On the 37th anniversary of the Anfal genocide in Garmyan, the University of Human Development President, Professor Dr Mariwan Ahmed Rasheed, the University’s President Assistant for Scientific Affairs, Professor Dr Anwar Muhammed Faraj, and the Head of the University’s Media Office, Assistant Professor Dr Ahmed Omar Bali, attended a commemoration ceremony held in the village of Debna, where the Anfal Monument and a special cemetery for the Anfal martyrs are located.

The village is near Kalar, the largest city in the Garmyan area, situated in the southeast of the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. During the commemoration, the UHD President and his Assistant laid flowers in front of the Anfal Monument, which was built to honour Kurdish civilians killed during the notorious Anfal campaigns in Garmyan.

The event was also attended by the Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Affairs of the Kurdistan Region, as well as the presidents of all public and private universities in Kurdistan.

“The Anfal campaign was launched by the Iraqi regime under President Saddam Hussein in 1988 to suppress the Kurdish resistance; but the campaign targeted civilians and the methods employed amounted to acts of genocide and crimes against humanity by the standards of the Genocide Convention. Thousands of homes were demolished and burnt, many villages and towns were razed to the ground, and tens of thousands of people were killed by chemical weapons or taken to detention centres to face the harshest and most inhumane conditions”,  quoted from Iraq’s Nugra-Salman prison castle: a place for dark tourism.