Roj Bash !

Hathra, 80 km in the South-west of Mosul

These pictures are not gore not so violent, but if you are very very sensitive, warning…

“But was it a question of taking care of them? Not, I will bury them with bulldozers.” (Recording on cassette of Ali Hassan Al-Madjid, Meeting of the Northern Office, perhaps January 21, or 22, 1989).

“On September 25, 1990, the honourable director emitted the following directive : the sentence “We do not have any information on their fate” will replace the sentence “They were arrested during the victorious campaign of Anfal and kept in detention.”

“Some members of Jash who had sympathy to the tribe of Salim, tried to bribe the soldiers, offering 1000 dinars to release each child. “It is too late, answered the soldiers; children had been already put in the trucks.”

The Purple Lady

“I cry when I see a tragic spectacle or a film. Once, I cried by seeing, in a film, a lost woman, and without family. But I would like to say that I did what I was supposed to do. I do not think that you could have made more than I did .” (Hassan Ali Al Madjid, April 15, 1989).

The ministry for the humans right of Kurdistan publishes documents, photographs, DVD, on Anfal, and before that, before the campaignof 1987-1988, on the massacre of 8000 Barzani in 1983. As for the Shiites, the fall of Saddam’s regime allows now to find and exhume the mass graves. Several CDRom and DVD were given to the Kurdish institute : All mass graves ; Hathra : Showing evidences ; Barzan’s mass graves ; Fact finding Mission : Barzani’s mass graves ; The victims of Saddams Regime ; Saddam’s Legacy…

I selected some photographs of these pits in Iraq, filled of skeletons and mumyfied corpses, melt with clothing and the objects which dead people had had taken with them. I say “Iraq” because Kurdistan it is not the country of the death, it is Iraq which is a grave for Kurds, when Kurdistan is obliged to be “Iraq”, it becomes this country, the land of death.

Members of Barzani tribe, killed in 1983

Some of these pictures are beautiful, I took them in priority. Although the term of “beautiful” can shock, it is true, they are beautiful, like this skull as a Vanity, or this childish sandalette of which near, to show his size, one posed a black pen, one of these very simple Bic with transparent plastic body, and of which one removed the cap. Then, all of us, at home, can take the same pen and measure the size of the sandalette.

Some corpses, like painting subjects, like these famous portraits of unknown people, half or full lentgh, have anonymous and familiar names in the documentary, as “The Purple Lady”.

No, these skulls are not repulsive, it is like unearthing life and indices about of exhumed ancient princes, while we inquire into their death: a bullet in the nape of the neck, a single bullet, and how they died, blinfolding women, blindfolding men with their bound hands. And thing also speak us, sandals, shoes, glasses, children pacifyer, like artifacts of ancient tombs, and are filmed as witnesses as worthy as human remains.

There is also, as in Cambodia, the photographs and the names of 8000 Barzani killed, in the same way in 1983. It would be necessary to write the life of each one of these faces, it would be necessary to make more than to retain the name of these deaths, even if it is better than nothing, we should collect all tales about them, all what people remember of them.

And thus, they would me more than piled up bones, melting skeletons, forensic evidences presented in the trial of their murderers. Thus this pits would not be only mass graves, massive graves but : I + I + I + … piled up.

(Documents about Anfal under the picture could be red in Genocide in Irak, the Anfal campaign against Kurds, Middle East Watch (HRW)