The father of a demonstrator killed last year in Iraqi Kurdistan is working locally and internationally for freedom for those still in prison and accountability for officials who have wrongfully detained, beaten, tortured and killed people for participating in legitimate public witness.

  

Three years after a rocket nearly took his life, a young shepherd and his community hold on tenaciously to a life of hospitality in a war-scarred land.

PRAYERS FOR PEACEMAKERS, June 27, 2012

Give thanks for CPT Iraqi Kurdistan presenting their latest report detailing harm to civilian Kurds from cross-border attacks by Turkey and Iran to diplomats from each country. Pray for the Kurdish villagers as they speak out against the military actions.

Christian Peacemaker Teams-Iraqi Kurdistan accepted an invitation to the Iranian Consulate in Sulaimani on 22 May. They brought with them the team’s latest report, Disrupted Lives: the effects of cross-border attacks by Turkey and Iran on Kurdish villages.

First Consul Hamid Bodaghi was attentive and showed interest in the report and CPT’s work.

CPT Iraqi Kurdistan personally delivered a new report detailing harm to civilian Kurds from Turkey’s cross-border military actions to a Turkish diplomat. 

When asked about past attacks seemingly directed against the civilian population, the Vice Consul stated that “there has not been any attack against civilians intentionally.” Pressed on the safety of civilians in border areas he said, “We will never attack innocent people.”

The report documents civilian deaths, physical and emotional injuries, loss of crops and livestock, property damage, environmental contamination and regular displacement each year for long periods, all resulting from cross-border military actions. 

The Iraqi Kurdistan Christian Peacemaker Team publicly launched its latest report, Disrupted Lives: the effects of cross-border attacks by Turkey and Iran on Kurdish villages in a 31 May press conference in Sulaimani, Iraqi Kurdistan.

Disrupted Lives, available in Kurdish and English versions, details the effects of cross-border bombing and shelling attacks by Turkey and Iran in the Pshdar district of Iraqi Kurdistan over the course of 2011. 

Despite the heavy heat outside, the basement was cool, almost damp, with the smell of old crumbling concrete and years of dust storms. It was dark but a light glowed, soaking everything in a sinister red film, showing the way through, showing their faces, twisted with fear, and pain, and loss.

Pictures hung on the walls, one per wall. Large, almost life sized images of fallen bodies, decaying children, bloated cows. I stood in silence. I know the history, the decades of brutality, of ethnic cleansing, the systematic murder of Kurdish men, women and children in the 1980s; Saddam’s al’Anfal campaign. I had even seen those pictures before. But this was different; the horror was close and chilling.

This is the story of Sardasht Osman. On 5 May 2010, his body was found, shot, outside the city of Mosul. He had been abducted from outside his university two days earlier, in front of a crowd of witnesses. 

The prospective journalist's final opinion piece, “I Am in Love with Massoud Barzani’s Daughter,” criticized the KRG president’s wealth in biting satire. “All my friends said, ‘Saro, let it go and give it up or you will get yourself killed. The family of Mulla Mustafa Barzani [Massoud Barzani’s father] can kill anyone they want, and they surely will.’ ”

It appears they did. 

Saturday, 5 May marked the two-year anniversary of Kurdish journalist Sardasht Osman’s murder.  CPTers traveled to Hawler (Erbil) to stand in solidarity with Osman’s family, friends, and colleagues, as they remembered the young man.  Osman, who was twenty-three at the time of his death, was in his final year at university in Hawler, and frequently published articles critical of the Kurdish Regional Government and prominent party leaders.  According to the Committee to Project Journalists (CPJ), “the Kurdistan Regional Government issued a 430-word report in September 2010 claiming that Osman had been killed by a member of Ansar al-Islam, an extremist group, for not carrying out work he had promised to do.  The report provided no evidence for the assertion.  CPJ and other press groups said the report lacked credibility.”

On Saturday, CPTers, along with their partner Mohammed Salah, joined a crowd of about 150 people at the cemetery where Osman is buried.  The media presence was significant as well—many present were Osman’s colleagues.  After the ceremony, CPTers met with Osman’s father and older brother, as well as reporters, and CPTer Garland Robertson gave an interview to the Kurdish News Network (KNN).