Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 104 Part 3.djvu/698

 104 STAT. 2050 PUBLIC LAW 101-513—NOV. 5, 1990 50 USC 1701 SEC. 586F. DECLARATIONS REGARDING IRAQ'S LONG-STANDING VIOLA- ^°^- TIONS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW. (a) IRAQ'S VIOLATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL LAW. —The Congress determines that— (1) the Government of Iraq has demonstrated repeated and blatant disregard for its obligations under international law by violating the Charter of the United Nations, the Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare (done at Geneva, June 17, 1925), as well as other international treaties; (2) the Government of Iraq is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights and is obligated under the Covenants, as well as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to respect internationaly recognized human rights; (3) the State Department's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 1989 again characterizes Iraq's human rights record as "abysmal"; (4) Amnesty International, Middle East Watch, and other independent human rights organizations have documented extensive, systematic, and continuing human rights abuses by the Government of Iraq, including summary executions, mass political killings, disappearances, widespread use of torture, arbitrary arrests and prolonged detention without trial of thousands of political opponents, forced relocation and deportation, denial of nearly all civil and political rights such as freedom of association, assembly, speech, and the press, and the imprisonment, torture, and execution of children; (5) since 1987, the Government of Iraq has intensified its severe repression of the Kurdish minority of Iraq, deliberately destroyed more than 3,000 villages and towns in the Kurdish regions, and forcibly expelled more than 500,000 people, thus effectively depopulating the rural areas of Iraqi Kurdistan; (6) Iraq has blatantly violated international law by initiating use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war; (7) Iraq has also violated international law by using chemical weapons against its own Kurdish citizens, resulting in tens of thousands of deaths and more than 65,000 refugees; Saddam (8) Iraq continues to expand its chemical weapons capability, Hussein. QJ^^ President Saddam Hussein has threatened to use chemical weapons against other nations; (9) persuasive evidence exists that Iraq is developing biological weapons in violation of international law; (10) there are strong indications that Iraq has taken steps to produce nuclear weapons and has attempted to smuggle from the United States, in violation of United States law, components for triggering devices used in nuclear warheads whose manufacture would contravene the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, to which Iraq is a party; and (11) Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has threatened to use terrorism against other nations in violation of international law and has increased Iraq's support for the Palestine Liberation Organization and other Palestinian groups that have conducted terrorist acts.

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