MIDDLE EAST Middle Eastern Genocides Armenian Genocide The

MIDDLE EAST

Middle Eastern Genocides • Armenian Genocide • The Armenian Genocide was the systematic mass extermination and expulsion of 1. 5 million ethnic Armenians within the Ottoman Empire by the Ottoman government • Anfal Genocide • The term “Al-Anfal” translates to the spoils (of war), and is the eighth chapter of the Qur’an. Anfal in the Qur’an does not refer to genocide, but the word was used as a code name by the Iraqi Government for the systematic attacks against the Kurdish population in the late 1980’s.

Armenian Genocide • Dates: 1914 – 1923 • Perpetrators: Ottoman Empire • Victims: Armenians • Results: Estimated 1. 5 million Armenian Deaths

Armenian Genocide Personal Account “…On the day of Vardavar, 1915, The Turkish askyars brought Chechen brigands from Daghestan to massacre us. They came to our village and robbed everything. They took away our sheep, oxen and properties. Those who were good-looking were taken away. My aunt’s young son, who was staying with me, was also taken away, together with all the males in the town. They gathered the young and the elderly in the stables of the Avzut Village, set fire and burned them alive. Those cattle-sheds were as large as those of our collective farms. They shut people in the stables of Malkhas Mardo, they piled up stacks of hay round them, poured kerosene and set on fire. Sixty members of our great family were burned in those stables. I do not wish my enemy to see the days I have seen, lao! Only I and my brother were saved. From the beginning, they took away the young pretty brides and girls to Turkify them and also they pulled away the male infants from their mothers’ arms to make them policemen in the future. ” – Shogher Tonoian’s testimony, survivor of the Armenian Genocide

Remains of the Armenian corpses burnt alive in the cattleshed in Aly-Zrna

Anfal Genocide • Dates: The Al-Anfal attacks occurred from 1986 -1989, but violence towards the Kurds had been happening decades before • Perpetrators: Iraqi government (Ba’athist regime) • Victims: Kurdish Population of Iraq • Results: 50, 000 – 182, 000 Kurdish deaths as a result of the campaign

Anfal Genocide Personal Account Adiba Oula Bayez, an Anfal survivor described the Aug. 16, 1987 bombardment of her village of Balisan, saying warplanes dropped bombs that spread a smoke that smelled "like rotten apples. " "Then my daughter Narjis came to me, complaining about pain in her eyes, chest and stomach. When I got close to see what's wrong with her, she threw up all over me, " Bayez, a mother of five, said. "When I took her in to wash her face. . . all my other children were throwing up. " "Then my condition got bad, too. And that's when we realized that the weapon was poisonous and chemical, " she said. “I couldn’t do anything. ” Bayez said the villagers fled to nearby caves on mules, "but the helicopters came and bombed the mountains to prevent the villagers from taking refuge anywhere. " Like many villagers, she was blinded by the gas, she said. In the caves, people were vomiting blood, many had burns. "All I knew was that I was holding tight my five children, " she said. "I couldn't see, I couldn't do anything, the only thing I did was scream, 'Don't take my kids away from me. '" The villagers were taken by the military to a prison camp, and Bayez said four people kept in the same room with her died. On the fifth day in jail, she pried open her swollen eyes with her fingers to see, and "I saw my children's' eyes swollen, their skin blackened, " she said.