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The Bombing of the Zewa Camp, an Unforgettable Crime — June 9, 1985
After Saddam Hussein, Vice President of the Republic of Iraq, and Mohammad Reza Shah of Iran reached an agreement on March 6, 1975, on the sidelines of the summit of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in Algiers—or, more precisely, after Saddam put part of Iraq's land and waters on the bargaining table in exchange for striking and besieging the September Revolution—the great September Revolution withdrew its Peshmerga forces from the confrontation fronts because of the combined international pressure. To protect the people of Kurdistan, the revolutionary leadership decided temporarily to suspend the armed struggle. Despite the regime's successive general amnesties and the Shah regime's threats and pressure on revolutionaries to return and abandon the steadfast revolutionary leadership, many revolutionaries refused to return under the authority of a government prepared to sell its honor in opposition to a people's rights. Under international pressure, the revolutionary refugees who did not abandon their leadership were initially settled in tents in the Zewa area of Eastern Kurdistan. Houses were later built for them with the assistance of the revolution and international organizations. Although the Zewa camp was not a military field, at dawn on June 9, 1985, during the holy month of Ramadan, the Ba'ath Party regime used 8 MiG-32 aircraft to unleash its chauvinist hatred for 15 minutes against the innocent refugees of the Zewa camp, most of whom were fasting. It killed nearly 150 innocent refugee and displaced civilians, including women and children, and wounded more than 400 others. Most were children and students who had gone to their schools to receive their final annual results. In fact, whenever the enemy was defeated by the Peshmerga forces on the battlefield, it retaliated by attacking defenseless civilians in the camps and targeting refugees and people far from the fighting. It had previously done the same in the summer of 1983 against B…







