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Iraqi Kurdistan: Fifty people arrested for
waving the Iraqi flag
31.7.2007
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July
31, 2007
Duhok, Kurdistan region (Iraq), (ekurd.net),
-- Kurdish Security forces in Duhok city in the
Kurdistan Autonomous Region in the north of Iraq
arrested 50 people for waving the Iraqi flag to
celebrate the victory of the Iraqi national football
team, a police source said Monday.
The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity,
said, 'The Kurdish security forces seize anybody
carrying the Iraqi flag, even for one hour.'
According to AKI, a police officer in the Duhok
province said those arrested were predominantly
Christians or members of the Yezidi minority, a
religious community which passes on its beliefs via
oral tradition.
Kurdistan region is a safe haven for thousands Arab
refugees from the rest (Arab) part of Iraq. Mostly
Arab fans waved with the Iraqi flag, a source from
Duhok said.
The region's president Massoud Barzani had earlier
ordered that the
Kurdistan flag would replace
the Iraqi one in all the cities of
the autonomous region.
The order said that "regions in Iraq's Kurdistan
which have been hoisting the Baathist flag should
lower it and hoist only the Kurdistan flag".
Massoud Barzani said earlier, "the present flag is
not the flag of Iraq, but of the Baath party and chemical
strikes, drainage of the marshes, putting down
uprisings and mass graves."
On Sunday, the Iraqi national football team won the
Asian Cup title for the first time in its history.
Iraq's Kurdish minority has enjoyed wide autonomy
since Saddam's defeat in the 1991 Gulf War over
Kuwait and strongly supported the 2003 US-led
liberation which unseated him.
The brutal Anfal campaign of 1988
by the former Saddam regime
182,000 Kurds were killed and 4,000 villages wiped
out.
DPA | eKurd.net | AKI
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