Tuesday, 16 March 2010
Hewlêr, Southern Kurdistan — On 22nd anniversary of the poisonous gas attack on the Kurdish town of Helebce, families of Helebce city’s chemical bombings victims demonstrated on Tuesday before the German Consulate in Erbil city, demanding the German government a formal apology for selling chemical weapons to the former Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein who ordered to launch the attacks on Kurds in 1988.
This morning, representatives of various Iraqi-Kurdish demonstrations villages and towns that were attacked with poison gas in the 80 years before the German consulate in Iraqi Kurdistan. They demanded that the Federal Republic of Germany finally an official apology for the delivery of weapon systems and components for the production of poison gas used by the former Iraqi bloody regime to massacre civilians Kurds in Helebce town.
On 16 March 1988, the Iraqi army had deliberately targeted the Kurdish town of Helebce with poison gas bombs. 5000 civilians died instantly, thousands in the long-term consequences. Also 35 other towns and villages were bombed during this period.
It is well known that German companies at that time as "Death Dealers" functioned. To no one has been held accountable. Even Germany has never accepted responsibility for these crimes and apologizes to the Kurds.
So far, no official representative of the Federal Republic of Germany has ever visited Helebce.
For this reason, representatives of all villages today demonstrated in front of the Consulate General of media coverage and demanded that General Oliver Schnakenberg, finally, the pending apology. if this fail, the demonstration would be repeated at every anniversary.
"So far, many representatives of Germany visited Kurdistan, but no one has ever mentioned the poison-gas supplies," says the petition. "When Germany continued to refuse to make an official apology, we must assume that it belongs to the peace-loving nations."
