Human rights in Saddam Hussein's Iraq


's era under President Saddam Hussein was notorious for its severe violations of human rights, which were perceived to be among if not the worst in the world. Secret police, state terrorism, torture, mass murder, genocide, ethnic cleansing, rape, deportations, extrajudicial killings, forced disappearances, assassinations, chemical warfare, and the destruction of southern Iraq's marshes were some of the methods Saddam and the country's Ba'athist government used to maintain control. The total number of deaths related to torture and murder during this period is unknown, but estimated to be around 250,000 according to Human Rights Watch, with the great majority of those occurring as a result of the 1988 Anfal genocide and the suppression of the 1991 uprisings in Iraq. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International issued regular reports of widespread imprisonment and torture.

Documented human rights violations 1979–2003

Human rights organizations have documented government-approved executions, acts of torture and rape for decades since Saddam Hussein came to power in 1979 until his fall in 2003.
According to officials of the United States State Department, many human rights abuses in Saddam Hussein's Iraq were largely carried out in person or by the orders of Saddam Hussein and eleven other people.
The term "Saddam's Dirty Dozen" was coined in October 2002 and used by US officials to describe this group. Most members of the group held high positions in the Iraqi government and membership went all the way from Saddam's personal guard to Saddam's sons. The list was used by the Bush Administration to help argue that the 2003 Iraq war was against Saddam Hussein and the Baath Party leadership, rather than against the Iraqi people. The members are:
The destruction of Shi'ite religious shrines by the former government has been compared "to the leveling of cities in the Second World War, and the damage to the shrines was more serious than that which had been done to many European cathedrals." After the 1983-88 genocide, some 1 million Kurds were allowed to resettle in "model villages". According to a U.S. Senate staff report, these villages "were poorly constructed, had minimal sanitation and water, and provided few employment opportunities for the residents. Some, if not most, were surrounded by barbed wire, and Kurds could enter or leave only with difficulty." After the establishment of republican rule in Iraq, enormous numbers of Iraqis fled the country to escape political repression by Abd al-Karim Qasim and his successors, including Saddam Hussein; by 2001, it was estimated that "Iraqi emigrants number more than 3 million." Nicholas Kristoff of The New York Times commented: "Police in other countries use torture, after all, but there are credible reports that Saddam's police cut out tongues and use electric drills. Other countries gouge out the eyes of dissidents; Saddam's interrogators gouged out the eyes of hundreds of children to get their parents to talk."

Number of victims

In January 2004, Human Rights Watch stated: "Having devoted extensive time and effort to documenting atrocities, we estimate that in the last twenty-five years of Ba'th Party rule the Iraqi government murdered or 'disappeared' some quarter of a million Iraqis, if not more." The 1988 Al-Anfal campaign resulted in the death of 50,000-100,000 Kurds, while 25,000-100,000 civilians and rebels were killed during the suppression of the 1991 uprisings. In addition, 4,000 prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison were reportedly executed in a particularly large 1984 purge. Far fewer Iraqis are known to have been executed during other years of Saddam's rule. For example, "Amnesty International reported that in 1981 over 350 people were officially executed in Iraq ... the Committee Against Repression in Iraq gives biographic particulars on 798 executions." Kanan Makiya cautions that a focus on the death toll obscures the full extent of "the terror inside Iraq," which was largely the product of the pervasive secret police and systematic use of torture.