1 <series title> Human Rights Watch Books 2 <map> 3 <title>Human Rights in Iraq <au>David A. Korn A Human Rights Watch Book <**>HRW logo on title page Yale University Press New Haven and London 4 Copyright <co> 1990 by Human Rights Watch. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Human Rights in Iraq was first published in slightly different form by Human Rights Watch, copyright <co> February 1990. Design: Designed by insert name, typeface, and Set in type by printer Printed in the United States of America by CIP info to come The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. 5 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 <ct>Contents Acknowledgments Introduction A Note on Transliteration Vital Statistics Chapter 1: Background Chapter 2: The Institutions of Repression Chapter 3: The Constitution, the Judiciary, and Fundamental Rights Chapter 4: The Forms of Repression Chapter 5: The Kurdish Minority Chapter 6: The Treatment of Iranian Prisoners of War Chapter 7: The United States and Iraq Chapter 8: Covering Up Human Rights Violations Chapter 9: Conclusions and Recommendations Notes Bibliography Index 6 <ct>Acknowledgments Human Rights in Iraq was written with support from the staff of Middle East Watch, one of the five Watch Committees of Human Rights Watch. Kenneth Roth, deputy director of Human Rights Watch, edited the report, and Eric Goldstein, research director of Middle East Watch, provided research assistance. The author and Middle East Watch wish to express their appreciation to Roberta Cohen for providing significant materials on human rights and Kurdish issues, to Deborah Gordis for research assistance, and to Michael Hoffman for advice on international legal issues. 7 <ct>Introduction This report on human rights in Iraq covers the two decades of rule by the Arab Baath Socialist Party, by far the longest rule of any party or group since Iraq became a state. During this time Iraq gained international prominence, in large part due to its enormous oil wealth, believed after Saudi Arabia to be the world's largest. Since coming to power in 1968, the Baath party and its leader, President Saddam Hussein, have used this wealth to enforce their rule through a system of control that Iraqis know as <"terror and reward."1 The pillars of this system are a generous welfare state, a powerful army, and an extraordinarily well-organized and effective police state. Oil earnings have also made Iraq a coveted market for the industrialized nations. This substantial economic factor, reinforced by increasingly influential pro-Iraq lobbies, has provided an important incentive to the West to disregard brutal and widespread Iraqi abuses. In recent years, the Iraqi government has shed the external image of extreme radicalism that it cultivated during the 1960s and 1970s. It has loosened its ties with the Soviet Union, moved to what is commonly called the moderate Arab camp, improved its relations with the West, and sought recognition as a responsible member of the world community. After the fall of the Shah, Iraq came to be seen by many in the West as a bulwark against the spread of Islamic fundamentalism from Iran to the other oil-rich countries of the Persian Gulf. Regrettably, the Iraqi government's shift toward a more moderate foreign policy has not been accompanied by a less repressive domestic policy. For over a 8 year--since the end of the Iran-Iraq War--Iraq's leaders have spoken of plans for <"reform" and have professed a desire to see human rights protected.2 But little has come of these statements. Iraq's citizens continue to be denied freedom of expression and association, and to be subjected to arbitrary arrest and imprisonment, deportation, torture, disappearance, and summary and political execution. Iraq's Kurdish minority has suffered particularly severe repression in recent years. After using chemical weapons to crush a Kurdish insurgency in 1987 and 1988, the Iraqi government is now engaged in a forced relocation program of such proportions that it threatens Kurdish ethnic identity and cultural survival. The goal appears to be to cut off Iraqi Kurds from their brethren in neighboring countries and to ensure that an active Kurdish insurgency cannot revive. Reporting on Iraq is no simple matter, the less so when the subject is human rights. The Iraqi government does not allow independent human rights monitors, domestic or foreign, to conduct investigations in Iraq.3 In 1983, Amnesty International was allowed to send representatives to Iraq to <"discuss matters of concern" with government officials, but it was not permitted to investigate abuses independently. Middle East Watch's request to visit Iraq in connection with the preparation of this report was received with much courtesy by Ambassador Abdul Amir al-Anbari when its representative called on him in Washington on June 27, 1989, but later inquiries at the Iraqi embassy were met with transparent excuses and, finally, silence. A further request made directly 9 to the Iraqi Foreign Minister proved equally fruitless. The severe punishment meted out to Iraqi citizens who speak out on human rights intimidates others from doing so.4 Travel restrictions imposed in 1979 and tightened during the Iran-Iraq War remain in effect and bar all but a few from leaving the country and providing testimony abroad. And the collapse of the Kurdish rebellion has closed off an avenue of escape and a channel for transmitting information on human rights abuses. In this sense, at least, Iraq today is even more tightly sealed against foreign inquiry than it was during the war. Iraqi émigrés who seek to expose Iraqi human rights abuses live in fear of violence at the hands of Iraq's overseas security operatives. Many émigrés hesitate to testify even anonymously about abuses that they have suffered or witnessed, for fear of discovery and retribution against themselves or their families. The Western press has had no regular access to Iraq over the past twenty years. In the last few years journalists have been allowed to visit Iraq more frequently, but in almost all cases on tightly supervised, stage-managed tours. Iraq's press--government-owned, government-operated, and tightly controlled--is not a source of information on human rights violations. Even in this era of improved relations with Iraq, Western embassy personnel still find themselves cut off from all but perfunctory contact with ordinary Iraqi citizens and severely limited contact with Iraqi officials.5 Diplomats who have tried to move beyond approved bounds have met with reprisal. For example, in September 1988, 10 the Iraqi government expelled a senior officer of the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, evidently because he spent too much time in Kurdish areas asking about the government's use of chemical weapons against the Kurds. Despite being prevented from visiting Iraq, Middle East Watch has been able to assemble a large body of information on human rights conditions there. This book, originally issued as a report, is based on scores of interviews conducted in the United States and Western Europe with Arab and Kurdish Iraqis, officials of governments and international organizations, scholars, journalists, human rights experts, and various visitors to Iraq. The Middle East Watch investigator also examined extensive written documentation on Iraqi rights practices, for despite the Iraqi government's persistent and determined efforts to stifle the flow of information about rights conditions inside its borders, such information can be found in works of scholarship, reports and articles by Western journalists and other visitors to Iraq, public testimony given by Iraqi exiles, United Nations documentation, studies by human rights organizations and, finally, but by no means the least revealing, official Iraqi government texts. Taken together these sources of information cast a broad beam of light on the human rights practices of the Iraqi regime. The secrecy in which the government of Iraq shrouds its actions made it impossible to obtain proof of some of the allegations made against it. Where verification could not be obtained, Middle East Watch consulted recognized experts and matched the testimony of witnesses against one another. Only when there was concurrence among experts and in the testimony of several reliable witnesses from a variety of backgrounds was a 11 particular incident or practice credited; this lead to the excision of a substantial body of material--some of it plausible--for which supporting testimony from experts or witnesses could not be found. If we have erred in this report we believe it is on the side of caution. Although Middle East Watch would have preferred to interview Iraqi officials and obtain their responses to some of the allegations, the Iraqi government's refusal to permit us to visit made this impossible. <em> <A>A Note on Transliteration The Kurds of Iraq use the Arabic alphabet to write their language. Transliteration of Arabic and Kurdish names to English or other languages that emply the Latin alphabet at times produces a bewildering variety of spellings. In the matter of personal names, one may, for example, encounter Hussein or Husayn; Nasser or Naser; Mohammed, Mohamed, or Muhammad. Place names, too, often lack a standard spelling, unless they refer to a state or a capital city--for example, Cairo or Baghdad. The three major Kurdish cities of Iraq may be found rendered into English under the names Suleimanieh or Sulaymaniyah; Arbil or Irbil; Dahok, Dehok, or Dhawk.