FEBRUARY 2004

they put my brother and my uncle in jail.” – ROUFI AYAR
At the start of his teenage years, Ayar was often taken to the
police station for defending himself while being harassed by
other children. “We were known as the kids of the traitor,”
recalled Ayar. “If the mothers saw their children hanging out
with me, they would take their kids back home.” Although
traumatizing for a child, he understood that other people also
lived in trepidation and were only trying to protect their families.
“It was very hard at that time,” he said.
The Ayars lived in a prison-like state for years. The government
put restraining orders on the entire family; they
lived as if on house arrest. Ayar’s Uncle Mansour, Hanna’s
brother, was jailed by association. Once released, he stayed in
hiding until he was able to escape to the United States.
“He went to the United States in 1968 and returned to get
his family in 1969,” explained Ayar. “As soon as he landed at the
airport in Baghdad, he was arrested and jailed for three months.”
Finally, in the late 60s, the Ayar family traveled to the United
States with the help of Ayar’s mother’s brother, Mike Denha.
Roufi obtained a passport by default. The events that led to the
granting of his passport turned out to be a blessing in disguise.
A gym teacher, a member of the Ba’ath Party, had harassed
Ayar, forcing the teenager to fight back. Ayar threw a stack of
schoolbooks at the teacher, who tried to hit the then15-yearold.
The next day, Ayar was greeted at school by being beaten
at the hands of the principal, assistant principal and gym
teacher. After the whipping, school officials expelled him.
He was able to obtain a passport by convincing
the authorities he had no other choices — no work
or school. It was off to America where Ayar has
lived for decades. He is married with six children.
One woman’s fight for freedom
Dr. Katrin Michael’s hand still shakes, and her lungs
can’t completely take in a full gasp of air. It’s been 18
years since she was sprayed by Saddam Hussein’s
chemical weapons and she still suffers the effects.
Michael, a Chaldean woman born in northern
Iraq, joined the Kurdish-based Iraqi resistance
movement in 1982 to fight against Saddam
Hussein’s regime. A victim of chemical bombings
by Hussein’s forces, she fled Iraq in 1988. She has been living in
the United States since 1997, where she is a leading advocate
on behalf of Iraqis persecuted by Hussein’s regime.
In March of 2003, Michael wrote in an op-ed piece in
Newsday that, “Only Saddam’s removal can free women.” She
speaks as an Iraqi woman who wages peace and has fought in war.
This is a story she also shared with President George W. Bush.
“The stories of Hussein’s brutality are all true,” explained
Michael. “Ethnic cleansing, summary imprisonment and execution,
torture and rape are all part of the nightmare. I know this
from personal experience.”
Michael’s father founded an Iraqi peace movement, a crime
for which he was murdered. At the age of 14, the young woman
was arrested by the regime merely because she joined the Iraqi
Women’s League and she was not the only young girl arrested
for such a trivial offense.
Later, she joined the Kurdish resistance, even though she
was, in their eyes, a mere woman and a Christian, Michael
recalled. “I traveled in disguise to Baghdad and around the
country to organize the opposition to Hussein,” she said.
“But when I was injured in one of his chemical bombardments
against hundreds of Kurdish villages in 1987 and 1988, I
was forced to flee to a refugee camp in southern Turkey, where
I stayed until I recovered and finally reached freedom in the
United States in 1997. I continue to suffer to this day from lung,
nerve and eye damage caused by these weapons.”
Prior to the war and capture of Hussein, Michael believed that
no one in Iraq was immune from his brutality — not even the
closest members of his family. He executed two of his own sonsin-law
in 1996. “Women were especially targeted as part of his
broader policies of intimidation,” said Michael. “A commonly
used form of torture was to bring in a detainee’s female relative,
preferably his wife, daughter or mother, and gang-rape her in front
of him. Members of the Iraqi opposition in exile received videotapes
of their female relatives in Iraq being raped.”
It didn’t end there.
Women who criticized or
merely offended Hussein
were accused of being
prostitutes and regularly
beheaded in public. His
son, Uday, often led
these beheadings. They
occurred in Baghdad, as
well as in smaller villages
throughout Iraq. The
heads of the executed
women were hung on the
doors of their houses for
all to see.
Up until recently, Michael worked for the Washington
Kurdish Institute, a nonprofit research and educational organization.
A member of the Iraqi opposition in the United States,
she has helped to increase women’s presence in domestic and
international opposition movements.
Michael currently has a book in production that tells of
the chemical and biological bombings in the Kurdistan
region of Iraq, which forced more than one million Iraqi
Kurds to flee the country.
Katrin Michael in the Oval Office with President Bush
PHOTO COURTESY KATRIN MICHAEL
FEBRUARY 2004 CHALDEAN NEWS 25