March 16, 1988, The Day of the Kurdish Genocide

Thirty-one years ago the brutal regime of Iraq committed genocide against innocent Kurdish civilians in the town of Halabja. This act of genocide, using chemical weapons, resulted in the death of nearly 5,000 people and the injury of 10,000 more, mostly women and children.

The purpose of the Iraqi regime’s mass killing of the Kurds was to erase the identity of the Kurds and their national movement toward freedom and self-determination. Since the creation of the State of Iraq, each successive regime has tried all sorts of weapons on the Kurds. The Kurdish people are the only nation in the world that has been subjected to centuries of massacres and genocides for demanding basic rights and freedom.

On this tragic anniversary, I honor the fallen civilians and the Peshmerga forces of Kurdistan for their ongoing sacrifices. I also urge both the Kurdistan and the Iraqi governments to defend the people of Halabja and to compensate them morally and financially.

Further, I reaffirm my stance that the policies of persecution and the use of force against the Kurdish people will never be successful against a nation that is determined to win its freedom and self-determination. On the contrary, this will only encourage us, the Kurds, to achieve our goal. The policial characters who continue to commit atrocities against the Kurds today will meet the same fate as the former dictatorship of Iraq.