Today I came across Mafqud.org an online memorial to the disappeared in Iraq under the Baathist regime. Mafqud means "disappared" in Arabic. The website contains the names and some information of over 10,000 of the hundreds of thousands who "disappeared" in Iraq under the Hussein regime. Unfortunately you have to use a search engine to look at the records, which minimizes their visual impact, though it must aid administration of the website.
As the coordinator of Proyecto Desaparecidos, an online memorial to the disappeared in Argentina, I find the project very laudable. We must remember the disappeared, we must not allow their torturers and killers to erradicate their memory from this world. Their names and faces should remind us of our commitment to create a world that is just for all, where everybody's fundamental rights are respected. So I applaud Maqfud.org and I'm glad it's there.
And yet I find it interesting that the Mafqud.org website seems to have come into being in March 2003, just as the American troups were readying to invade Iraq and that its creation was made possible by a grant from the United States Department of State.
Mafqud.org is/was a project of a Washington DC based organization originally called "Organization for Human Rights in Iraq" and later renamed Huquqalinsan.org , so as to not confuse it with a well-known Iraqi organization also called "Organization for Human Rights in Iraq". Another partner in its creation was the Teheran based "Documental Center for Human Rights in Iraq", itself associated with the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq.
It's difficult to believe that the timing of the site was circumstancial, that it was not part of a greater propaganda effort to justify the invation of Iraq on human rights terms.
Ultimately, however, I'm not sure how to feel about this site. On the one hand I think that anything that help us remember the disappeared is good. On the other, it seems perverse to use people who had suffered because of political reasons for a political agenda. And yet many of the disappeared themselves might have agreed with that agenda - though many surely not.
Posted by marga at February 27, 2006 3:08 PM | TrackBack