A conference to mark the 30th anniversary of the Halabja Genocide

Halabja: Echoes of Genocide in Kurdistan
How can communities in Kurdistan and Iraq halt the cycle of genocide?

Tuesday, March 13, 2018

Newseum
Knight Conference Center, Level 7
555 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington, DC

On March 16, 1988, Iraqi aircraft attacked the city of Halabja with chemical weapons. Children were lost in the chaos that followed, families were decimated as 5,000 people died and thousands more were injured with poison gas.
 
This genocide was one of many atrocities committed against the people of Kurdistan by the dictator Saddam Hussein. During his rule, 182,000 Kurds were killed in the Anfal genocide campaign; 8,000 Barzani men and boys were murdered in 1983; thousands of Faily Kurds disappeared, and thousands more were oppressed, abused, and killed by the Ba'athist regime. The genocide also saw the destruction of 4,500 villages and the razing of cities such as Qala Diza, tearing at the fabric of Kurdish society and economy.
 
The suffering of the people of Halabja has come to symbolize all of the atrocities committed against the people of Kurdistan.  In Iraq, violence and genocide is cyclical, and in 2014 we again witnessed a genocide against the Yezidis, Christians and others in Nineveh.
 
This year we will commemorate the 30th anniversary of the Halabja genocide. We invite you to join us for a conference to discuss this atrocity, the cycle of genocide in Iraq, how this impacts politics in Kurdistan and  Iraq today, and the imperative for justice and reconciliation.