Iraq: Protect Government
Archives from Looting
(New York, April 10, 2003)
U.S. and allied forces
should prevent Iraqi government
offices from being ransacked
because government documents
will undoubtedly be key
evidence in future war
crimes trials, Human Rights
Watch urged in a letter
to U.S. Secretary of State
Colin L. Powell and U.S.
Secretary of Defense Donald
H. Rumsfeld today.
Families who have been
expelled from their homes,
particularly from the
areas around Kirkuk in
northern Iraq, will also
need to rely on government
records to establish their
property claims, ethnic
identities and place of
origin.
Failing to protect Iraqi
security archives could
contribute to retaliatory
violence and vengeance
killings, since the archives
could identify tens of
thousands of security
agents and collaborators
by name, Human Rights
Watch said.
Looting has been reported
in many Iraqi cities as
the government collapses,
and U.S. and coalition
forces have done little
to stop it. In Basra,
British officials have
publicly stated that they
allowed the looting of
Ba'ath party buildings,
which house important
archives, as a means of
showing the population
that the party had lost
control of the city.
"These government
documents are critical
evidence of twenty-five
years of atrocities,"
said Kenneth Roth, executive
director of Human Rights
Watch. "Countless
families in Iraq will
need access to these archives
to establish what happened
to their missing relatives."
Human Rights Watch estimates
that some 250,000 to 290,000
Iraqis have "disappeared"
during the rule of the
Ba'ath Party-taken away
from their homes by the
Iraqi security forces,
and never heard from again.
The archives of the Iraqi
security services could
finally allow the families
of those "disappeared"
to find out what has happened
to their long-lost relatives.
Following the 1991 uprisings,
Kurdish officials secured
an estimated 18 tons of
Iraqi state documents,
which were transferred
to the United States and
analyzed by Human Rights
Watch. These captured
documents clearly established
Iraqi
government responsibility
for the genocidal Anfal
campaign against the Kurds,
and helped Human Rights
Watch identify the responsible
Iraqi officials. The documents
also provided important
evidence of other repressive
actions by the Iraqi government,
including its campaign
against the southern Marsh
Arab population.
Future insecurity could
be prevented if documents
are preserved. For many
displaced Iraqis, official
government records are
all they have to establish
their identities, place
of birth, ethnicity, or
ownership of property.
Human Rights Watch has
reported on the confiscation
of nationality correction
forms, expulsion orders,
and ration cards before
Iraqis were forcibly displaced
from their homes http://www.hrw.org/reports/2003/iraq0303/,
making the copies available
in official government
repositories even more
important. Current occupants
of property abandoned
by displaced people have
an interest in seeing
these documents destroyed.
More generally, if these
records are not preserved,
displaced people will
not be able to make property
claims, or even to establish
their identities or those
of their children.
In the former Yugoslavia,
many property documents
were willfully destroyed
in the process of "ethnic
cleansing," and displaced
people have had great
difficulty in returning
to their former homes
as a result.
Kenneth Roth is
executive director of
Human Rights Watch.
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