27 March 2006. A World to Win News Service. Every year on 16 March, there is a ceremony in the town of Halabja in the eastern part of Iraqi Kurdistan in memory of the 5,000 people killed in 1988 when Saddam Hussein sent aircraft to drop poison gas in an effort to deter Kurds from rebelling against his regime. Saddam was supported by the US then, and Washington prevented the UN Security Council from denouncing this crime, even though the US was later to use this incident as one of its pretexts for invading Iraq.

Discontent in Iraqi Kurdistan

27 March 2006. A World to Win News Service. Every year on 16 March, there is a ceremony in the town of Halabja in the eastern part of Iraqi Kurdistan in memory of the 5,000 people killed in 1988 when Saddam Hussein sent aircraft to drop poison gas in an effort to deter Kurds from rebelling against his regime. Saddam was supported by the US then, and Washington prevented the UN Security Council from denouncing this crime, even though the US was later to use this incident as one of its pretexts for invading Iraq.

This year, the ceremony turned into a protest against the US-backed Iraqi Kurdish government by many relatives of the victims and others. Mariwan Hama-Saeed, a journalist for the Institute for War and Peace, spoke to BBC. Later he and a local trainee reporter wrote first-hand accounts on the group’s Web site (www.iwpr.net). He said that 3-5,000 people, mainly young men, chanting, “Down, down, down with the government