Missing Persons – Basic Questions

 

 

Why are there so many missing people in Iraq?   Saddam’s brutal regime executed 300,000 or more people over the past 20 years.  There families were often not notified of the killing, and many families have believed for years that their missing relatives are in prison.  Now that the regime is gone, we have learned that all of these missing persons were either killed, or somehow, luckily escaped abroad.

 

Why were these people taken away?  Saddam Hussein’s regime maintained power through a policy of silencing opposition from the Iraqi people.  Anyone who opposed the regime, or came from a particular ethnic, religious, or gender group at a particular time could be taken away as punishment.  Once they were taken, they were often tortured and when lucky, survived to go to prison.       

 

Where are they now?  Many of the prisoners who survived the brutal torture were eventually executed by the regime, particularly the political prisoners.  Hundreds of thousands of those “taken away” are in the mass graves being found all around Iraq.  We are hoping, of course, to find some of the missing persons abroad in areas a fortunate few may have escaped to during different uprisings or wars.  These individuals would have been fearful of notifying their relatives still living in Iraq that they were alive because the regime often tortured and punished family members and friends of those who left Iraq.

 

How can we find these missing persons?   One way of finding missing persons is through exhumation of mass graves.  Some missing persons have already been identified by the initial exhumations conducted by Iraqis.  If remains at a grave site have an identification card, or uniform, or other identifying feature, such as dental records, they can be identified.   Sex and age can also be determined from the appearance of human remains.  These factors help make it possible to identify missing persons.  We can also learn of the fate of missing persons through records.  The regime has left behind hundreds of thousands of records, already discovered, containing identifying information and execution dates for the missing persons.   Witnesses have also observed killings of particular persons and remained silent until now.  Finally, for those Iraqis who did escape the brutality, they may be located in refugee camps and abroad.  Hopefully, we can reunite them with their families.  

 

How do we plan to help the Iraqi people?  We recognize and understand the past suffering of the Iraqi people, and the grief they have suffered over the loss of so many innocent loved ones.  We are committed to assisting the Iraqi people to develop an Iraqi Bureau for Missing Persons, that will input data from all of the sources above to try and match lists of missing persons with knowledge of their whereabouts or fate.  We will also assist the Iraqi people in gaining much needed psychological counseling and community support networks to assist in the grieving process and training in advocacy for laws which could benefit the surviving family members.