İSTANBUL- Ramazan Öztürk, a journalist, who announced the Halabja massacre, which was engraved to the memories with the death of more than 5 thousand people, with his “Silent Witness” photograph, expressed the brutality over which 32 years has passed, saying, “It was a human drama too big to fit in two lines of a newspaper”.

One of the events engraved as a black mark on the history of mankind, Halabja Massacre has always come to minds with the words of a child running to their mother: “Dayê bêhna sêva tê. (Mother it smells like apples).

What happened on March 16, 1988 in the city of Halabja, near the Iranian border of the Iraqi Federated Kurdistan Region, was one of the most painful massacres in the world. Towards the end of the war between Iran and Iraq on September 22, 1980, Saddam Hussein launched the Al-Anfal Campaign  against the Kurds between 1986 and 1988. After the Kurdistan Patriotic Union (PUK) and the Democratic Party of Kurdistan (KDP) ended the clashes and allowed the Iranian army to enter Halabja, Sddam Hussein directed his attacks to Halabja

Upon the rebellion that started in Halabja, Saddam Hussein also ordered Lieutenant General Ali Hasan al-Majid al-Tikriti, known with the name of "Chemical Ali", to use chemical bombs.

Airplanes of the Iraqi army, which took off by the orders of Saddam Hussein, took the Halabja under intense bombing for 3 days. In the bombardment, thousands of people died in their homes and thousands dies in the streets where they ran in panic. According to the data of World Health Organization (WHO), more than 7 thousand people were injured in the massacre where more than 5 thousand people died and 61 thousand 200 people got disabled. Many of those lost their lives as a result of the chemical gases which has the apple smell.

Ramazan Öztürk, a journalist who announced what happens in the Halabja to the world with his “Silent Witness” photograph, told that they could not erase the massacre from the minds of the people for all these years.

'IMAGES THAT CHILLS YOUR BONES'

Stating that he went to Halabja by helicopter over Iran as soon as he heard the news of the massacre, Öztürk said that when they got out of the helicopter in a place where they could see the Halabja from top, Öztürk said that a bone-chilling image appeared before their eyes.

Öztürk said, “There were big bomb capsules around. In the pits opened by the bombs which had fallen, there were dead  animals. The painful voices of animals were creepy. With a weight of chemical gases discarded, a cloud of fog had collapsed over the city. When we saw that view there, we could guess what we would encounter in the city square."

A WEIRD DEATH SILENCE...

Expressing that the cities had a noise, but they encountered a terrible silence when they arrived in Halabja, Öztürk explained his testimonies with the following words: "I was following the war between Iran and Iraq before, but for the first time I was entering a city where chemical weapons were used. You would expect all the houses to be demolished by the bombardement, but the majority of the houses have not been destroyed. There was a funeral and a strange smell of people who died all over the streets. The skins of the bodies were swollen due to the chemical gases used, and the people still living seemed to die due to the influence of nerve gas. The images of mothers who were exposed to attack at their dinner table and trying to protect their children by hugging them were very influental."

'SILENT WITNESS' OF THE MASSACRE

Explaining that he saw the baby in the arms of a father while walking on the streets with the responsibility of announcing the massacre to the world, Öztürk stated that the deaths of his father and son were enough to reveal the brutality experienced.

Öztürk spoke that this photo frame, which he named as “Silent witness” as follows: “It was very striking. How innocent the boy's face was. This innocence was the victim of a dirty and treacherous war. How could this child be involved in this war? The father's effort to protect his child on his way to death had an impact on me. Looking carefully at the photo, while Father Ömer Havar is losing his life, his weight is supported by his elbow on the stair's step in order not to harm the child. That's why we said this photo is the 'silent witness' of this massacre."

'HALEPÇE IS A SMALL HIROCHIMA'

Öztürk says “It is a small Hiroshima” for Halabja as the most prominent example of the genocide the Kurdish people have been exposed to.

Saying that the Kurdish people should not forget the Halabja massacre by engraving this massacre in their memory, Öztürk underlined that the media and especially the Kurdish media organs, which are in a position to prepare a historical documents, also have great responsibilities.

MA / Naci Kaya