New ministry seeks to restore Iraqis' sense of dignity

By David Shelby
Washington File Staff Writer

Washington -- After suffering decades of human rights violations, Iraqis are building institutions to come to terms with the past and ensure that their basic dignity never again falls victim to the arbitrary oppression of a tyrannical regime.

In a February 14 ceremony, Iraq's Human Rights Minister Mohamed Jasim opened the doors of his ministry in Baghdad, which has been mandated to investigate past human rights violations and make sure that they are not repeated.

According to Iraqi Governing Council spokesman Hamid Alkifaey, the new ministry will work "to realize its goals in the shortest time possible in order to uplift the Iraqi people who have suffered such oppression."

In a February 20 interview with the Washington File, Alkifaey noted, "There were terrible violations of human rights during the rule of Saddam Hussein. ... Hundreds of thousands were thrown into mass graves."

He added, "When we established a new system, we saw that it was necessary and important that a ministry for the protection of human rights exist in order to guarantee basic rights and to document and rectify what happened to the extent that this is possible. Of course, we cannot bring back the dead."

For years, international human rights organizations have documented egregious violations of human rights under Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime.

A 2002 report from Amnesty International stated, "Scores of people, including possible prisoners of conscience, were executed. The victims included army officers suspected of plotting to overthrow the government or of having contacts with opposition groups abroad, and suspected political opponents, particularly Shi'a Muslims suspected of anti-government activities."

The report went on to detail the executions of four officers "reportedly for criticizing the government" and the execution of two Shi'a clerics "reportedly for publicly accusing the government of being behind the murder of Ayatollah Mohammad Sadeq al-Sadr in 1999."

The report also documented specific methods of torture used on political prisoners including electric shocks, burns, beatings, rapes, suspensions from rotating fans, extraction of fingernails and mock executions.

The full extent of the human rights abuses are only now coming to light, however, as officials begin the task of investigating the scores of mass graves that the Baathist regime left in its wake. As of mid-January 2004, 53 of 270 reported mass gravesites had been confirmed.

Immediately following the war, Human Rights Watch estimated that "as many as 290,000 Iraqis have been ‘disappeared' by the Iraqi government over the past two decades."

Perhaps no region of the country is more familiar with this reality than the Shi'a-dominated south. This keen awareness of the former regime's abuses made the opening of a new Human Rights and Democracy Center in the southern city of Najaf all the more significant.

During the February 17 ceremony to mark the opening of the center, Sheikh Khalid Nuamani stated, "God created human beings with dignity. We are here to return to the people of Najaf their human dignity."

Other Human Rights and Democracy Centers are already operating in the southern cities of Hilla and Diwaniyah, and more are expected to open in South Central Iraq over the coming weeks. These centers support human rights initiatives as well as democracy and advocacy training.

Alkifaey said that he knows of no other country with a Ministry of Human Rights and that such matters are generally subject to the oversight of international organizations.

"But we in Iraq feel that there is a need to have a special ministry devoted to human rights in order to reassure the Iraqi people who have known such oppression," he said. "This ministry will serve to help the Iraqi victims come to terms with the terrible human rights violations of the past insofar as possible."

(The Washington File is a product of the Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of State. Web site: http://usinfo.state.gov)