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Iraqi Mistreatment of Women

There was a meeting in Beirut to "go public" regarding current mistreatment conditions. Iraqi persecution of females was top order at the conclave.

  • J. Grant Swank, Jr.
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There was a meeting in Beirut to "go public" regarding current mistreatment conditions. Five hundred delegates from over 110 nations were present. Iraqi persecution of females was top order at the conclave.

Bodily harm to women was described in all its grotesque dimensions: rape, chemical weaponry, ethnic "cleansing," genocide, cultural obliteration, forced "disappearances" of politically leading spokeswomen, religious persecution, sex abuse, torture, executions, abandonment, separation from kin, and, in particular, the misuse of the adultery law in order to malign innocent women.

Delegates brought to the fore the Iraqi's official "Women's Union" as an example of political mockery. It is an entity overseen by Iraq's ruling Ba'ath party. The Beirut conference sought to expose this organization as a sham, indeed another determined channel for the persecution of women.

A 23-page Foreign Office report to the Conference presented specific detail. It stated for written documentation the various means of torture against women in particular, such including ripping out of tongues, eye piercing, electric shock treatments, and acid dousing.

As a part of the statement, Um Haydar, a 25-year-old female, was highlighted as representative of inhumane levelings against women. She had been yanked from her home, then her head cut off in 2001 after her husband had fled the regime. Policemen then lifted her offspring and mother-in-law to an undisclosed location. They have never been seen to this date.

An English writer was told by one of Saddam's chuckling henchmen that "we could make a kebab out of a child, if we wanted to.'


  • J. Grant Swank, Jr.
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