Skip to main content

Meet Iraq's human rights advocate who lived through two genocides

Dr. Widad Akreyi, who lived through the 1980s Anfal genocide and the 2014 Yazidi genocide, has become one of the major defenders of human rights in Iraq and beyond.
472924231.jpg

Childhood memories are indelible in Dr. Widad Akreyi’s mind. They still mark her life and her battles around the world. The iconic Kurdish defender of human rights was born in Akre, not too far from Erbil in Iraq's southern Kurdistan. She was just 10 years old when Saddam Hussein's Baath Regime took power in Iraq in 1979. Akreyi had already survived the Iraqi government offensive against the Kurds in the mid-1970s. She also lived through the Anfal genocidal campaign, when atrocities were committed against Kurdish civilians by the Iraqi government between 1986 and 1989 — the campaign was commissioned by Hussein to crush Kurdish resistance in northern Iraq in the last phase of the 1980-1988 Iraq-Iran War. Today, she is an award-winning peace activist, but those distinctive memories of her early age become clearer with each passing day.

She vividly remembers the Baath Party youth organization, which spied on pupils. “The model was the Hitlerjugend and Jungmadel of 1930s Germany,” Akreyi told Al-Monitor. She added, “The girls were mostly the daughters and relatives of Arab settlers; they usually questioned pupils who did not understand what was going on. If the girls who spied had the slightest suspicion of ‘wrong’ opinions, the questioned pupils and their families would face serious consequences. We learned at ages 6 and 7 that the world was not as safe as we had previously thought.”

Access the Middle East news and analysis you can trust

Join our community of Middle East readers to experience all of Al-Monitor, including 24/7 news, analyses, memos, reports and newsletters.

Subscribe

Only $100 per year.