CPTnet
14 August 2012
IRAQI KURDISTAN: June-July Update

On team: Lukasz Firla, Carrie Peters, Patrick Thompson, David Hovde and Garland Roberts

CPT partner Mohamed Saleh spent many days at the office, teaching Kurdish to Peters, Thompson, and Hovde, and working with the team to plan trips, meet with potential partners and translate documents. Saleh would also occasionally start cleaning out the team’s refrigerator, or sweep off the courtyard, at which point the team would protest that he didn’t have to do such things, and decide it was probably time to clean the house. 

Thompson, Peters, and Saleh traveled to a Syrian refugee camp outside of Duhok. The CPTers were joined by Jim Fine, from Mennonite Central Committee in Erbil, and by Majed Dawi, from Public Aid Organization, and the team’s contact with the camp. It was a sobering trip. At the time, Dawi estimated there were about a thousand people in the camp (numbers have since swollen to over 4,000), living in UNHCR tents. Residents told of receiving repeated summons to report to various security branches of Bashar al-Assad’s regime. When the summons finally came from the “Palestine Branch,” the families decided to escape. They described how the Palestine Branch was notorious in Syria – if you went to them, the men and women in the tent said, you never came back.

The team also spoke with refugees on the “singles” side of the camp - for young men who arrived without their families. Many of these young men told the team that they were defectors from Bashar al-Assad’s army. They had been told, “Kill or be killed,” and, “Kill your brother or we will kill you.” But some of the men wondered if life in the camps was so much better. Thompson asked about the refugees’ access to doctors. “Yes,” another man said with a laugh. “There is a doctor. If you go to him with a bellyache, he will give you pills for your head.” 

Firla was invited to speak at a conference at the American University of Iraq - Sulaimania, as a part of a day-long event highlighting different areas of Kurdish culture. Firla, representing CPT, spoke about the cross-border attacks that have so affected the villages in Iraqi Kurdistan along the Iranian and Turkish borders. Thanks to that presentation, the team made many new connections. 

The team responded to continuing threats to the lives and families of persons who before had publicly called for governmental reform. After a visit from another distraught individual the team composed an article identifying the dangerous and disturbing experiences faced by participants in Kurdish Spring 2011 protests. The article appeared on the website of independent newspaper Awene.

The team visited Bilal, a prisoner confined because of a 20-year sentence following his conviction in the killing of a soldier during a spring 2011 demonstration in Halabja. The family and Bilal conceded their Ramadan fasting routine to enjoy a picnic dinner in the prison yard, receiving CPT members into their company.  

	Weavers of life in Sunnah village

Team members, accompanied by two journalists, traveled to Zarawa and Sunnah villages. The journalists recorded damages to the economic, physical, emotional and community life in the border region from cross-border attacks by Iran and Turkey.

The team participated in a series of gatherings intended to bring awareness to injustices resulting from Iranian governmental policies: an imprisoned individual conducting an extended hunger strike and Iranian citizens residing in Sulaimani who are in danger of being returned to Iran because of their past association with the editor of the newspaper Israel-Kurd. The Asaish (police) have directed them to leave the country. Some of the targeted persons have gone to the Qandil mountains and others are planning a pilgrimage to Syria to aid in the struggles of Kurdish refugees there. The team offered temporary sanctuary for them if that option would be beneficial. The team also visited with the Iranian Consulate again to nurture relationship and to discuss concerns associated with CPT’s work in the area.

CPT Iraqi Kurdistan opposes violence by Turkey and Iran against the Kurdish people, UN sanctions that collectively punish Iranians and Kurds in Iran, and the calls for military action against Iran.