Freedom of the Press at a Crossroads in Iraqi Kurdistan

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Jan 10, 2014 Iraq
[Media swarm the \"Red Caravan\" carrying protesters against attacks on journalists in Erbil on 5 January 2014. Image exclusive to Jadaliyya] [Media swarm the \"Red Caravan\" carrying protesters against attacks on journalists in Erbil on 5 January 2014. Image exclusive to Jadaliyya]

Freedom of the Press at a Crossroads in Iraqi Kurdistan

By : Kamal Chomani

It appears there are but two ways to depict livelihood in Iraqi Kurdistan. Western journalists covering the area commonly invoke the region`s new luxury hotels and airports as symbols of its progress and prosperity. On the other hand, local journalists who document the corrupt deals behind the business boom report receiving death threats regularly and some have been murdered for their work.  

Kawa Garmyani, a reporter for the weekly Awene and editor of Rayal Magazine, was shot and killed in front of his home in Kalar city on the night of 5 December 2013. He had covered corruption in the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and had reportedly filed several lawsuits after being threatened.  

It had been widely reported by Kurdish media that Garmyani had been threatened by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) politburo member Mahmud Sangawi, who allegedly failed to appear for a court hearings concerning the incident. An audio file of an alleged telephone conversation between the murdered journalist, Kawa Germyani and Mahmoud Sangawi was uploaded on YouTube exposing an exchange where Sangawi appears to be threatening to kill the journalist. A Kalar Court issued an arrest warrant for Mahmoud Sangawi, the PUK`s politburo, who has been sued by the Garmyani family. Sangawi was arrested ahead of his appearance in court.

Garmyani`s death—along with the earlier murders of the journalists Soran Mama Hama and Sardasht Othman and the 2011 killing of demonstrators in Sulaimaniyah—raises serious questions about the KRG`s claim to be a pillar of democracy in the Middle East and a model for the rest of Iraq.

On the evening of 26 October 2013 in Sulaymaniya city, gunmen in a gray unlicensed BMW shot and wounded Shaswar Abdulwahid, hitting him in his right leg. Abdulwahid is the owner of Nalia Satellite TV, the first independent Kurdish satellite station in the Iraqi Kurdistan region. No investigations have been carried out to date. 

Abdulwahid told Jadaliyya, "I am not a politician or a famous figure in politics in the KRG. I have no private connections with any politicians or political parties. The only reason that they wanted to kill me is my ownership of Nalia TV, as we have been facing many other terrible events in the past three years." 

It was the second time that Nalia TV has been the target of attack by unknown assailants. In the first incident, which took place on 17 February 2011, Nalia`s facilities were set on fire. The attack occurred on the first day of protests against the KRG in Sulaimaniyah in which ten people were killed and five hundred people injured by security and Peshmerga (Kurdish armed forces).

Abdulwahid underscored that the attempt to kill him was actually an attempt to "silence his TV." He told Jadaliyya, "[t]he court has issued arrest papers for the [perpetrators], but they are still free [because] they may be above the government or rule [of law]." Wary of the KRG`s judiciary, Abdulwahid said he is working with lawyers on possibly finding an international venue for his case. 

The damage to Nalia TV`s facilities was estimated at ten million dollars. Abdulwahid said he was promised compensation, but there has been no independent investigation or processing of any claims. 

Freedom of the press in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq has experienced dark times in the past. In July 2008, Soran Mama Hama, an independent Kurdish journalist, was shot and killed in Kirkuk. Two years later, in May 2010, another journalist, Sardasht Othman, was abducted and murdered in Erbil. Sardasht Othman was a journalist who wrote investigative pieces about corruption in the KRG’s ruling parties, in particular KDP and its tribal structure. Yet the case have not been adequately investigated.  

According to documentation assembled by organizations defending freedom of the press in the Kurdistan region, in the past eleven months more than two hundred violations have been recorded, most of them during the campaign for the 21 September parliamentary elections.

Many have praised the KRG’s thriving democracy. But during the political unrest, the security apparatus treated journalists harshly. Kamaran Muhammad, spokesman for the Zar (Mouth) Group for Defending Freedom of Speech, questioned how democratic the region actually is, telling Jadaliyya that the KRG’s treatment of journalists should be judged on the security forces` response to them during coverage of riots, election campaigns, and sensitive issues.

In May 2013, Metro Center, an organization defending human rights and freedom of speech, criticized the KRG for forty recorded violations in just four months: "Believing in freedom of speech cannot be carried out only by words; [the] KRG should act.” The center recorded sixty-one more violations surrounding the September elections.

In an interview with Jadaliyya four days before Garmyani`s murder, Asos Hardi—general director of the Awene (Mirror) Co. for Publishing, founder of Hawllati (Citizen), the first Kurdish independent newspaper, and winner of the Gebran Tueni Award for the Defense of Press Freedom in the Middle East—expressed his anger at the situation facing journalists.

Hardi asserted, "[o]ur main problem is that there’s no guarantee for the freedom we have achieved in the KRG. Meanwhile, there are two administrations–KDP and PUK–on the ground, and that has made the KRG chaotic."

Hardi himself was attacked in August 2011 in Sulaimaniyah by a group of men. Five of the assailants were arrested, and three were sentenced to two years in jail. Commenting on the attack, Hardi said, "[m]any of the higher officials within the KRG and the two ruling parties have their own thugs. Unfortunately, these thugs attack journalists in the center of the cities. Most times, investigations go nowhere." 

He further explained, that "[m]urdering journalists is still a possibility, and almost all independent, critical journalists feel unsafe. Writing on sensitive issues, which are red lines for journalists–like the corruption of the [top] officials in the KRG and the two ruling parties and their families, oil, some historical events and several other issues–may lead to the death of the writer."

While KRG prime minister Nechirvan Barzani is spending millions of dollars for advertisements in the international media depicting the KRG as "the other Iraq" and a "region of democracy and freedom of speech," Kurdish journalists feel unsafe in their own homes.

An independent journalist who works in Erbil relayed to Jadaliyya, "During Saddam Hussein`s dictatorial regime, people were not sure if they would come back [home] in the evening. Today, in a free Kurdistan, journalists go out, but they are not sure if they [will] come back safely." In a similar vein, Abdulwahid noted that freedom of the press in the KRG is allowed to the extent that "your media outlets are not critical enough to be a threat to the power. Once you cross the red lines, you are in danger."

One journalist summed up the current situation succinctly in saying that: "Kurdistan is no longer a safe place for a critical journalist." Although the Kurdistan region’s parliament passed Law 35 guaranteeing freedom of speech in 2007, journalists are concerned that it is not being enforced. So far, some ten journalists have fled the KRG and sought asylum in the United States and Europe.

On 5 January, in most of the cities in the Kurdistan region, as well as many European countries and Canada, Kurdish people protested to pressure the KRG to bring those responsible for these crimes to justice. In the cities of Slemani, Erbil, and Kalar, these protests have been larger and more sustained, often every week. Erbil`s protest on 5 January featured a large roving lorry that drove along a main street in the city center for seventeen kilometers. The lorry, named "the Red Caravan," carried the protesters who held up signs commemorating the victims of the attacks. They demanded KRG investigate the murders of journalists and put an end to violence.

Kurdish intellectuals, scholars, writers, and journalists fear setbacks to the freedom of speech, freedom of the press, and democracy that they have gained by risking their lives. They are concerned that the KRG will become a region in which, in their leadership`s eyes, oil contracts and vast profit trump freedom and democracy.  
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Jan 9, 2012 Lebanon
Maya Mikdashi By :
Maya Mikdashi

American Elections Watch 1: Rick Santorum and The Dangers of Theocracy

One day after returning to the United States after a trip to Lebanon, I watched the latest Republican Presidential Primary Debate. Unsurprisingly, Iran loomed large in questions related to foreign policy. One by one (with the exception of Ron Paul) the candidates repeated President Obama`s demand that Iran not block access to the Strait of Hormuz and allow the shipping of oil across this strategic waterway. Watching them, I was reminded of Israel`s demand that Lebanon not exploit its own water resources in 2001-2002. Israel`s position was basically that Lebanon`s sovereign decisions over the management of Lebanese water resources was a cause for war. In an area where water is increasingly the most valuable resource, Israel could not risk the possibility that its water rich neighbor might disrupt Israel`s ability to access Lebanese water resources through acts of occupation, underground piping, or unmitigated (because the Lebanese government has been negligent in exploiting its own water resources) river flow. In 2012, the United States has adopted a similar attitude towards Iran, even though the legal question of sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz is much more complicated and involves international maritime law in addition to Omani and Iranian claims of sovereignty. But still, US posturing towards Iran is reminiscent of Israeli posturing towards Lebanon. It goes something like this: while the US retains the right to impose sanctions on Iran and continuously threaten war over its alleged pursuit of a nuclear weapon, Iran should not dare to assume that it can demand the removal of US warships from its shores and, more importantly, should not dream of retaliating in any way to punitive sanctions imposed on it. One can almost hear Team America`s animated crew breaking into song . . . “America . . . Fuck Yeah!”

During the debate in New Hampshire, Rick Santorum offered a concise answer as to why a nuclear Iran would not be tolerated and why the United States-the only state in the world that has actually used nuclear weapons, as it did when it dropped them on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki- should go to war over this issue. Comparing Iran to other nuclear countries that the United States has learned to “tolerate” and “live with” such as Pakistan and North Korea, Santorum offered this succinct nugget of wisdom: Iran is a theocracy. Coming from a man who has stated that Intelligent Design should be taught in schools, that President Obama is a secular fanatic, that the United States is witnessing a war on religion, and that God designed men and women in order to reproduce and thus marriage should be only procreative (and thus heterosexual and “fertile”), Santorum`s conflation of “theocracy” with “irrationality” seemed odd. But of course, that is not what he was saying. When Santorum said that Iran was a theocracy what he meant is that Iran is an Islamic theocracy, and thus its leaders are irrational, violent, and apparently (In Santorum`s eyes) martyrdom junkies. Because Iran is an Islamic theocracy, it cannot be “trusted” by the United States to have nuclear weapons. Apparently, settler colonial states such as Israel (whose claim to “liberal “secularism” is tenuous at best), totalitarian states such as North Korea, or unstable states such as Pakistan (which the United States regularly bombs via drones and that is currently falling apart because, as Santorum stated, it does not know how to behave without a “strong” America) do not cause the same radioactive anxiety. In Santorum`s opinion, a nuclear Iran would not view the cold war logic of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) as a deterrent. Instead, the nation of Iran would rush to die under American or Israeli nuclear bombs because martyrdom is a religious (not national, Santorum was quick to state, perhaps realizing that martyrdom for nation is an ideal woven into the tapestry of American ideology) imperative. Santorum`s views on Iran can be seen one hour and two minutes into the debate.

When it comes to Islam, religion is scary, violent and irrational, says the American Presidential candidate who is largely running on his “faith based” convictions. This contradiction is not surprising, given that in the United States fundamentalist Christians regularly and without irony cite the danger that American muslims pose-fifth column style- to American secularism. After all, recently Christian fundamentalist groups succeeded in pressuring advertisers to abandon a reality show that (tediously) chronicled the lives of “American Muslims” living in Detroit. The great sin committed by these American Muslims was that they were too damn normal. Instead of plotting to inject sharia law into the United States Constitution, they were busy shopping at mid-western malls. Instead of marrying four women at a time and vacationing at Al-Qaeda training camps in (nuclear, but not troublingly so) Pakistan, these “American Muslims” were eating (halal) hotdogs and worrying about the mortgages on their homes and the rising costs of college tuition. Fundamentalist Christians watched this boring consumer driven normalcy with horror and deduced that it must be a plot to make Islam appear compatible with American secularism. The real aim of the show, these Christian fundamentalists (who Rick Santorum banks on for political and financial support) reasoned, was to make Islam appear “normal” and a viable religious option for American citizens. Thus the reality show “All American Muslim” was revealed to be a sinister attempt at Islamic proselytizing. This in a country where Christian proselytizing is almost unavoidable. From television to subways to doorbell rings to presidential debates to busses to street corners and dinner tables-there is always someone in America who wants to share the “good news” with a stranger. Faced with such a blatant, and common, double standard, we should continue to ask “If Muslim proselytizers threaten our secular paradise, why do Christian proselytizers not threaten our secular paradise?”

As the United States Presidential Elections kick into gear, we can expect the Middle East to take pride of place in questions pertaining to foreign policy. Already, Newt Gingrich who, if you forgot, has a PhD in history, has decided for all of us, once and for all, that the Palestinians alone in this world of nations are an invented people. Palestinians are not only a fraudulent people, Gingrich has taught us, they are terrorists as well. Candidates stumble over each other in a race to come up with more creative ways to pledge America`s undying support for Israel. Iran is the big baddie with much too much facial hair and weird hats. America is held hostage to Muslim and Arab oil, and must become “energy efficient” in order to free itself from the unsavory political relationships that come with such dependancy. Candidates will continue to argue over whether or not President Obama should have or should not have withdrawn US troops from Iraq, but no one will bring up the reality that the US occupation of Iraq is anything but over. But despite the interest that the Middle East will invite in the coming election cycle, there are a few questions that we can confidently assume will not be asked or addressed. Here are a few predictions. We welcome additional questions from readers.

Question: What is the difference between Christian Fundamentalism and Muslim Fundamentalism? Which is the greater “threat” to American secularism, and why?

Question: The United States` strongest Arab ally is Saudi Arabia, an Islamic theocracy and authoritarian monarchy which (falsely) cites Islamic law to prohibit women from driving cars, voting, but has recently (yay!) allowed women to sell underwear to other women. In addition, Saudi Arabia has been fanning the flames of sectarianism across the region, is the main center of financial and moral support for Al-Qaeda and is studying ways to “obtain” (the Saudi way, just buy it) a nuclear weapon-all as part and parcel of a not so cold war with Iran. Given these facts, how do you respond to critics that doubt the United States` stated goals of promoting democracy, human rights, women`s rights, and “moderate” (whatever that is) Islam?

Question: Israel has nuclear weapons and has threatened to use them in the past. True or false?

Question: How are Rick Santorum`s views on homosexuality (or the Christian right`s views more generally) different than President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad`s or King Abdullah`s? Can you help us tease out the differences when all three have said that as long as homosexuals do not engage in homosexual sex, it`s all good?

Question: Is the special relationship between the United States and Israel more special because they are both settler colonies, or is something else going on?