For the 35 years Saddam Hussein ruled Iraq, no organization ever raised a voice against the regime, according to Fouad Baban, a doctor and professor in Sulaymaniyah, Iraq.
And according to Baban, human rights abuses in the country abounded during Hussein's reign.
Penn's chapter of Amnesty International, an organization that takes a stance against human rights violations, invited Baban, along with Ahood Al-Fadhal -- an advocate of women's rights and one of the first female elected officials in Iraq -- to speak about the brutal atrocities that occurred under Hussein's rule.
Wharton senior and President of Penn's chapter of Amnesty International Visalakshi Venugopal said the chapter invited Baban and Al-Fadhal to speak because "people are really interested in Iraq, and it was an easy way to promote human rights."
Baban said that high on Hussein's long list of offenses was his use of "weapons of mass destruction."
"He was producing chemical weapons since [the] 1970s," he said.
Baban focused on the brutality of Hussein's regime, citing examples of genocide aimed against the Kurds, who live primarily in northern Iraq.
Baban said that in 1998 he found at least 280 sites in Iraqi Kurdistan that had been bombed by Hussein's regime. He also said that there were over 300 mass graves of Kurds hidden throughout Iraq that had not been found "until the collapse of Saddam."
According to Baban, Hussein's military destroyed 4,000 Kurdish villages using dynamite and deported about 200,000 Kurds because Hussein claimed that they lacked proper Iraqi passports.
Al-Fadhal, who has lived in Basrah, Iraq, her whole life, lost all three of her brothers at the hands of Hussein's military. Along with her two children, she also spent time in jail because her husband was against the regime.
"I [have been] suffering from Saddam's regime for [the] past 35 years," Al-Fadhal said. "You [were] not a human under Saddam."
Baban agreed with Al-Fadhal. People "were used as guinea pigs [in] chemical lab investigations," he said. "Saddam was so brutal."
Baban stressed how "grateful [Iraqis are] to the United States of America and [her] allies for toppling this regime."
College freshman Alexandra Martins said she came to the event "to get the Iraqi perspective." She said, with regard to Baban and Al-Fadhal, "I'm blown away [that] they came [to America] to defend what the U.S. has done."
Other students were drawn to the event because they wanted to learn more about human rights violations in Iraq in general.
"I didn't know much about ... the genocide and WMDs," Wharton freshman Robert Reisenweber said. "I wanted to hear first-hand about what was going on."
Baban and Al-Fadhal spoke for about an hour to around 40 people at the event, which took place in Huntsman Hall
