Status: 4/4/2023 2:59 p.m
In the past five decades, up to a million people have disappeared in Iraq without a trace. This is the conclusion reached by a UN committee that has investigated and is now denouncing the mass disappearances of people.
In Iraq, militias, army and police organizations have made several hundred thousand people disappear over the past decades. This is from a UN report Committee Against Enforced Disappearances (Committee on Enforced Disappearances – CED), which was presented in Geneva.
Many cases also relate to the period of the predominantly US and British occupation from 2003 to 2011. The practice continues to the present. Numerous victims were forcibly abducted, also abroad.
In November, the committee visited Iraq for almost two weeks. The delegation included the German Barbara Lochbihler as vice-chair of the panel. According to the report, the phenomenon of enforced disappearances was not reflected in official statements by Iraqi authorities, while accurate data could be obtained underhand. To date, however, there are no reliable figures.
Abducted and prisoners for decades
It is estimated that up to 290,000 people, including 100,000 Kurds, were swept away during the rule of the Baath Party and Saddam Hussein from 1968 to 2003 alone.
Between 50,000 and 70,000 men and boys disappeared in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, some of whom relatives hope may still be living in Iranian camps. According to the report, after Hussein’s fall, 96,000 Iraqis were temporarily detained in US- and British-run prisons, many without their families being notified.
“Islamic State” continues practice
In the course of the removal of the old Baath regime, security forces and militias made tens of thousands of people disappear, according to the UN, in 2006 and 2007 alone. During this period, about 20,000 bodies were delivered to the Baghdad Forensic Institute, most of which could not be identified.
Following the withdrawal of US troops, the practice of enforced disappearance of suspected former Ba’athists and alleged terrorists continued. From 2014 to 2017, “Islamic State” fighters kidnapped and murdered thousands of people. According to the UN, around 6,800 Yazidis were abducted and 3,100 killed within a few days in the Sinjar district.
The committee also reported numerous allegations that demonstrators arrested in connection with the anti-government protests of 2018 to 2020 had disappeared or were being detained at an unknown location.
Government should adapt criminal law
Since in most cases the perpetrators went unpunished, the UN committee called on the Iraqi government to take decisive action against these “appalling crimes”. Criminal law needs to be adapted, cooperation between the authorities better coordinated and a national register for disappeared persons created.