ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – On the 33th anniversary of the last stage of the ethnic cleansing campaign known as the Badinan Anfal, Kurdistan Region Prime Minister Masrour Barzani asked Baghdad to compensate the victims of the former Baathist regime.
The 1988 campaign in the Badinan region in the west of the present-day Kurdistan Region saw more than 2,000 Kurdish men and women forcibly taken from Duhok province. The majority of them were killed and their remains have never been found.
“The Iraqi government should compensate the families of the Anfal genocide victims,” Barzani said Wednesday, commemorating the anniversary.
More than 40,000 people fled to neighboring Turkey, escaping the brutal offensive that destroyed and depleted 700 villages in the area.
The Kurdish premier reiterated that his government would continue efforts to work for the recognition of the crime as a genocide internationally, according to the statement.
It is estimated that 180,000 people were killed in the eight stages of the Anfal, which stretched across Kurdish-populated areas of Iraq.
The Badinan region is a reference to the area that speaks the Kurmanji dialect of Kurdish.