IGC ON THE 25th COMMEMORATION OF ANFAL AND HALABJA GENOCIDE
It is an honour to be standing in front of all of you. I want to start off by saying:
On behalf of the institute for research of genocide and the international team of experts, we want to extend our deepest condolences to the Kurdish nation, on the 25th anniversary of the Halabja Gas Attack and Anfal Campaign.
It’s interesting that 25 years have passed and many people do not know much about this genocide. I won’t lie, I was one of those people. I remember in university there was always a footnote about the suffering of Kurds under Sadam Hussain’s government. However, I have never heard any of my professors say the words Halabja or Anfal.
What I’m trying to say is, unless there is ongoing discourse about past human suffering we tend to forget: schools and university do not education, politicians fail to hold public discourse and leaders who commit these crimes are sometimes not held responsible. Worst of all this leaves room for future genocide.
Coming from a country where genocide denial is part of daily public discourse, I fear history will repeat itself. Currently my intolerance for genocide denial is justifiable and the Bosniak community sympathizes with the Kurdish community. We understand how it feels to have someone publicly disregard proven facts and we understand the frustration when world leaders do not react to genocide denial.
Genocide denial is one of the reasons why I got involved with the institute and further pursued my masters in human rights. I came to the point where I could not watch nor listen to new reports and studies that “proved” that the mass, senseless murders of Bosniaks, Armenians, Kurds and Tutsis were not genocide.
I realized that we as individuals have a responsibility to the victims and survivors to keep the discourse going, to challenge these denials. Further, I believe that individual and community actions are the best solution to ending genocide denial. I have come to this realization while campaigning for the Srebrenica genocide resolution.
I am also aware of your efforts in getting a resolution passed to commemorate the Kurtish genocide in Canada and the Institute for Research of Genocide Canada commends your efforts. By now you probably realized that this is a very tiring, frustrating and difficult task. That being said I want to share some of my first hand experiences. My first words of advice are: Do not give up and do not give in!
The Bosniak community has lobbied the Canadian parliament to pass the Srebrenica genocide resolution for 5 years. Finally the resolution was passed on october 19 2010. This was not without issues. One of the biggest challenges was when harper placed a veto on our resolution. In other words he banned the resolution from being voted in the parliament. This was because we did not want to remove the word genocide from the resolution.
This mind you came a month before the 10th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide. Instead of giving up a group of us decided to organize a silent march through the streets of toronto and other events for the tenth anniversary. At our events we had a chance to educate the greater canadian public about the veto. These events were met with great success and i realizes anything is possible.
Another reason why these events were successful was because we had community support. Without individual and collective support none of our campaigns would have been successful and the Srebrenica genocide resolution would never have been adopted. Each and every one of you can make an impact and you are all an important part of the bigger picture.
Lastly, organization and communication between community members plays an important task in carrying the lobbying efforts forward. With proper communication and allocation of tasks to community members, success is inevitable.
To conclude, I want to stress that we as individuals, play the key role in keeping truth and justice going. We must help each other because if we allow genocide denial to continue, future genocides are inevitable. Denial is the final stage of Genocide.
On behalf of the Institute for Research of Genocide-Canada we stand in solidarity with the Kurdish nation and we support your future efforts to have Halabja Gas Attack and Anfal Campaign passed as Genocide in the Canadian Parliament.
Thank you
Aldina Muslija
M.A Human Rights
Central European University
Secretary of the Institute for Research of Genocide, Canada
