Human rights activists have launched an international campaign in solidarity with Palestinian refugees in Iraq.

The move comes as part of attempts to boost bilateral ties between the Palestinian and Iraqi peoples and to push for the protection of the refugees’ human rights in Iraq.

Reports, articles, press statements, and videos will be released as part of the campaign.

The campaigners have called on mass media and pro-Palestine activists to support the humanitarian drive and urge the Iraqi authorities to suspend all unfair measures issued against Palestinian refugees and reveal the fate of victims of enforced disappearance.

“Nearly 600 Palestinian refugees were killed and dozens forcibly disappeared in the country”, the campaigners said in a press statement.

Palestinian refugees have been residing in Iraq since 1948, when the Arab-Israeli conflict caused large scale displacement throughout the region. That movement was followed by another group who fled the Occupied Territories as a result of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war and later by a third group who fled from the Gulf countries in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf war.

Persecution of members of the Palestinian community in Iraq began almost immediately after the fall of the former Saddam Hussein’s regime in April 2003. Palestinians were subject to harassment, targeted attacks, kidnapping, abduction, torture and extra-judicial killings.

Hundreds of Palestinian families were forcibly evicted from government and privately owned housing, by groups of armed Shi’a militia as well as landlords who had received minimal rent from the government. Large numbers of Palestinians were dismissed from their employment, and the widespread violence in the aftermath of the US invasion caused the exodus of hundreds of families.