Human rights in Saddam Hussein's Iraq

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Iraq under Saddam Hussein was notorious for high levels of torture and mass murder.

Secret police, torture, murders, targeted assassinations, chemical weapons, and the destruction of wetlands (more specifically, the destruction of the food sources of rival groups) were some of the methods critics say Saddam Hussein used to maintain control. The total number of deaths related to torture and murder during this period are unknown as are the reports of human rights violations. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International issued regular reports of widespread imprisonment and torture.

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[edit] Documented human rights violations 1979-2003

Human rights organizations have documented government approved executions, acts of torture, and rape for decades since Saddam Hussein came to power in 1979 until his fall in 2003.

  • In 2002, a resolution sponsored by the European Union was adopted by the Commission for Human Rights, which stated that there had been no improvement in the human rights crisis in Iraq. The statement condemned President Saddam Hussein's government for its "systematic, widespread and extremely grave violations of human rights and international humanitarian law". The resolution demanded that Iraq immediately put an end to its "summary and arbitrary executions... the use of rape as a political tool and all enforced and involuntary disappearances".
  • Two years earlier, two human rights groups, the International Federation of Human Rights League and the Coalition for Justice in Iraq released a joint report, accusing the Saddam Hussein regime of committing "massive and systematic" human rights violations, particularly against women. The report spoke of public beheadings of women who were accused of being prostitutes, which took place in front of family members, including children. The heads of the victims were publicly displayed near signs reading, "For the honor of Iraq." The report documented 130 women who had been killed in this way, but stated that the actual number was probably much higher. The report also describes human rights violations directed against children. The report states that children, as young as 5 years old, are recruited into the Ashbal Saddam, or "Saddam's Cubs," and indoctrinated to adulate Saddam Hussein and denounce their own family members. The children are also subjected to military training, which includes cruelty to animals. The report also describes how parents of children are executed if they object to this treatment, and in some cases, the children themselves are imprisoned.
  • Full political participation at the national level was restricted only to members of the Arab Ba'ath Party, which constituted only 8% of the population. Therefore, it was impossible for Iraqi citizens to change their government.
  • Iraqi citizens were not allowed to assemble legally unless it was to express support for the government. The Iraqi government controlled the establishment of political parties, regulated their internal affairs and monitored their activities.
  • Police checkpoints on Iraq's roads and highways prevented ordinary citizens from traveling abroad without government permission and expensive exit visas. Before traveling, an Iraqi citizen had to post collateral. Iraqi women could not travel outside of the country without the escort of a male relative.
  • The activities of citizens living inside Iraq who received money from relatives abroad were closely monitored.
  • In 1988, the Hussein regime began a campaign of extermination against the Kurdish people living in Northern Iraq. This is known as the Anfal campaign. The attacks resulted in the death of at least 50,000 (some reports estimate as many as 100,000 people), many of them women and children. A team of Human Rights Watch investigators determined, after analyzing eighteen tons of captured Iraqi documents, testing soil samples and carrying out interviews with more than 350 witnesses, that the attacks on the Kurdish people were characterized by gross violations of human rights, including mass executions and disappearances of many tens of thousands of noncombatants, widespread use of chemical weapons including Sarin, mustard gas and nerve agents that killed thousands, the arbitrary imprisoning of tens of thousands of women, children, and elderly people for months in conditions of extreme deprivation, forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of villagers after the demolition of their homes, and the wholesale destruction of nearly two thousand villages along with their schools, mosques, farms, and power stations.
  • In April 1991, after Saddam lost control of Kuwait in the Gulf War, he cracked down ruthlessly against uprisings in the Kurdish north and the Shia south. His forces committed wholesale massacres and other gross human rights violations against both groups similar to the violations mentioned before. Estimates of deaths during that time range from 20,000 to 100,000 for Kurds, and 60,000 to 130,000 for Shi'ites.
  • In March of 2003, Britain released video footage of Iraqi soldiers firing on fleeing Iraqi citizens near the town of Basra in southern Iraq.
  • Also in April of 2003, CNN revealed that it had withheld information about Iraq torturing journalists and Iraqi citizens in the 1990s. According to CNN's chief news executive, the channel had been concerned for the safety not only of its own staff, but also of Iraqi sources and informants, who could expect punishment for speaking freely to reporters. Also according to the executive, "other news organizations were in the same bind."[1]
  • After the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, several mass graves were found in Iraq containing several thousand bodies total, and more are being uncovered to this day. While most of the dead in the graves were believed to have died in the 1991 uprising against Saddam Hussein, some of them appeared to have died due to executions or died at times other than the 1991 rebellion.
  • Also after the invasion, numerous torture centers were found in security offices and police stations throughout Iraq. The equipment found at these centers typically included hooks for hanging people by the hands for beatings, devices for electric shock, and other equipment often found in nations with harsh security services and other Middle Eastern nations.
  • According to some reports, torture was used to improve the performance of the Iraqi soccer team.[2]

[edit] Collusion of foreign powers in Saddam-era human rights abuses

During his rule Saddam Hussein was aided by foreign powers; the great bulk of Iraq's conventional weapons were supplied by the United States, Soviet Bloc, China, France, and Egypt, all of whom helped arm the Ba'athist government throughout the 1980s. Western relations with Iraq seem to have been motivated mostly by the potentially larger threat of an Iranian based Islamic Revolution, which might have threatened foreign investment and disturbed the strategic balance in the region. It was hoped that an appropriate amount of foreign aid would allow for an Iraqi victory over Iran in the Iran-Iraq War, but be insufficient to allow for Iraqi expansion into Iran and other countries in the region. Western relations with Iraq after the Iran-Iraq War demonstrated a continued interest to support Iraq in an effort to balance the power of Iran and other actors. As late as July 25, 1990, a week before the invasion of Kuwait, the U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, April Glaspie, assured Saddam Hussein that the U.S. "wanted better and deeper relations."[3]

[edit] Involvement of 'Saddam's Dirty Dozen' in abuses

According to officials of the United States State Department, many human rights abuses in Saddam Hussein's Iraq were largely carried out in person or by the orders of Saddam Hussein and eleven other people. The term "Saddam's Dirty Dozen" was coined in October 2002 (from a novel by E.M. Richardson, later adapted as a film directed by Robert Aldrich) and used by US officials to describe this group. Most members of the group held high positions in the Iraqi government and membership went all the way from Saddam's personal guard to Saddam's sons. The list was used by the Bush Administration to help argue that the 2003 Iraq war was against Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party leadership, rather than against the Iraqi people. The members are:

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Jordan, Eason. "The News We (CNN) Kept To Ourselves", The New York Times, 04/11/03. (requires login, reposted at Free Republic)
  2. ^ soccer Iraqi torture - Google Search. Google.com.
  3. ^ Dobbs, Michael. "U.S. Had Key Role in Iraq Buildup", Washington Post, December 30, 2002, p. A01. Retrieved on 2006-05-27.

[edit] External links

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