Iraqi Faili Kurds say killings on the rise in community after referendum plan

An advocacy group for Faili Kurds in Sulaimani city, Iraqi Kurdistan, July 16, 2017. Photo: screenshot/NRT TV

SULAIMANI, Iraq’s Kurdistan region,— An advocacy group for Iraqi Faili Kurds expressed concerns on Sunday that assassinations in their community are on the rise in Iraq after the plan for a referendum on independence was declared by the Kurdistan Region more than a month ago.

Faili Kurds have reported increased threats in Baghdad and other Iraqi provinces.

The community said it has formed a committee to appeal to Iraqi political parties and the legislature in order to try to limit the threat and intimidation facing Faili Kurds.

The committee’s latest meeting with Iraqi parliamentarians took place on Sunday in the city of Sulaimani. Earlier this month, the committee visited the Iraqi Parliament in Baghdad on July 5.

Three Faili Kurds have been killed in Baghdad since the declaration of the independence referendum which is set to be held on September 25, according to the Faili Kurds Organization.

“We call on the Iraqi Parliament to issue a law and put an end to the threats we are facing,” Esra Faili, the head of the Faili Kurds Organization, said during a press conference in Sulaimani following the advocacy meeting with Kurdish MPs in the Iraqi Parliament.

“Since the planned referendum, the Faili Kurds in Baghdad and other Iraqi areas – not including the Kurdistan Region – are facing threats and their lives are in risk,” she said.

Iraqi lawmakers told NRT they have raised the issue with other senior Iraqi officials over Faili Kurds’ concerns in the country, especially in Baghdad.

A Kurdish lawmaker from the Iraqi Parliament, Bakhtyar Shaways said he and some other MPs held talks with related senior officials and told them it is “impossible.”

Baghdad’s Kaifi area is the most Faili populated area in the capital city, which is estimated to be inhabited by some 150,000 from the community.

In the early years of 1980, a massive campaign to capture Faili youth took place and many families, numbering 600,000, were forcibly deported to Iran. They were not allowed to take their identification papers with them on the pretext of originally being foreigners in Iraq.

Additionally, thousands were killed. In total, as many as 1.4 million Failis were stripped of their citizenship and deported to Iran between the 1960s and 1980s. After the overthrow of Hussein’s regime, fewer than 15,000 have returned. Today many Faili Kurds still do not have citizenship documents.

Many still remain exiled in Iran, unable to return to their homelands despite having proper documents claiming their homelands.

An expert on the Faili case Dr. Ala Musa Hasan in his May article on Ekurd said “In Iraq’s society, there have been many violations of civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights of minority groups, especially the Faili Kurds people. They are still up to date experiencing discrimination, racism and exclusion on the grounds of their ethnic, religious, national, or racial characteristics from both governments (the Iraq’s central Arab majority government and the Kurdistan Regional Government KRG). Minority issues have been on the agenda of the current Iraqi government for more than 13 years, and still nothing was accomplished yet.”