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A Special Report from CPJ: In Kurdistan,
more attacks against journalists
5.5.2008
By Joel Campagna
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Iraqi
Kurdish political leaders have cultivated an image
of freedom and tolerance, but that increasingly
clashes with reality. As the independent press has
grown more assertive, attacks and arrests ha
increased.
May 5, 2008
Iraqi Kurdistan.
A slender frame and quiet demeanor belie the fiery
online presence of Nasseh Abdel Raheem Rashid,, a
29-year-old biology student turned journalist. As a
contributor to Kurdistanpost, a popular
Kurdish-language news site that has incensed Iraqi
Kurdish officials, Rashid has railed against the
political order in Iraqi Kurdistan and the actions
of unscrupulous political officials. In an article
published last summer, he took aim at veteran
Kurdish fighters, or peshmerga, who had once fought
against Saddam Hussein, but who should now “be tried
for looting the fortunes and properties of the
people.”
It was only a matter of time before Rashid’s biting
criticism would bring him unwelcome attention.
As he strolled through the central market of his
hometown of Halabja in eastern Iraqi Kurdistan last
October, four armed men wearing military uniforms
forced him into a waiting Nissan pickup, bound his
hands and legs, and covered his head with a sack. “I
didn’t know where I was going. They drove around for
a few hours and then went over what seemed like an
unpaved road,” Rashid told the Committee to Protect
Journalists during an interview in Sulaimaniyah
shortly after the incident. Rashid said he was
pulled from the truck, punched and kicked, and
threatened at gunpoint to stop working or be killed.
The assailants sped off, leaving Rashid bruised and
shaken.
Iraqi Kurdistan, the mountainous region in the north
of Iraq that is home to about 5 million people, has
been recognized internationally for its tolerance of
free expression. A small but combative independent
press regularly challenges the region’s main
political parties—Massoud Barzani’s Kurdistan
Democratic Party (KDP) and Iraqi President Jalal
Talabani’s Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK)—by
publishing daring stories about government
corruption, mismanagement, social ills, and human
rights abuses. The work of these print and online
outlets has come to overshadow the well-funded and
once-dominant media outlets run by the parties
themselves. |
Iraqi President : Jalal Talabani, a Kurd
Massoud Barzani, the President of the autonomous Regional
Government of Kurdistan 'Iraq' |
But the increasing
assertiveness of the independent press has triggered
a spike in repression over the last three years,
with the most forceful attacks targeting those who
have reported critically on Barzani, Talabani, and
other high-level officials, a CPJ investigation has
found. At least three journalists have been seized
and assaulted by suspected government agents or
sympathizers, while a number of other reporters have
been roughed up and harassed. To date, no one has
been arrested for the attacks and officials of the
Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), the
semi-autonomous governing authority, have yet to
provide answers. Critical journalists who have
spoken out against Kurdish leaders have been
detained by security forces and prosecuted under
Baath-era criminal laws that prescribe steep
penalties. In the past year, the KRG parliament has
pushed for harsh new legislation that would set
heavy new fines and allow the government to close
newspapers.
In response, CPJ conducted a two-week fact-finding
mission to Erbil and Sulaimaniyah in October and
November 2007, meeting with dozens of
party-affiliated and independent journalists. In
Erbil, seat of the KRG, officials and legislators
said they were receptive to some of CPJ’s concerns
and stressed that they were committed to a free
press. But these officials were unable to account
for the violent attacks on reporters, minimized the
legal restrictions on the press, and lashed out at
many independent papers and online publications,
calling them scandal sheets. In addition, party
leaders have barred their rank and file from
speaking to the press without permission, and
party-run newspapers regularly launch vitriolic
attacks against independent journalists.
“When you face social and political problems you
have two choices: You either make changes or you
close the mouths of the journalists,” Nawshirwan
Mustafa, a media owner and former PUK leader, told
CPJ during an interview in his vast hilltop
headquarters in Sulaimaniyah. Mustafa, a charismatic
and well-financed figure who split with the PUK to
launch his own newspaper and television station,
said he fears hard-line party officials have decided
to pursue the latter course. |
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When asked
about restrictions on the press, party and
government officials shifted much of the blame to
journalists. “We don’t claim we are perfect. …When
in transition [to democracy] you have to pass
through many stages,” Falah Bakir, head of the KRG’s
Foreign Relations Department, told CPJ during a
meeting in Erbil. “I believe that in Iraqi Kurdistan
we are making steps forward. We want to have a free
press, we want journalists to be respected and the
voices of the people heard, but [journalists] lack
professional experience.”
Kawa Mawlud, editor-in-chief of the official PUK
daily, Kurdistani Nuwe, put it more bluntly: “One of
the shortcomings we see is not the limits on
journalists, but that there is no limit.”
The Iraqi Kurdish press is not without its flaws.
Independent papers, which operate on shoestring
budgets and have staff with little formal training,
have relatively weak standards of professionalism,
and their coverage has a heavy political bent.
“After the uprisings, the Kurds didn’t have
journalists. We had poets and writers, and they
became journalists,” said Ako Mohamed, former editor
of the Erbil-based weekly Media. “Newspapers … had
no news. They were all opinion articles, and there
was an ideology.”
After enduring years of political repression and a
1988 campaign of genocide at the hands of Saddam
Hussein’s government, Iraqi Kurds are regarded by
many as the success story of Iraq. Benefiting from
more than a decade and a half of de facto autonomy
following the 1991 Gulf War, Iraqi Kurds boast a
relatively stable government and an economy now in
the midst of a development boom. Although the region
has seen sporadic terrorist bombings—two targeting
KRG and KDP offices in May 2007 claimed at least 45
lives—Iraqi Kurdistan has avoided the sustained
violence of central and southern Iraq.
KRG officials have aggressively promoted the area as
the “Other Iraq,” hiring the powerful Washington
lobbyist firm Barbour Griffith & Rogers, and
stressing the region’s stability, business-friendly
environment, and respect for human rights. “What is
happening in the Kurdistan region—democracy, freedom
of speech, economic development—is exactly what the
world hoped for with the removal of the dictator. We
are creating a stable democracy in the Middle East,”
KRG Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani declared in a
glossy 2007 advertising supplement to the journal
Foreign Affairs. “I do not understand why this is
not acknowledged more often.” |
Asos Hardi, who heads the weekly Awene, says the
courts are stacked against the news media.
Tariq Fatih, publisher of Hawlati, has changed his
routine after being assaulted in downtown
Sulaimaniyah city, Kurdistan |
Certainly the KRG has a
vested interest in willing the international
community, especially the United States, to embrace
the public image it has promoted. The KRG enjoys
close relations with the U.S.; popular support for
the United States and President George W. Bush runs
uncommonly high thanks to the 2003 U.S. overthrow of
Saddam Hussein, which the Kurds enthusiastically
backed. During KRG President Barzani’s 2005 visit to
the White House, Bush called him “a man of courage …
who has stood up to a tyrant.” The Kurdish region
hosts a U.S. military presence, and some U.S.
political figures such as Democratic presidential
candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton have promoted the
establishment of permanent U.S. bases here. The
United States, which provided protection to the
Kurds for more than a decade after the Gulf War, has
invested hundreds of millions of dollars in
humanitarian and development assistance. Now, the
KRG has set out to attract new foreign investment
and to develop international tourism and oil
production.
But tensions between the ruling parties and the
independent press are likely to remain high in the
near future. Despite its relative economic success,
the region still suffers from high inflation, poor
public services, economic disparities, and recurring
allegations of government corruption—all fodder for
a critical press corps. For all its shortcomings,
the independent press has provided a crucial
platform, giving voice to ordinary citizens and
scrutinizing powerful politicians in an otherwise
party-dominated media environment.
The Kurds—whose
homeland spans Turkey, Iran, Syria, and Iraq—make up
one of the Middle East’s largest ethnic groups,
numbering around 25 million, and represent the
largest ethnic group in the world without a state.
Like their regional brethren, Iraqi Kurds have
suffered political betrayal at the hands of the West
and political persecution at home. |
Shortly after the 1991
Gulf War, Saddam’s army crushed an incipient revolt
in Iraqi Kurdistan a month after it began. In April
of that year, U.S. troops entered northern Iraq and
established a safe haven over a large swath of the
region in response to a humanitarian crisis
triggered by the exodus of thousands of Kurds
fleeing Saddam’s army into the mountains. Iraqi
aircraft were barred from operating in a “no-fly”
zone patrolled by U.S. and British fighters. By
October 1991,www.ekurd.netSaddam
decided to withdraw his army and government
administration from much of the Kurdish region,
ushering in de facto autonomy for Iraqi Kurdistan,
which came under the control of Massoud Barzani’s
KDP and Jalal Talabani’s PUK. The parties
established a power-sharing agreement, and
parliamentary elections were held in 1992.
A traditionally agricultural society that was
underdeveloped under Saddam, Iraqi Kurdistan has
since seen its population become more urban and its
economy more reliant on construction, commerce, and
government. Younger generations of Iraqi Kurds speak
almost entirely Kurdish, eschewing the Arabic their
fathers and mothers learned in Iraqi schools.
Sentiment for Kurds to run their own affairs and to
be separate from Iraq runs high.
The Kurds’ newfound autonomy also transformed the
media landscape. The KDP and PUK launched a new
stable of media that included newspapers, radio, and
television in Arabic and Kurdish. They offered fresh
discourse opposing the Baathist regime and
reflecting Kurdish aspirations. For most of a
decade, the news media remained under the control of
the ruling Kurdish political parties, reflecting
party interests and avoiding criticism of party
policies. |
Authorities have tried to bar journalists from
Qandil montain region, where the Kurdistan Workers'
Party PKK set up camps such this. |
In 2000, after a period
that saw a bloody war between the PUK and KDP
followed by a truce, the region’s first independent
newspaper, Hawlati (Citizen), was founded by a group
of intellectuals from the PUK-dominated city of
Sulaimaniyah. Motivated by the absence of media that
could hold the parties accountable, they launched
the paper with a handful of staffers and a $3,000
investment. Hawlati quickly became the region’s most
popular newspaper by casting for the first time in
the local press a critical eye on the governing
practices of the ruling parties. With a distinctly
populist tone, its news and opinion pieces
challenged the political domination of the parties,
government nepotism, and the lack of public
services. Today, the twice-weekly Hawlati is
considered the most widely read newspaper in Iraqi
Kurdistan with an estimated circulation of about
20,000.
Since Hawlati’s launch, a handful of other
independent and semi-independent papers have
followed, most of them based in the comparatively
liberal PUK enclave of eastern Iraqi Kurdistan.
Awene, the region’s other leading independent paper
with a circulation of about 15,000, publishes
critical stories spotlighting corruption—such as an
October investigation that accused a Kurdish
businessman of pocketing $38 million in government
money earmarked for army vehicle purchases. Other
papers include the newly launched Rozhnama, a
critical daily founded by Mustafa. New Radio is the
region’s first non-party radio station; although it
has received some KRG and U.S. aid, the station has
aired critical programming. The most strident
political criticism, however, is published in online
magazines, among them the Sweden-based Kurdistanpost,
which features opinion pieces and political satire
from local writers and intellectuals in the Kurdish
diaspora.
Internationally, Iraqi Kurdistan’s press freedom
record came into sharp focus for the first time in
2005, when authorities in Erbil detained
Austrian-Kurdish writer Kamal Sayed Qadir and, after
a summary trial, sentenced him to 30 years in prison
for articles he wrote for Kurdistanpost. Qadir was
certainly impolitic in his writing: Along with
accusing Masoud Barzani and his family of
corruption, Qadir claimed the family had ties to the
Russian spy service the KGB, and that Barzani’s son,
Masrour, head of KDP intelligence, was a “pimp.”
Qadir was released five months later on a
presidential pardon, but in the eyes of many
journalists the excessive prosecution signaled an
escalation in government press tactics. Since then,
at least seven journalists have been detained by
officials, three sentenced to jail terms, and
several subjected to violent attacks, according to
CPJ research.
Nabaz Goran, 29,
a contributor to several newspapers including
Hawlati and Awene, was abducted and assaulted in a
manner strikingly similar to the October 2007 attack
on Kurdistanpost’s Rashid. Five Kalashnikov-wielding
men wearing military uniforms forced Goran into a
pickup truck as he left the Writers Union Club in
downtown Erbil in April 2007. “They pulled a gun to
my head and told me to get in,” Goran told CPJ at an
Erbil café. Goran was blindfolded and driven for a
half-hour before being dumped in a remote area,
where he was beaten with a metal rod and rifle
butts. As in the Rashid case, he was warned to stop
working. “We are here to wise you up not to write,”
one of the men said. “If you continue, we will
continue.” Goran suffered a broken ankle, cracked
teeth, and heavy bruising.
Goran said he is unsure what triggered the assault
but noted that he had published critical articles
about several officials, including an article that
mocked Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani’s official
motorcades. “When the prime minister leaves his
home, life stops!” he wrote. “Neither a citizen, nor
a car, nor a bird, nor a breath can move so that His
Highness … can pass.” In another article he accused
President Masoud Barzani of being such a poor
administrator that he “could not tie his own
shoelaces.” Goran said he also argued with and wrote
a critical article about a KDP media officer in the
days leading up to the attack.
Many journalists see an official hand behind the
assaults. Aso Jamal Mukhtar, a 41-year-old
cameraman, said he believes government retaliation
was at work when assailants targeted him near
Sulaimaniyah’s Azadi Park in May 2007. Mukhtar, who
works for Mustafa’s soon-to-be-launched Chaw TV and
whose brother Kamal runs Kurdistanpost from Sweden,
was assaulted by three men as he left the office of
his former employer, the government-run Education
TV. “It was dark and I found a car blocking my way,”
Mukhtar said at a Sulaimaniyah pizza parlor not far
from the scene of the attack. “Three people with
masks got out of the car quickly. Two had sticks in
their hands and the third a pistol. They attacked
the car and pulled me out.” He escaped with cuts and
bruises. Mukhtar said PUK officials had complained
to him on numerous occasions about Kurdistanpost,
accusing him of writing for the site and insisting
his brother stop critiquing Kurdish officials.
Officials who spoke with CPJ denied responsibility
for the attacks, saying, for example, that the
military uniforms worn by the assailants are
publicly available. In a written response to CPJ’s
concerns in February, KRG foreign relations head
Bakir said the attacks were under investigation.
“Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani and all relevant
authorities in the Kurdish region take these attacks
seriously,” the letter said. “The protection of the
right to free speech is a priority of this
government.” He added: “It is my hope that the
investigations will run their course and the
perpetrators brought to justice.”
To an extent, the attacks and intimidation have
accomplished their goal, leading some journalists to
alter their work schedules to avoid being out at
night. Tariq Fatih, 37, the publisher of Hawlati,
said he began limiting his nighttime activities
after being assaulted by several unknown men in a
downtown Sulaimaniyah restaurant. Twana Osman,
former editor of Hawlati and now an adviser, said
officials have passed along “friendly” advice to the
paper, warning staffers to avoid going to clubs at
night and to vary their travel routines.
Amid recent
tensions between Turkey and the Iraqi
Kurdistan-based Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK),
security authorities have systematically barred
journalists from the rebel stronghold in the Qandil
Mountain area. Border skirmishes and Turkish
shelling have been reported since late 2007, with
Turkey launching an eight-day incursion into Iraqi
Kurdistan in February. Some journalists attempting
to cover the story were reportedly assaulted by
these security forces.
More routinely, police and security forces known as
asayish have arbitrarily detained journalists or
jailed them on court orders issued in connection
with criminal defamation complaints. In other cases,
security forces have harassed journalists covering
public protests and confiscated their equipment, as
was the case during 2006 antigovernment protests in
the town of Halabja.
Ahmed Mira, the youthful, clean-shaven editor of the
investigative monthly Livin, runs his magazine from
a small office on the top floor of a commercial
building near Sulaimaniyah’s bustling central
market. Mira, a former school teacher, had his own
run-in with asayish after his magazine ran a cover
story speculating about President Jalal Talabani’s
health and possible power struggles within the PUK
over his succession. Headlined “Legacy of a Sick
Man,” the article said Talabani’s purportedly
declining health had caused political tensions
“because there are many in the PUK waiting for zero
hour in order to succeed Talabani.” The reaction was
swift.
Asayish in Sulaimaniyah summoned Mira for
questioning on April 16, 2007, the day the magazine
hit newsstands. “I was told the article disturbs
national security,” he told CPJ during an interview
in Livin’s bare office. Mira was told to write down
personal information, including his driver’s license
number, employment, and background about his family.
But it wasn’t the end of his problem. “The next day
a group of security people came to my house in
civilian clothes and without warrant took me to the
security office,” he said,www.ekurd.net
describing how the men
seized him unexpectedly on the street. “They
handcuffed me and put me in a room alone.” Mira was
held overnight, questioned, and reprimanded for
insulting Talabani.
Other prominent detentions include Hawlati writer
Hawez Hawezi, who was arrested by security forces
twice in 2006, the first time in March after he
wrote an article referring to Barzani and Talabani
as pharaohs who should leave the country if they
cannot reform it. Two months later, he was detained
again and held for several days after he wrote a
piece describing his ordeal at the hands of security
forces. His colleagues at Hawlati said he has since
fled to Syria because of safety concerns. In
November 2007, asayish agents detained Mosul-based
reporter Faisal Ghazaleh of the PUK’s KurdSat TV.
Ghazaleh said he was severely beaten with batons
while interrogators made vague allegations that he
had cooperated with terrorists by filming their
attacks. A court ordered his release the following
month after investigators failed to produce evidence
of a crime, he said.
“All those arrested were done so by laws that
exist,” PUK media representative Azad Jundiyani, a
harsh critic of the independent press, told CPJ. “We
need to change the law and we will not have the
problem of arresting journalists.”
The laws cited
by Jundiyani date back to the Baath era and enable
government officials to harass, prosecute, and
silence inconvenient independent journalists.
After gaining de facto autonomy in 1991, Iraqi Kurds
began repealing or replacing Iraqi laws deemed
“incompatible with the welfare of the people,” but
left intact the 1969 Penal Code and Code of Criminal
Procedure. The penal code—which allows for pretrial
detention and prison time for a wide range of
expression-related “offenses”—has been used
repeatedly by officials seeking to crack down on
critical members of the press. Article 433, which
criminalizes defamation and allows fines and
imprisonment for offenders, is one of the most
commonly used statutes. (Printing an offending
comment in a newspaper is considered an aggravating
circumstance.) Other articles of the penal code
stipulate penalties for vague offenses such as
publishing false information or insulting public
servants, “the Arab community,” or a foreign
country.
KRG courts are packed with loyalist judges who have
predictably handed down harsh verdicts against
journalists, according to CPJ’s analysis. “Judges
are appointed by the parties,” said Asos Hardi, a
former Hawlati editor who now heads the weekly Awene.
“So you can imagine it is very hard for them to make
an independent decision when one of the parties is
involved.” The December 2005 court proceedings
against the online writer Qadir were notoriously
unfair; he was convicted and sentenced in a hearing
that lasted less than an hour.
Since then, a rash of other criminal cases has
targeted independent newspapers, particularly
Hawlati. Just months after Qadir’s conviction, a
criminal court in Sulaimaniyah sentenced Twana Osman
and Asos Hardi, the paper’s former editors, to
six-month suspended jail terms for publishing an
article alleging that KRG Deputy Prime Minister Omar
Fatah ordered the dismissal of two telephone company
employees after they cut his phone line for failing
to pay a bill. Earlier, Hardi had been sentenced to
a one-year suspended term for humiliating an aide to
Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani by publishing an
open letter from an artist who said the prime
minister’s office never paid for artwork it took.
Hawlati says that at least 50 criminal complaints
have been brought against it by government officials
and citizens since its launch. Another case was
added to the docket in January when Jalal Talabani
launched a criminal lawsuit against the paper after
it translated and reprinted excerpts from an article
by U.S. scholar Michael Rubin of the conservative
think tank American Enterprise Institute. The
article was highly critical of Talabani and Barzani,
concluding that “the unreliability of [Iraqi
Kurdistan] leadership makes any long-term
U.S.-Kurdish alliance unwise.” What appears to have
set off Talabani was Rubin’s assertion that the two
leaders had amassed fortunes while in power.
Concerns about the severity of the existing Baath-era
media laws appeared, at least initially, to spur the
KRG to craft more liberal legislation in 2007. In an
eye-opening move, however, the KRG parliament in
December significantly stiffened restrictions in the
draft that had been under discussion for much of the
year.
The bill, which was published in the daily Rozhnama
on January 6, stipulated fines between 3 million
Iraqi dinars (US$2,450) and 10 million Iraqi dinars
(US$8,200), and six-month newspaper suspensions for
vague offenses such as disturbing security,
“spreading fear,” or “encouraging terrorism.” Given
the tenuous financial situation of independent
papers—several operate at losses or barely break
even—the elastic language of the bill could allow
pro-party judges to put critical newspapers out of
business. Similar fines were in order for those who
“insult religious beliefs,” “tarnish common customs
or morals,” or publish anything “related to the
private life of an individual—even if it is true—if
this insults him.”
Parliament’s approval of the press bill triggered a
storm of criticism from Iraqi Kurdish journalists
and CPJ, leading President Barzani to veto the
measure and send it back to parliament for revisions
Freed from the
shackles of Saddam Hussein for 17 years, Iraqi Kurds
have made enormous strides from the authoritarian
control of the Baath era and have developed a
dynamic news media. Those gains are being
undermined, however, at the very moment Iraqi
Kurdistan is trying to polish its global image.
“There is more pressure on us now,” said Rozhnama
Editor Ednan Osman, citing not only the number of
attacks but the aggressive tenor of government
officials. “The political situation is complicated
and the security situation is dangerous. These
parties only want to hear their own opinions.”
Iraqi Kurdish officials have argued that building a
democratic society takes time and that missteps are
inevitable. Yet the current trend appears to be
toward a growing suppression of the press, which
conflicts with the KRG’s lofty rhetoric of being the
“Other Iraq” where stability and freedom abound. If
Kurdish officials are serious about their public
support for democracy and the rule of law, they
should take a decisive stand against violent attacks
on the press, put an end to spurious criminal
prosecutions and the arrests of reporters, and do
away with restrictive laws used to clamp down on the
press. Parliament’s debate on the new press bill
will be a good barometer of the government’s
intentions.
Joel Campagna is senior program coordinator
responsible for the Middle East and North Africa at
the Committee to Protect Journalists.
Recommendations to the Kurdistan Regional Government
The Committee to Protect Journalists calls on
Regional President and KDP head Masoud Barzani,
Iraqi President and PUK head Jalal Talabani,
Regional Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani, and the
Kurdistan Regional Government to immediately adopt
the following recommendations:
1- Publicly condemn violent attacks, acts of
intimidation, and other crimes carried out against
members of the press. Ensure that thorough and
transparent investigations are conducted into these
attacks. Make public the findings of these
investigations. Ensure that future attacks are
promptly investigated.
2- End the practice of detaining journalists for
their work, a tactic used by asayish security forces
and other regional authorities. Cease other forms of
official interference with the press, such as
threats against or job dismissals of journalists, or
other forms of interference in the work of
journalists.
3- Abolish provisions of KRG law that violate the
internationally protected right "to seek, receive
and impart information and ideas of all kinds,
regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing
or in print, in the form of art, or through any
other media," as guaranteed by Article 19 of the
International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights
to which Iraq is a state party. Articles that
stipulate prison penalties, ban news outlets, set
excessive fines, prescribe vague prohibitions, and
impose professional requirements should be voided.
Do not pass or sign into law any bill that contains
such measures or that more broadly violates
international press freedom standards.
4- Suspend articles of the penal code—including but
not limited to Articles 210, 211, 233, 433—that
criminalize defamation, insult, slander, and the
publication of “false” information. Create or
strengthen appropriate civil defamation remedies.
Copyright, respective author or news agency, cpj org
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