Drying of southern Iraq’s Ahwar (natural swamps), mass annihilation crime, Thi-Qar Council says

THI-QAR / IraqiNews.com – Southern Iraq’s Thi-Qar Province ’s Council has called on the Human Rights Minister, during his reception by the Council on Sunday, to consider the drying of southern Iraq ’s Ahwar (natural swamps) by the former Baath regime as “a mass annihilation crime.”   “We are proud by the Iraqi Parliament’s decision to consider the chemical attack on northern Iraq’s Kurdish city of Halabja in the 1980s as a mass annihilation crime, but also demand to consider the drying of southern Iraq’s Ahwar (marches) as a similar crime as well,” the Chairman of Ahwar (marches) Rehabilitation Committee, Hassan Warboush told IraqiNews.com news agency.   “Unfortunately, the Iraqi Parliament did not take into consideration the problem of the marches and similar issues against innocent people there, and we have called on the Human Rights Minister during the said session to take the said issue seriously,” he stressed.   On his part, the Chairman of the Integrity Commission in Thi-Qar Province , Jamil Yousif, said that the former Baath regime had covered the whole of Iraq in its oppression, “but there are certain areas where it doubled its oppression against, especially the areas of Ahwar (marches).”   Southern Iraq’s Chibayesh marches, 95 kms to the east of Nassiriya city, the center of Thi-Qar Province, is the largest marches area in southern Iraq, covering 600 sq. kms, where over 380,000 people live, most of them working in agriculture, fishing, hunting birds and milking.   The said marches have suffered broad drying operations in the 1980s by the former regime, forcing most of its inhabitants to desert them and the drying of broad water areas, before some of them restored their water after the defeat of the former regime in 2003.   RT / SKH   1069