ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The British Ambassador to Iraq Stephen Hitchen paid tribute to the victims of the 1988 chemical attack on Halabja on the 36th anniversary of the tragedy, saying the massacre should serve as a reminder of the many atrocities committed by the Baathist regime.
“I think the anniversary of the massacre in Halabja is a very good time to remember that things were not better at that time,” Hitchen told Rudaw’s Dilniya Rahman.
“The death of 5,000 Kurds at that time during a much wider Anfal campaign is a true reminder of how terrible the crimes were of the Baathist regime,” he added.
Hitchen noted that it was important to remember all the victims of the tragedy as each had a story and a family.
“It is important that we remember all of them, and it is important that we as the international community as well, remember what happened, take the lessons from it, and remember the individuals that were lost and not just the effect,” Hitchen said.
In the last days of the eight-year-long war between Iran and Iraq, warplanes of the former regime of dictator Saddam Hussein rained down a lethal cocktail of chemical weapons on the city of Halabja on March 16, 1988, killing at least 5,000 people, mostly women and children, and injuring hundreds of others.
The Halabja chemical attack, which was recognized as an act of genocide by Iraq's High Court in 2010, has left a permanent scar in the historical memory of the Kurdish people.
The attack was part of a wider Anfal genocidal campaign that saw over 182,000 Kurds killed by the Baathist regime.
