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Demonstration against "forcing out" Kurds
in disputed Jalawla town
20.11.2011 |
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November
20, 2011
DIYALA,
Iraq, — Dozens in Jalawla town, Diyala province,
organized a demonstration on Saturday to protest
what they claimed to be forcing out dozens of
Kurdish families in the town whose properties
allegedly given to "squatting" Arab families under
former dictator Saddam Hussein.
The demonstrators called on the Iraqi government to
repeal Saddam-era decisions that aimed at "Arbizing"
the Kurdish populated territories in the provinces
of Diyala, Salahaddin, and Kirkuk.
"We call on the Iraqi government to not commit to
the topple regime's decisions under which 150
Kurdish families will be forced
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Jalawla town, Diyala province |
out of their hoes and
Arabs resettled there" Farhad Mohammed, one of the
demonstrators told AKnews.
According to Kurdish officials in Jalawla, the 150
Kurdish families have been given a 3-day period by
court to leave the houses and pay eight years of
rentals to the Arab families to whom the right of
property had been transferred under Saddam but who
had left the houses after the 2003 US invasion for
Iraq.
The Kurdish families had returned to their houses
after 2003.
Sherko Tofiq, a Kurdish official in Jalawla told
AKnews that some 400 families had been forced to
leave Jalawla under Saddam Hussein and their houses
given to Arab families.
"After 2003, the Kurdish families returned to their
houses... but now a committee set up to resolve the
right of property to those houses has recommended
(to court) to return the houses to the Arab families
and force the Kurdish families to pay 8 years of
rentals"
According to Tofiq, most of the committee are Arab
ethnics.
The court has ordered the Kurdish families to leave
by tomorrow and hereby 15 Kurdish families have been
warned by police, he said.
Saddam Hussein replaced hundreds of Kurdish families
in the provinces of Diyala, Salahaddin and in
particular in the oil-rich Kirkuk in the 1980s by
Arab families from central central Iraq.
Diyala province, a
restive part of Iraq outside the Kurdish autonomous
region of Kurdistan but home to many Kurds. The Diyala district, which includes a string of villages and
some of Iraq's oil reserves,www.ekurd.net is home to about 175,000 Kurds, most of them
Shiites.
In June 2006, the local council of Khanaqin proposed that the district be
integrated into the autonomous Kurdistan region in northern Iraq.
During the Arabisation policy of Saddam Hussein in the 1980s, a large number of
Kurdish Shiites were displaced by force from Khanaqin. They started returning
after the fall of Saddam in 2003.
Article 140 of the Iraqi constitution is related to the normalization of the
situation in Kirkuk city and other disputed areas like Khanaqin.
Kurdistan's government says oil-rich Khanaqin should be part of its
semi-autonomous region, which it hopes to expand in a referendum in the future.
In the meantime, Khanaqin and other so-called disputed areas remain targets of
Sunni Arab insurgents opposed to Kurdish expansion and vowing to hold onto land
seized during ex-dictator Saddam Hussein's efforts to "Arabize" the region.
Copyright © 2011, respective
author or news agency,
aknews.com | ekurd.net | Agencies
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