Kurdish artist depicts Anfal and Halabja in paintings put on show in UK
08/07/2012 16:38
Sulaimaniyah, July 8 (AKnews) – A
Kurdish artist in UK is putting his works on the show to tell the story of
former Iraqi dictator’s atrocities against the Kurdish people in painting.
Mariwan Abu Zeid has put six of his paintings in Middleborough’s Cleveland College Gallery where about 100 artists are exhibiting their works.
Abu Zeid’s works depict the 1988 chemical attack on Halabja that killed about 5,000 civilian Kurds and injured about double the number, as well as the Anfal operation in which about 182,000 Kurds – mainly women and children – were rounded up by Iraqi forces, killed and buried in mass graves in southern Iraq’s deserts.
Abu Zeid told AKnews in a telephone interview that he chose the theme of Anfal and Halabja gas attack or his works in order to “better familiarize the UK citizens of the tragedies that came upon the Kurds” at the hands of the Iraqi regime.
The Halabja chemical attack and the Anfal Operations were recognized as genocide against the Kurds by the Iraqi Supreme Criminal Court that was set up after 2003 to try the former Iraqi leaders responsible for the massacres.
Among the high ranking Iraqi officials who were found guilty for ordering the attacks was Ali Hasan Majeed – Saddam Hussein’s cousin – who was executed in 2010.
By Kamaran Karim
RY/AKnews
