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Iraqi Kurdistan

The Destruction of Koreme
During The Anfal Campaign

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To the townspeople of Erbil who, risking themselves, provided for the villagers of Koreme and thousands of others in the camps of Beharke, Jeznikam, Qushtapa, Daratu, Binasirawa, Kasnazan, Sharways, Pirzin, Mala Omar, Segirtkan, Barhushtar, and Sebiran when they were hungry, unsheltered and in great need.

Copyright © January 1993 by Human Rights Watch and Physicians for Human Rights.
All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America.
Library of Congress Card Catalog Number: 92-75040
ISBN: 0-300-05757-1
 

Until [Lidice], there were supposedly only two possible attitudes for a conqueror toward a village that was considered rebellious. Either calculated repression and cold-blooded execution of hostages, or a savage and necessarily brief sack by enraged soldiers. Lidice was destroyed by both methods simultaneously ... Not only were all the houses burned to the ground, the hundred and seventy-four men of the village shot, the two hundred and three women deported, and the three hundred children transferred elsewhere to be educated in the religion of the Fuhrer, but special teams spent months at work leveling the terrain with dynamite, destroying the very stones, filling in the village pond, and finally diverting the course of the river. After that, Lidice was really nothing more than a mere possibility ... To make assurance doubly sure, the cemetery was emptied of its dead, who might have been a perpetual reminder that once something existed in this place.

Albert Camus,
The Rebel*
*Copyright 1956 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.; used by permission.


TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Koreme Before the Anfal Campaign

Flight to Turkey

The Chemical Weapons Attack on Birjinni

The Firing Squad at Koreme

Detention and Disappearance

Forced Relocation, and the Dead Infant Girls of Jeznikam Cemetery

The Destruction of Koreme

Conclusions of Law and Fact

The Prayer Over the Dead at Koreme

APPENDICES

1. Archaeological Report on Koreme, Birjinni, and Jeznikam - Beharke Cemetery

2. Forensic Anthropology Report

3. Report on Firearms Identification at the Koreme Execution Site

4. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide

5. Memorandum: The Elements of Crimes Against Humanity Applied to The Destruction of Koreme
 
 

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