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Documentary Film on Saddam´s Mass Graves
We are happy to announce that our latest documentary, Saddam’s
Mass Graves will participate in the Asian International Documentary
Film Festival in Seoul, South Korea. September 1st. http://www.ebsdoc.co.kr
Jano Rosebiani will present and discuss the film. Rosebiani
will also be a guest on EBS-TV special “Meet the Director”
Sept. 1 and 2. ESB maybe accessed via satellite on Hot Bird.
Saddam’s Mass Graves
Review by
Latika Padgaonkar
The Pioneer Newspaper, New Delhi, India
“If Saddam Hussein had not been deposed, the majority
of Iraqis would have ended up in mass graves.”
When Kurdish filmmaker Jano Rosebiani came to the Osian’s-Cinefan
Festival last month with his film, Jiyan, he had another film,
a documentary, in his suitcase: Saddam’s Mass Graves.
The film had premiere at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival
in May this year, but wasn’t part of Osian’s-Cinefan,
and consequently wasn’t shown. The director did, however,
leave behind a tape. In it is a tale that’s hard to bear.
Last year, Rosebiani travelled all over Iraq, meeting and
talking to survivors and witnesses of the systematic liquidations
carried out over several years by Saddam Hussein. The graves
Rosebiani discovered are in thousands, sometimes marked by
a plain tombstone; but mostly, the dead lie anonymous, under
mounds and ditches with nothing whatsoever to indicate that
these are, indeed, graves of men young and old, of every religious
and ethnic group, of people who were gagged, blindfolded,
shackled and shot. They toppled – or were pushed –
into the ditches along which they sat. There is a grisly similarity
to the manner in which tyrants slaughter people.
Some survived miraculously to tell the tale. “We were
taken during the month of Ramadan. When the victims had fallen
into the holes, the holes were covered up with bulldozers.”
Woman after wailing woman in black recalled the scenes of
those times: the rumble of tanks, the whir of planes, the
blasts of gunfire, people dragged out of bed, children thrown
into trucks like logs of wood, the decimation of entire immediate
families and extended families. The women’s reactions
ranged from resignation (“That’s been our fate for
twenty years”) to a ferocious desire for revenge (“Give
me Saddam’s blood. I’ll drink it”). We’ve
endured nothing but grief, they howl on camera, nothing but
grief.
“The crimes against the Kurds have been committed ever
since the inception of the State of Iraq in 1921,” said
Rosebiani in an interview. “The Kurdish massacre has
always been ethnic. The Indo-European Kurds have aspirations
for independence from the ruling Arabs and from the Arabisation
campaign in Kurdistan.” As for the attack on the Shia
Arabs, “it has its religious roots as well as Iran-Iraq
animosity. Both groups had opposed Saddam’s regime.”
But the dead in the mass graves included just about everyone:
Kurds. Shias, Sunnis and Turkmen. Some were tortured.
“Saddam’s mass burials began in the early 80s,”
explained Rosebiani, “then escalated during the Anfal
genocide of the Kurds in 1987-88. The genocide alone cost
182,000 lives. Saddam then attacked the Shia Arabs in the
south following the Gulf War.” An estimated 1.3 million
people are missing since his assumption of power in 1979,
300,000 are believed to lie in the graves, most of which are
located near the border with Saudi Arabia. Of these, 270 have
been discovered so far, but only 50 excavated for sampling.
Some 4,500 villages were razed. And given the arrogance of
the regime, no effort was made to hide the criminal act. On
the contrary, the killing was done with pride. “The regime
gave itself the right to kill innocents,” says one interviewee,
“And that is scarier than the killing itself.” For
a whole month in the graveyard of a town called Dubis, women
washed four to five bodies every day. “We lost all appetite,”
they tell you in the film.
The consequences of these deaths are being felt on many levels:
financial, social, psychological as well as in health and
education. Mobile teams of social workers are helping people
to rejoin society. “There are local human rights organizations
all over Iraq,” said Rosebiani, as well as Human Rights
Ministries in both Kurdistan and Baghdad.” People are
seeking compensation, they want moral as well as material
support. The problems appear to be especially acute among
women, and those who spoke said that if these problems remained
unaddressed, there would be no productive future for Iraqi
society.
There remains the question of identifying the bodies of family
members and, quite simply, having a place to grieve. “We
want a memorial for the dead. They are entitled to it.”
But identifying means exhuming, a process that is technical,
slow and painful. It could take up to a year to exhume a single
site. Besides, this is no ordinary exhuming – this is,
as one person explained – biological anthropology with
forensic application. Western countries began by sending forensic
teams but the job was called off due to unrest in the country.
Rosebiani says that the idea of truth and reconciliation for
the people of Iraq was the driving force behind making this
documentary. People in the film agree. “These graves
should bond Iraqis. If Saddam Hussein had not been deposed,
the majority of Iraqis would have ended up in mass graves.”
For Rosebiani, a major area of conflict is the resettlement
of the Internally Displaced People and the reversal of the
Arabisation campaign. “Kurdish families want to return
to their villages and reclaim their homes and land but the
Arab settlers are not moving out.” Iraq is undergoing
a temporary phase of violence, he believes, “which was
expected after three and a half decades of tyranny…reconciliation
has to come in the right form of government. The Kurds have
been oppressed not only by Saddam’s Ba’ath regime,
but by all successive Iraqi rulers since 1921. They have reason
enough not to trust any emerging Arab ruler, which is why
they demand a federal system. It is either that or separation.
The same may be true for the Shias as well.”
A New Film:
Rosebiani and editor, Kawa Akreyi are currently working round
the clock editing a new feature documentary in Hollywood.
This new film, which is produced in collaboration between
Evini Films and Hollywood-based Stonegate Entertainment Group.
The new feature will be combining Saddam’s Mass Graves
and Chemical Ali documentaries and more that will be a a precise
and complete depiction of Saddam’s crimes against humanity.
The film will be released in USA theaters nationwide in Oct.1st.
More information to come. Be on the look out.
Evini Films
25 Kolanî 47
Hewlêr, Kurdistan-Iraq
Local Tel.: 22 276 24
Sat. Tel.: +88 21 66 774 4440
Int. Tel.: +44 702 860 1000 then 447 8499 #
E-fax: +1 208 246-0706
http://www.medyaarts.com
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Jiyan - finally a film about Halabja
Saddam's Mass Graves
Read on: http://www.medyaarts.com
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