the end of the 1980-1988 Iraq-Iran war, more than 4,500 Kurdish villages were reported to have been destroyed and nearly 180,000 Kurds killed.

 

Non-governmental Iraqi rights organizations that sprang up after the fall of the regime are reported to have collected massive data on the victims, which also include tens of thousands of Iraqis who were uncovered in mass graves.

 

But still it is hard to have exact statistics on how many Iraqis suffered directly at the hands of the former regime.

 

The rights groups maintain that it is wrong to say that the atrocities were only directed at minority groups such Kurds and Shiites.

 

Most Iraqis suffered and there is hardly a person in Iraq who does not know about a case involving a violation of human rights, they say.

 

The ministry statement said chemical attacks targeted 250 villages in the north.

 

It also said there was still no information on “a great number of Iraqis” who were reported missing under the former regime.