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Kurdish Yazidis Movement reject approving
Iraq's 2008 budget
14.2.2008
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February 14, 2008
BAGHDAD, Iraq, — A leading figure from
the Yazidi Movement for Reform and Progress said on
Thursday that the Yazidis do not support the
approval of the 2008 budget, underling that he did
not vote for it.
“Unfortunately, we have not found a clear vision
regarding the government’s steps to boost
investments in the budget draft law,” Amin Farhan,
head of the Yazidi Movement for Reform and Progress,
told VOI.
“We also objected distributing oil shares mechanism
on provinces. We believe that Kurdistan region got
more than it deserves, which forced me not to vote
for the 2008 budget,” Farhan explained.
Iraq's parliament on
Wednesday passed three key laws that
set legislations for provincial elections, allotted
$48 billion for 2008 spending, and provided general
amnesty to detainees in Iraqi custody.
Iraqi parliament Speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani said
at a press conference that “the voting took into
consideration all blocs and their powers.”
He branded the session as an “Iraqi wedding
ceremony.”
“Rows took place in the session, but we voted on the
laws and will abide by them,” al-Mashhadani
conceded.
Amin Farhan is the only Yazidi legislature in the
parliament.
According to the UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR),
there are about 800,000 Yazidis all over the world.
550,000 of them live in Iraq and concentrated in the
district of Sinjar,www.ekurd.net
where the temple Lalesh
is considered the holiest shrine for Yazidis, the
district of al-Shaykhan (50 km north of Mosul), the
district of Bueshiqa (15 km east of Mosul) and some
other areas and villages in the provinces of Ninewa
and Duhok in Kurdistan region.
Yazidis are primarily ethnic Kurds and most live
near Mosul, with smaller communities in Armenia,
Georgia, Iran, Russia, Syria, and Turkey. The
estimates of their population size vary, partially
due to the Yazidi tradition of secrecy about their
religious beliefs.
Yazidis worship seven angels, in the form of
peacocks, who are subordinate to the supreme god who
created the universe.
A couple of related incidents in the spring
highlighted the tensions between Sunnis and Yazidis.
In April 2007, a Kurdish Yazidi teenage girl was
brutally beaten, kicked and stoned to death in
northern Iraq by other Yazidis in what authorities
said was an "honor killing" after she was seen with
a Sunni Muslim man. Although she had not married him
or converted, her attackers believed she had.
The Yazidis condemn mixing with people of another
faith.
A U.S. military official said the Sunni al-Qaeda
Organization in Iraq sent members of the Yazidi
religious minority death threats, called "night
letters," telling them "to leave because they are
infidels."
VOI
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