Genocide Experts Call for Ending Arabization in Disputed Topzawa Village

PUKMEDIA

Demonstration against the violation of Kurdish and Turkmen rights in Kirkuk.

In a statement obtained by PUKMEDIA, 55 organizations, groups, media outlets, writers, journalists, and genocide activists expressed support for Kurdish and Turkmen farmers who are on strike to reverse the effects of the demographic change practices used by the former Iraqi Ba'ath regime and urged the Iraqi government to take action to stop these violations.

Kurdish and Turkmen farmers in Topzawa village, south of Kirkuk, have been on strike for 25 days over the Iraqi Ministry of Defense and army's reoccupation of their farms, and the government has still not complied with their demands. The rights of the Turkmen and Kurdish residents of Topzawa village have been violated twice by the Iraqi government.

The statement says that the Ministry of Defense and the Iraqi Army are using the fact that the lands are state property as an excuse for wanting to develop residential complexes for army officers. However, the statement also asserts that the lands were illegally taken from Kurdish and Turkmen farmers in 1987 by the deposed Ba'ath regime and turned into state property and given to resettled Arabs.

The statement continued by saying that this is a violation committed by the Ministry of Defense against the residents of Topzawa village, even though the law on the abolition of the decisions of the Ba'ath regime's Supreme Leadership Council, issued following Council of Ministers decision number 30  in 2012, should have been enacted as it a part of the agenda of Al-Sudani's cabinet and was approved by the legislature.

The organizations and activists in the field of genocide describe these steps of the Iraqi Ministry of Defense and the army as a dangerous alarm that reminds everyone of the bitter memories of the crime of Anfal, especially as these violations are also being committed in other locations such as Sargaran, Daquq, Leylan, etc.

Notably, this is the second time that the Iraqi government has seized the land of the Turkmen and Kurdish residents of Topzawa village. The first time was in 1987, during the Baath regime, when all the villagers were evicted and expelled, and their land was nationalized and distributed to resettled Arabs.

Kurdish residents in Kirkuk and other disputed territories between Erbil and Baghdad are occasionally attacked, and their land is taken over by resettling Arabs who refuse to give up the lands granted to them by the Ba'ath government of Iraq. Article 140 of the Iraqi Constitution was largely written to address the issue of disputed regions between Erbil and Baghdad. The former Iraqi Ba'ath regime made significant efforts to Arabize the populations of Diyala, Kirkuk, Nineveh, and Saladin, which led to these disagreements.



PUKMEDIA