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Die Linke calls for Germany to recognise genocide of Kurds in Iraq

The party also calls for the prosecution of the companies that supplied the chemicals to Saddam Hussein

GERMANY’S Die Linke party has called for official recognition that Saddam Hussein’s al-Anfal campaign in Iraq was a genocide and for German companies and individuals that facilitated it to be prosecuted.

The party tabled proposed legislation in the German parliament regarding the former Iraqi dictator’s brutal campaign of forced Arabisation, which led to the death of 182,000 Kurds and more than one million being forced off their land between 1986 and 1989.

Die Linke MP Helin Evrim Sommer exposed the complicity of German companies in the Anfal attack and the gassing of 5,000 Kurds at Halabja, which was one of the worst massacres in recent history.

Some 80 German companies are known to have supplied Saddam’s regime with equipment for its weapons programme, far outstripping the involvement of other countries.

While much of this technology was used for conventional weapons, an 11,000-page report sent to the United Nations in 2002 detailed how German firms had “actively encouraged” the Iraqi government to develop weapons.

Die Linke called for Germany to ensure that that there is support for the survivors of the genocide and their relatives and that the Kurdistan region receives financial compensation to aid redevelopment.

Those that aided the Iraqi regime’s chemical weapons programme with technology, laboratories, factories and chemicals should be prosecuted and made to pay compensation to its victims and their relatives, according to the proposed legislation.

“The German government should do everything in its power to cast light on this crime against humanity, in which German companies erre also involved for the sake of profit,” Ms Sommer said.

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