But the villagers who left in 1985 and who have basically given up on being able to return to their family properties, are launching a legal case that will attempt to get the villagers the compensation promised to them back when they first left their homes.
“The agreement concluded with the Turkish by the former Iraqi government says that the villagers affected should be compensated,” Haval Wahab, the lawyer handling the case, told NIQASH – he said he had filed the case in the Iraqi courts in Baghdad but that, up until now, there had been no movement on the issue because of the fact that the court system wasn’t operating properly.
Wahab said he had met with the village leaders and elders from Nirwa, Rika and Dosky Shory to discuss the case. Everyone was very positive, he reported. “And when we initiated the lawsuit in March, people responded quickly. Within the space of two months, 16,000 people had given me the power of attorney, to file suit on their behalf.”
“Neither the federal government in Baghdad or the Kurdish government [in the semi-autonomous state of Iraqi Kurdistan] have shown any sympathy to these people’s case,” Wahab complained. “It’s a matter of national interest and at the very least the Kurdish government should support their own people.”
Although it was the former Iraqi government, led by deposed dictator Saddam Hussein, that had helped to organize the enforced evacuation of the villagers, one of the villagers involved, Nizar Jatinsi, from Dosky Shory, noted that: “the current Iraqi government has inherited this problem and is therefore legally obliged to compensate us for the losses we incurred.”
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