Baghdad to host "GENOCIDE" festival for Feyli Kurds

Shafaq News/ An international film festival dedicated to the Feyli Kurds will debut in Baghdad at the end of November 2024.

The festival's president, Kurdish director Eyad Jabar, told Shafaq News Agency that the event aims to document the genocide and suffering experienced by Feyli Kurds through cinema and documentaries. "the festival will spotlight the magnitude of the disaster that remains largely unknown."

The festival's first edition will feature 12 new films, including documentaries, short fiction, and animations focused on the Feyli Kurds.

Jabar revealed that efforts to establish the festival have been underway for four years. "We decided to hold this festival to provide a global platform for recognizing the suffering of this community," Jabar said.

"Given cinema's power and international reach, we aim to use it to advocate for our people."

Feyli Kurds are an ethnic group historically inhabited both sides of the Zagros mountain range along the Iraq-Iran border.

According to the Minority Rights Group, today, the estimated 1.5 million Faili Kurds in Iraq live mainly in Baghdad, as well as the eastern parts of Diyala, Wasit, Maysan, and Basra governorates, as well as in the Kurdistan region.

During Saddam Hussein's regime, which spanned nearly three decades, thousands of young Feyli Kurds were forcibly relocated to undisclosed destinations, their fates shrouded in uncertainty, with indications suggesting that many perished in custody or were subjected to extrajudicial executions and buried in mass graves.

The Ba'athist regime initiated a concerted campaign in the late 1970s and early 1980s to uproot the Feyli Kurds, stripping them of their Iraqi citizenship and seizing their assets. They endured deportation, displacement, arrests, and executions during the tenures of former Presidents Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr in 1970 and 1975, followed by Saddam Hussein in 1980.

In 2010, the Supreme Criminal Court rendered its verdict on the crimes of displacement and confiscation of rights perpetrated against the Feyli Kurds, unequivocally designating them as acts of genocide.

In December 2008, the case concerning the Feylis was forwarded to the Iraqi High Criminal Court. Following 44 hearings in 2010, the court officially recognized the genocide of the Feylis. The Iraqi Parliament also officially classified the forced deportations and disappearances as acts of genocide.