Kurds Crush Free Speech

Friends,

  Kurdistan is still part of Iraq. But, the Kurd's wish to be independent and to be able to keep the immense amount of money from the oil located under their feet. And this is the "model area" for our military in Iraq. What a bunch of shit we are wading in.

  Bring our troops home.

Peace, Love and Hope,

Rev O

Kurdistan’s press pays for tackling corruption

By Anna Fifield in Suleimaniya

Financial Times of London

“We are proud of not having red lines, of crossing the boundaries and touching the most sensitive issues,” says Mr Mira, editor of Lvin (“Movement”), a fortnightly magazine that has homed in on corrupt officials.

Such pride comes at a high price. One of Lvin’s reporters, 23-year-old Soran Mama Hama, was gunned down outside his home in Kirkuk in July, shortly after writing about police links to a prostitution ring. His picture now adorns every wall and door in the Lvin office.

“Soran received threatening messages for three months before he was killed,” says Mr Mira, who also receives such calls, almost daily. Now, he stays elsewhere immediately following publication to try to avoid becoming a target at home.

While democratic Kurdistan is often heralded as a role model for the rest of Iraq, the government – or more specifically, the two parties that run almost every facet of life in the semi-autonomous region – are regularly accused of shady practices.

Lvin, circulation 25,000, and independent Kurdish newspapers including Hawlati, Awene and Rozhnama are leading the charge. Much more so than the rest of Iraq, Kurdistan has a lively independent press seeking to offer an alternative news diet.

“Our role is to bring about political change in this society,” Mr Mira says in his office in Suleimaniya.

“We will try to change as much as we can, including the two corrupt political parties who monopolise everything,” he says, referring to the Kurdistan Democratic party, which is headed by Masoud Barzani, the regional president, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, led by Jalal Talabani, the president of Iraq. Mr Mira says he is most proud of publishing stories about Mr Barzani’s official residence, which the magazine said was as secretive as an aircraft’s black box recorder, and another entitled “The Sick Man”, about Mr Talabani’s health."

American officials in Iraq are concerned about recent attempts to clamp down on the Kurdish press.

“There have been a number of instances in the past six months in which reporters have been harassed, detained, pressurised not to write about corruption,” says a senior US official in Baghdad. “Sometimes we really question the [regional government’s] commitment to a truly democratic Kurdistan.”