Over the years, I have continually argued the case for indicting the Iraqi regime for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide. In 1991, I stood at the opposition dispatch box and described what I had seen on the mountains of Iran and Iraq when the Kurds fled from the bombardment of Saddam Hussein. The scenes were appalling and typical of the attacks made by the Iraqi regime on its own people. The victims of these attacks include Arabs as well as Kurds. They also include Assyrians, Turkomans and the Shi’as in the south of the country who were forced to flee from the marshes into Iran.
I am afraid that people have very short memories. The regime should be removed, and it could have been removed by indictment under international law. It is a great regret to me that this country, which could have led the way, did not do so.
After two years of our making the case and providing evidence from the victims of the regime, the Attorney General felt that there was not sufficient evidence. I do not know how much evidence one needs, because it abounds. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International have the evidence. The Kurds themselves have documents from a torture centre that they eventually liberated, where thousands of their citizens died.
That torture centre has now been turned into Iraq’s first genocide museum which, on my latest visit there, I opened. It was snowing and quite dark on that day, and people had come from all over the area. Their relatives had died in that torture chamber. Inside the cells, people had written things on the walls. Sometimes the writing was in blood, and sometimes it was just marks to cross off the days of the week. The museum contained photographs that the Kurds had taken. The images were of skulls and shreds of clothing, and of the type of thing that one sees in genocide museums elsewhere in the world.
I have been to similar museums in Rwanda and Cambodia, and I have seen the holocaust exhibition in London, but on this occasion, I cried. I do not think that I have ever cried in public before, but I did so because the regime’s victims were all around me. One old woman came up to me with a piece of plastic and pushed it into my hand. I unwrapped it and saw three photographs. They were of her husband and two sons who had died in there.
I have been involved for 25 years—including before I became a politician—with the Iraqi opposition. For those 25 years, I have heard the tales of Saddam Hussein’s regime and its repression of the Kurds and other minorities. People seem to think that that all came to an end in 1991, but that is a big mistake. Repression, torture and ethnic cleansing have continued throughout the time since then.
One victim I met on my visit was a youngish man who said that he had been in prison for eight years. Almost every day, he explained, people were executed at that prison – not one person, but hundreds. When, some time ago, there was an attack on the life of Saddam’s eldest son, Uday Hussein, 2,000 prisoners were executed on the same day. That is the reality of Saddam’s Iraq.
Ethnic cleansing goes on all the time. I visited a UN camp where there were hundreds of recent victims of ethnic cleansing who had been told that they had 24 hours to get out of the northern Iraq city of Kirkuk. As part of Saddam’s policy of Arabisation, the men, women and children in the camp had to agree that they were Arabs, not Kurds – but they would not.
When I hear people calling for more time, I say, ‘Who will speak up for Saddam Hussein’s victims?’ In other countries, we have taken action against people responsible for ethnic cleansing, so why not against him? I believe in regime change, and I say that without hesitation.