Union must bring Iraqi dictator to book, says leading rights activist

Date: 07/03/02

By David Cronin

Visiting Brussels last week, Bakhtiar Amin from International Alliance for Justice, asked several EU policy-makers to push for a tribunal to investigate human rights violations in Iraq.

The Washington-based exile wants the Union to include that demand in a motion to be debated by the UN Human Rights Commission, which meets in Geneva from 18 March-28 April.

'The international community has a moral responsibility towards the Iraqi people,' said Amin. 'There is frustration and anger towards the international community among ordinary Iraqis. They are tired of it finding excuses to always not do anything about the regime; it is an insult to humanity.'

He wants a tribunal to probe several allegations, including:

• The killing of an estimated million people - around 5 of the country's population - during the rule of Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath party;
• The use of chemical weapons against Kurds in the Halabja region in the late 1980s;
• The decapitation of 130 alleged prostitutes between June 2000 and April 2001;
• The execution of 2,000 detainees in the Abu Greb prison in just one day in March 1998.

Amin said none of the EU figures he held talks with raised any objections to his plea for a tribunal. The challenge is now to make sure one is actually set up, he believes.

During his stay, he met European Parliament President Pat Cox, as well as advisers to foreign policy chief Javier Solana and Commission President Romano Prodi.

However, Amin accused the EU of lacking a clear policy on Iraq. 'They don't have a strategy for how to ease the suffering of Iraqi people,' he said. 'The EU should help the Iraqi opposition. The ANC got help in South Africa and Burma is being helped to a certain level. Why can the Iraqi people not be helped to change the situation for the better?'

The economic blockade of his country, he argued, is a 'symptom of the problem rather than the problem itself'.

Although child protection charity Unicef has blamed the freezing of medical aid to the country for the deaths of more than 500,000 children from preventable disease, Amin said: 'The people are suffering not just from sanctions; they are suffering from dictatorship.'

He is urging the sanctions to be altered so that they hurt the ruling elite, rather than the entire population. 'The focus on sanctions deviates focus away from the focus on the criminal record of the regime. We are for targeted sanctions that isolate the regime.'

• Six Gulf states issued a joint appeal with the EU last week, urging Saddam Hussein to allow UN weapons inspectors unhindered access to Iraq. Signed by Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait, the plea was made at the EU-Gulf Cooperation meeting in Granada, Spain. The EU delegation also welcomed the suggestion by Saudi leader Crown Prince Abdullah that the Arab world could normalise relations with Israel if it withdrew from territories occupied in 1967. Both sides called on Iran to continue introducing political reforms.

The EU should actively seek to charge Saddam Hussein for crimes against humanity, a leading Iraqi human rights activist has urged.