Hammurabi Human Right Organization – Annual Report Human Rights Violations in Iraq 2015 – with concentration on minorities Monitoring & Pursuance & Documenting About Human Rights in Iraq while concentrating on Minorities’ rights www.hhro.org [email protected] Hammurabi Human Rights Organization Annual Report Contents: 1. Preface 2. Violations and Crimes committed against Iraqi minorities (Christians, Yazidies, Kaka’is, Fili Kurds, Shabak, Mandaeans, Baha’is and people of color). 3. Survivors (men & women) from Daesh militants, Christians and Yazidies talking about the Genocide, what they’ve endured in captivity (rape, slavery …). 4. A list of names of missing Christian Iraqis since the occupation of the Nineveh plain. 5. A list of the ones who died while prisoned by the Islamic State. 6. Violations against Christian children as a result to the IS’s crimes. 7. Acts of Genocide, vandalism and destruction which took place in minorities’ houses of worship and cemeteries. 8. Samples of human rights violations in different areas in Mosul. 9. Violations against displaced minorities’ students, teaching staff and institutions. 10. Conditions of Internally Displaced People in Iraq. 11. Evaluating Christian IDPs’ camps and complexesin the Center of Erbil and Ankawa. 12. Violations against employees and retirees. 13.Conditions of Iraqi minorities’ refugees in the regional countries such as Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. 14. Conclusions and General Recommendations. Appendixes Appendix ( A ) Appendix (B ) 1 Hammurabi Human Rights Organization Annual Report Preface The damages and crimes endured by Iraqis due to human rights violations in 2015 aren’t so different from the ones in 2014, the only minor difference is that the only thing that makes those less dangerous is the basic support and aid offered for the IDPs, but quite a minor support in general which doesn’t cover the basic needs. In general, due to a monitoring process by Hammurabi Human Rights Organization, we can confirm the following: 1st: crimes, such as (Murder, Captivity, Sexual Slavery, Genocide, imprisonment, torture, coercion in religious conversion, vandalism of personal property and religious and historical monuments, abduction, demographical change) have continued on the same level as in 2014, which represents a Genocide according to international standards. 2nd: human rights violations took place in all Iraqi territories in general, but have been most egregious against minorities. Completing the steps of transitional justice, the perpetrators and the ones offering support must not get away without punishment, because it is a moral and a national responsibility which should not be underestimated by any means. 3rd: the heinous human rights violations being committed by the Islamic State, terrorist groups and outlaws with the absent role of the government have taken the attention away from other violations such as domestic violence, homelessness, deteriorating financial crisis, declining job opportunities, lack of services (municipality, electricity, water, healthcare, education, social and economic). 4th: 2015 didn’t witness any positive developments in regards to confronting such violations, while noticing the absence of any procedures that could limit corruption and administrative idleness in governmental institutions despite many promises by the government to respond firmly to such issues, where the Iraqi citizens pay the price, for instance, what is called the unified retirement law which instead of doing justice to employees and retirees and respect their rights, people who’ve been receiving their salaries according to laws undertaken years ago, now, a number of former ministers have been deprived of their retirement rights, their salaries have been decreased to levels which makes them unable to provide proper living for their families. 5th: security and political conditions remain the same, the larger blocks continue to control decisions in the Iraqi state, while the disagreement between the regional and the central government continues. The political situation in the KRG have suffered from bickering and disagreements between the different political blocks, this didn’t allow to continue working according to moral and political responsibilities to confront such violations, but it was the other way around, since the beginning of the Islamic State’s aggression against the Nineveh plain, where the majority of residents were Christians and others were Iraqi minorities, the actions taken towards them were far from any standard security scales in the world, instead of providing security for the innocent citizens and encouraging them to effectively 2 Hammurabi Human Rights Organization Annual Report participate in defending themselves, they were forced to give up their personal weapons, depriving them from the right to defend themselves and their families, and then leaving them alone, taking the irresponsible decision to withdraw, exposing women and children to acts of Genocide, losing the trust of the Christians in the Nineveh plain and the Yazidies in Sinjar and other minorities such as Shabak, Turkmen, Kaka’is and others, which exposed Christians of Mosul, Yazidies of Sinjar and other minorities to the deliberate targeting by the Islamic State militants. An announcement by the head of the security committee in Qaraqosh district, forcing Christians to give up their weapons shortly before the withdrawal of the Kurdish security forces. Source: Ankawa.com. 6th: HHRO didn’t find any fast or important responses from the government and the other authorities in the Iraqi state in order to alleviate the suffering of the minorities especially in regards to the issue of the confiscated houses in Baghdad and Mosul, although the supreme judicial council have promised HHRO to have a judicial decision to restore those unlawfully taken houses and property, but we should mention the positive decision taken by the general real estate administration in the ministry of finances of the federal government to stop all transactions related to selling properties of Christians through agents and considering everything that have been sold that way illegal thus such forged transactions which occurred in the past wouldn’t be accepted. 3 Hammurabi Human Rights Organization Annual Report 7th: the continuous human rights violations in Iraq have raised hopelessness and frustration among the majority of Iraqis, but what happened to the Iraqi minorities is the worst, such issues have been suffered by thousands of young men from societies of minorities and internally displaced families encouraging them to emigrate heading to nearby countries and especially Turkey where more than 35.000 Iraqi Christian and 20.000 Yazidi are suffering from many tragedies, few of them have had continues troubles while trying to reach European countries through the sea, a number of Iraqis have drowned trying to get to Europe after being forced to go through the dangerous trip through the sea hoping to have a better life, after being a prey for human trafficking, smuggling and sexual assault mafias. In 2015, we have seen the rise of different institutions providing programs to help Iraqis emigrate and securing an access to certain countries Iraqi want to emigrate to, but later on, we realized that few of those institutions and agencies ended up revealing their true identity of fraud, blackmail, human trafficking … 8th:Hammurabi Human Rights Organization have recorded a financial human rights violation represented by Iraqi governmental bank’s dereliction (Alrafidain & Alrasheed) when responding to demands by the displaced from the Nineveh plain, these banks have ignored demands by those Iraqi citizens to withdraw money from their accounts in the banks, despite their repeated requests and need for the money which demands accelerating the process to provide them with the money they need to cover their financial shortage. HHRO sees that such persistence by governmental banks while ignoring the legal demands represents a human rights violation according to the relationship between the citizen and financial institutions putting into consideration that the deposits should not be manipulated in any way on the expense of its owner’s rights. Violations and Crimes against Minorities 1st: Christians The presence of Christians in different fields in Iraq wasn’t even comparable to Christians’ role in countries in the middle east, either culturally, socially, economically and even politically, despite the continues discrimination against them and the numerous setbacks they had to endure in their political and civil capabilities to defend their existence. In the seventies and the eighties, Chaldean, Syriac, Armenian, Assyrian, Evangelical and other Christians represented 10% of the Iraqi society, pre 2003, they numbered more than 1.5 million people. This number eerily declined to less than 500.000 people due to the continues acts of oppression and deliberate targeting of Christians in addition to the effect of unfair laws 4 Hammurabi Human Rights Organization Annual Report Which affect their religious freedom and separated families, such as Article 21 / Paragraph 3 of the civil status law which has been transformed into Article 26 of the national card law, which states that minors will be converted to Islam in case one of the parents converts, in addition to other unfair laws and the deliberate mass or individual murder which continues to happen against Christians in Baghdad, Mosul, Kirkuk and other areas, more than 880 cases of barbaric murders