COMMUNICATION AND INFORMATION CENTRE FACTS ABOUT IRAQ Treatment of Women

In a report published by Amnesty International (AI) (2001) - Iraqi law allows male relatives to kill a female relative in the name of honour without any consequent punishment. Women’s organizations and human rights activists in Iraq Kurdistan have reported that many thousands of women in the areas controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) have been tortured or killed by relatives and others who claim they are acting to protect the honour of the family. Women who have been raped, as well as those accused of adultery – or any sort of contact with a man who is not a family member – have been among the victims, as have women who have refused to marry the man chosen by their family.

Some women have been raped in custody. They were detained and tortured because they were relatives of well known Iraqi opposition activists living abroad. AI (2001) reported Najeeb Al Salihi, a former army general who fled in 1995 and joined the Iraqi opposition, was sent a videotape showing the rape of a female relative. Shortly afterwards he reportedly received a telephone call from the Iraq intelligence, asking him whether he had received the “gift” and informed him that his relative was in their custody.

US State Department (September 2002) – report Human Rights organizations and opposition groups continued to receive reports of women who suffered from severe psychological trauma after being raped by Iraqi personnel while in custody.

US State Department (September 2002) – report Iraqi forces allegedly raped women who were captured during the Anfal Campaign and during the occupation of Kuwait.

AI (2001) – In October 2000 dozens of women suspected of prostitution were beheaded without any judicial process in Baghdad and other cities. The killings were reportedly carried out in the presence of representatives of the Ba’ath Party and the Iraq Womens General Union. Members of feda’iyye Saddam, a militia created in 1994 by Uday Saddam Hussein, the eldest son of the President, used swords to execute the victims in front of their homes.

AI (2001) - A 25 year old woman known as UM Haydar was beheaded in the street without charge or trial at the end of December 2000 after her husband, suspected by the authorities of involvement in Islamist armed activities, fled the country. Um Haydar was taken from her house in al-Karrada district, in front of her children and mother-in-law, by men belonging to Fedaiyye Saddam. Two men held her arms and a third pulled her head from behind and beheaded her in front of the residents. The beheading was also witnessed by the ruling Ba’ath Party in the area. The security men took away the body and the head in a plastic bag and took away the children and mother-in-law.

US State Department (September 2002) – report in May the Iraqi Government reportedly tortured to death a mother of three Iraqi defectors for her childrens’ activities.

Human Right Alliance, France (2002) – a young was arrested because her husband had refused to join the war against Iran. Pregnant at the time, she gave birth in prison on 3 December 1989. “I breast fed my son, but they took him away when he was seventeen days old – so that he would not become like me. I am still looking for him, I never had any further news of him”. This woman, who was also horribly tortured in prison, says she still suffers endless torture: the torture of not knowing.