Conference on mass graveyards held in Arbil

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: The 3rd Conference for Mass Graveyards in Iraq was opened in Arbil, the capital of north Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, by the Region’s Ministry of Martyrs in the Region’s government, under the patronage of its Premier, Barham Ahmed Saleh. The opening ceremonies were attended by representatives of Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani, Kurdistan President, Massoud Barzani, Kurdistan Prime Minister, Barham Ahmed Saleh, Kurdistan Parliament’s Speaker, Kamal Kirkuki, as well as a number of Kurdistan and Iraqi Parliament’s members and officials of the Iraqi Federal Government and the Region’s government. A statement by the Kurdistan Region’s government, published on its official website on Sunday, pointed out that over 100 participants have attended the conference, that concentrates on three main axis – the Legal, International and Technical – during which 12 researches would be presented in Arabic, English and Kurdish Languages. The conference, held through cooperation and coordination with the Health Ministry of Kurdistan Region and Iraq’s New Media & Studies Center, is scheduled to “adjust Law No.5 for 2006 about mass graveyards, that had proven to have failed to achieve the ambitions of the related parties, planning to discover the huge number of mass graveyards, spread all over Iraq, with the Kurds being the largest victims buried in those mass graveyards. The conference also strives to “describe the mass graveyards, being evidence for mass annihilation campaigns, for the international circles.” Kurdistan Region had witnessed in the late 1980s of the last century, during the former Baath regime, campaigns called “Anfal,” that led to the killing of thousands of Kurds, who were buried in different parts of Iraq. The statistics of Kurdistan Regional government had shown that more than 182,000 people have been victims of those massacres. SKH (TF)/SR 733