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The Media Reality in Iraqi Kurdistan
1.6.2011
By Alice Hlidkova |
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June
1, 2011
The Role of Freedom of Expression and Democracy in
Kurdistan: can freedom of press exist in a federal
region of Iraq?
“We are inspired by you [President Barack Obama] and
the values of the free world led by the United
States of America. As a symbol of freedom, democracy
and equality in the free world, we are seeking your
help” - Shaswar Qadir, co-founder of Nalia
Television Radio
“I am proud to be a Kurd. I didn’t choose to be
Kurdish; I did choose to be a Muslim. I wish to live
in a country that there are neither women nor men
rights, but human rights. Here it won’t happen and
my dream will never come true.” - Tawar Rasheed,
former Human Rights Watch Iraq employee and real
estate developer.
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Eight years after the United States and its allies
invaded Iraq, the country’s transition to a
functioning democracy with press freedom is far from
accomplished, even in the northern region that U.S.
officials have sometimes touted as model for the
country.
Shortly after the February demonstrations in
Sulaimaniyah, Kurdistan, which left eight people
dead, Reporters Without Borders (RWB) wrote to
Kurdistani President Massoud Barzani to say that
despite improvements in the representation of
democratic voices in the region, the organization
was concerned about the deterioration in the
situation of journalists there since February 17.
In the aftermath of the 2003 invasion, Iraq
underwent a media boom. Hundreds of new
publications, television and radio stations sprang
up across the country, and Iraqis gained access to
satellite dishes and the Internet. In Kurdistan, the
semi-autonomous and federal region of Iraq,
independent media flourished. But in the years since
the occupation,www.ekurd.netthe media has fallen short of the
promise. A power vacuum bred violence and later
civil strife made Iraq the deadliest country in the
world for journalists between 2003 and 2008,
according to the New York-based Committee to Protect
Journalists (CPJ). Even after security improved in
2008 and a new coalition government was formed in
Kurdistan in 2010, restrictive legislation and other
barriers denied journalists the right to access
information.
In addition, extremists and unknown assailants, some
apparently linked to political parties, continue to
kill media workers and torch their offices.
Increasingly, journalists and media advocates find
themselves threatened, arrested and physically
assaulted by security forces linked to government
institutions and political parties, reported the
Iraq branch of Human Rights Watch.
Srwa Abdulwahid, for example, expects frequent
office visits from government security forces.
Threatening phone calls are not abnormal after she
became Kurdistan’s leading journalist in 1996.
Employed by the independent television station al-Hurra
in Sulaimaniyah, Srwa covers politics for her daily
evening report at 8 p.m. During her coverage of last
year’s regional elections on July 25, the Kurdistan
Regional Government (KRG) accused her of reporting
false information. The claims were later dropped.
Recently, after her brother’s radio and television
station, Nalia Radio Television, was burned down,
soldiers from the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK)
party continue to call her office and look for her.
Representatives from neither of the big political
parties in the coalition are willing to discuss the
incident.
For Srwa, freedom of press and access to information
means having connections. “To get access, you need
to establish personal relationships with party
members,” she says. Srwa has learned from her weekly
visits to parliament that its members are not
authorized to make statements on their party’s
political positions. In other words, MPs are not
required by their own parties to talk to the press;
only senior party officials are.
Special access is not limited to Kurdish journalists
such as Srwa. “Foreign journalists also have that
access,” she said, unless they leak classified
government information. This was the fate of one
Washington Post journalist who had been banned from
Kurdistan for leaking information. For foreign
journalists, media consultant Zagros Ahmed Kamal is
the man to contact at parliament. He is charismatic, answers questions, and arranges attendance at
parliamentary sessions. Upon requests journalists
are given a tour. In front of a large painting of
President Barzani, guarded by two soldiers, Kamal
boasts of the Kurdish media as “most advanced” in
comparison with the rest of Iraq.
Meanwhile local journalists are neglected. They sit
in the new media room inside the parliament
building, from which they record the hearings. They
bring their cameras, mobiles and recorders. On
occasion, their equipment is confiscated at the
security desk, the Metro Center to Defend
Journalists reported. When they approach MPs, it is
difficult for them to schedule one-on-one meetings
as MPs generally do not trust journalists. Kamal
claims that journalists pass on false or skewed
information about the government.
According to a eight-year-long report published in
2010 by Human Rights Watch, the Iraqi government has
become effective in using the country’s broad
criminal and civil libel laws to silence those who
criticize members of the government. While the
constitution provides the right to freedom of
expression (Article 19), the penal code authorizes
fines and imprisonment for those who criticize
public authorities. The report stated that President
Barzani filed a one billion-dollar defamation
lawsuit against the weekly publication Rozhnama
after a July 20, 2010 article accusing the KDP of
profiting from illegal oil smuggling to Iran.
Former Institute of War and Peace Reporting (IWPR)
Director Hiwa Osman believes Kurdistan is still
applying laws inherited from former dictator Saddam
Hussein. “Every document in the government is deemed
secret; whereas in the United States documents are
open unless deemed confidential. Often you have to
sign confidentiality agreements to obtain the
documents,” says Osman. “Jordan is the only Arab
country to disclose information; they have a civil
service code of conduct.” Osman, who trains
journalists who have later worked for The Washington
Post or The New York Times, is frustrated with the
authorities’ limited understanding of media. “We
have media advisers but no spokespersons,” he
argues.
Without transparency and accountability, freedom of
press ceases to exist in Kurdistan, argues the
director of the Metro Center, Mariwan Hama-Saeed. He
believes that Kurds turn a blind eye to party
politics; they fear the corrupt officials who are
not brought to justice. He says that watching
party-backed media is like “being in the Caribbean –
always sunny even in the winter. Everything is nice
and green.”
He poses a question: “In Cairo and Yemen people are
toppling their governments, but what about after
bringing down the officials?” Despite the Iraqis
toppling the Baathist Party with aid from the United
States, Mariwan argues Iraqis still do not know what
they are doing and what their structure of
government should be.
Many Kurds say there is no democracy without
transparency. But the majority considers the
region’s democratic process began in 2003 when the
Americans defeated Saddam Hussein. In comparison to
other Iraqis, Kurds are grateful for what they call
“the US liberation.” Former US embassy and Human
Rights Watch employee Tawar Rasheed remembers life
and hardship under Saddam. “If Saddam stayed, he
would have killed the same amount of civilians if
not more than the Americans had. We probably would
have gotten into war with someone else,” he says.
For Tawar, democracy will not save Kurdistan. He
gives the example of Palestine. “They had elections,
then extremists, and now the country is unable to
control its people. The people here are voting in
line of ideologies , not for someone who helps or
serves their country,” he says. He worries democracy
will be short-lived if people continue to vote
ethnically—Kurds for Kurds, Arabs for Arabs, and so
forth—and if the laws of the country are not
implemented, and individual rights not protected.
As the Kurdish government experiments with their
nascent democracy, it continues to control freedom
of expression—freedom of press. While media
advocates dream of new leaders, local journalists
struggle daily to protect the already fragile
independent press. In Kurdistan, where law is
inspired by the legal systems of sharia, France and
the Unites States, and where the 2005 Iraqi
constitution should fully protect individual rights,
politicians fail to provide resources and safety for
their journalists.
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