Iran
A woman sits by the grave of a chemical attack victim in Sardasht on June 28, 2020. Photo: IRNA
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Thirty-three years on, survivors of the 1987 chemical attack on the Kurdish city of Saradasht, Iran, say their suffering continues to go overlooked by the government.
On June 28 and 29, 1987, the Iraqi Baathist regime under Saddam Hussein dropped barrels of poison gas on Sardasht, killing 140 civilians and wounding thousands others who are still scarred by the attack.
Survivors say that they do not receive enough help from the Iranian government. To this day, they suffer both the physical and psychological effects of the bombing, but they say their plight is ignored by the authorities in Tehran.
Meriam Alipoor told Rudaw on Sunday that Iranian authorities have not compensated the survivors of the chemical attack.
“So far they have not helped us at all; I received a loan of one million Iranian tomans ($50) and gave it to my son to travel abroad,” Alipoor said.
Zeinab Khodayar, another survivor of the attack, said that authorities have also failed to provide survivors with specialized doctors.
“Unfortunately in Sardasht we don’t even have specialized doctors for the survivors of the chemical attack, we need to travel to other provinces and cities,”she said.
Sardasht is located in the province of West Azerbaijan, bordering Iraq’s Kurdistan Region. Thousands in the city live in poverty, with hundreds of men, young and old, working as kolbars – carrying heavy loads of goods across the Iran-Kurdistan Region border - to earn a meagre living.
The Director General of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Fernando Arias released a statement on Sunday to pay tribute to the victims of the attack.
“I am honoured to address this solemn ceremony to remember and pay tribute to the victims of the Sardasht chemical weapon attack,” Arias said. “Today, we pause to recognize that the horror of that day must never be forgotten.”
Arias also called on all countries to renew their commitment to achieve a world “free of chemical weapons."
Comments
Rudaw moderates all comments submitted on our website. We welcome comments which are relevant to the article and encourage further discussion about the issues that matter to you. We also welcome constructive criticism about Rudaw.
To be approved for publication, however, your comments must meet our community guidelines.
We will not tolerate the following: profanity, threats, personal attacks, vulgarity, abuse (such as sexism, racism, homophobia or xenophobia), or commercial or personal promotion.
Comments that do not meet our guidelines will be rejected. Comments are not edited – they are either approved or rejected.
Post a comment