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Iran
- Last week, Iranian authorities continued to crackdown on the activities of Kurdish border workers known as Kolbars. On Tuesday, Iranian border guards ambushed a truck carrying goods in the vicinity of the Ganawa border crossing near Marivan, injuring the truck’s driver and forcing a group Kolbars to flee. The border guards then confiscated the belongings of the fleeing Kolbars. Also, on Tuesday, two Kolbars were killed and four severely wounded near Piranshahr. The Kurdish rights group Hengaw, after speaking with one of the wounded Kolbars, reported Iranian-backed Iraqi militias carried out the ambush in conjunction with elements of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). The witness also told Hengaw that the militias tortured Kolbars taken captive following the attack. Kurdish human rights organizations have recently accused Iraqi militias loyal to the Iranian regime of carrying out attacks against Kolbars.
- On Sunday, a group of teachers held a protest in Marivan against the imprisonment of Kurdish teachers for protesting the conditions of schools and unpaid wages. The teachers held signs displaying the names of the jailed educators and called on the Iranian regime to free them. On Monday, in Sanandaj, members of the cultural organization Nozheen held a protest in front of the city court and called for the release of three of the organization’s members who were detained last week. Adris Manbary, Raza Mohamadi, and Rebwar Manbary were detained without charge by security forces.
- A principal from a school in Mehabad was dismissed after a video was leaked showing students dancing to music with their teachers. A prosecutor of the Islamic Revolutionary Court has also opened a case against individuals linked to the video.
- The Kurdistan Human Rights Association (KMMK) recently released a report on the victims of several earthquakes in the Kurdish region since 2017. According to the report, the Iranian regime’s discriminatory policies have resulted in failure to rebuild Kurdish cities and lack of compensation for those affected. Thousands of earthquake victims remain displaced and poverty has forced many in the affected areas to resort to selling organs.
Iraq
- On Wednesday, ISIS (Da’esh) terrorists set more Kurdish farmlands ablaze in Kirkuk province. The terrorists targeted the farmlands of Haftaghar village in the southern Daquq district. The Da’esh terrorists also shot and wounded five farmers who were harvesting their crops. On Thursday, six bombings in Kirkuk city killed six civilians and wounded 20. The bombs targeted a crowded street in Kirkuk during the shopping season preceding Eid. Though security cameras showed a vehicle placing IEDs in multiple locations throughout the city, the security forces have yet to make any arrests. Additionally, according to PUK lawmakers, the Kurds have lost 70 government positions since October 16, 2017, when Iraqi forces and Iranian-backed militias took control of Kirkuk’s security after removing Peshmerga from the province.
- Despite a signed agreement to form a new government, the relationship between the Democratic Party of Kurdistan (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) remains tense following the PUK’s boycott of the Kurdistan Parliament’s presidential vote last week. Both parties’ official media wings issued reports accusing the other of obstructing the formation of the government. Many NGOs and public figures called upon the parties to stop the “media war.” On June 3, leaders of the KDP and PUK encouraged their supporters to stop the negative reporting. The Islamic Union (Yakgrtu) general secretary, Slahaddin Bahaddin, offered to mediate the dispute between the KDP and PUK. The parties’ main disagreement regards the election of the governor of Kirkuk, as PUK is calling for the election of a party member given the refusal of KDP to select from the list of approved candidates.
- On May 28, the Turkish military launched a new campaign inside Iraqi Kurdistan targeting the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) based in the Qandil mountains on the Turkish-Iraqi border. The Turkish military’s use of airstrikes and artillery has displaced numerous residents from neighboring villages.
Syria
- On Saturday, a suicide car bomb killed ten people and injured 20 in al Raqqa city. The attack targeted the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), killing five SDF personnel and five civilians. Friday evening, the SDF foiled two IED attacks in Raqqa targeting civilians in a crowded commercial area. A joint U.S.-SDF operation captured 15 members of Da’esh sleeper cells south of al Hasaka, while local internal security forces announced the capture of a large sleeper cell in the vicinity of Manbij. In reaction to the increasing number of terror attacks in North and East Syria, Kurdish leader Salih Muslim stressed that operations in the post-Caliphate era “aim to eliminate the remnants of Da’esh sleeper cells and eradicate the organization’s ideology.”
- The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) handed over a large number of Da’esh families detained in Syria to their countries of origin. On May 29, the ANNES handed over 148 Uzbek women and children to the Government of Uzbekistan after they had surrendered to the SDF during the fall of Da’esh’s last stronghold in Baghouz. On June 3, the AANES’ foreign relations department handed over five Norwegian orphans, whose parents were Da’esh members killed in Syria, to the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The AANES also handed over another Yazidi Kurd to the Yazidi house in Amuda, Syria after she was found among displaced people in al Hol Camp. Following a meeting with the camp management of al Hol and mediation with Syrian Arab tribes, the AANES released hundreds of families of Da’esh terrorists to reduce overcrowding in the camp which has created humanitarian issues.
Turkey
- The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) condemned the Turkish military incursion into Iraqi Kurdistan and expressed its belief that “war is the wrong policy.” The HDP also issued a statement accusing the ruling party of Justice and Development (AKP) of “insisting on war policies and deepening crisis in the country.” Meanwhile, during a meeting of HDP lawmakers, the party’s co-chair Pervin Buldan said, “Either the Kurdish issue will be resolved, or the state will be dissolved.”
- A number of Kurdish activists were discharged from the hospital following health complications stemming from hunger strikes which lasted six months. The hunger strikes were carried out to protest the isolation of Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan and other political prisoners. That said, the mothers of some political prisoners voiced concerns about the government’s failure to allow medical treatment for political prisoners ending their strikes. Meanwhile, attorneys of other political prisoners in isolation have applied for permits to visit their clients. This follows the successful efforts of Ocalan’s lawyers to secure visitation privileges, who have requested additional consultation with their client this week. Ocalan was previously banned from receiving visitors from July 27, 2011, to May 2, 2019.
- After his election as president of Iraqi Kurdistan, Nechirvan Barzani received a congratulatory message from the Kurdish National Congress (KNK). “Kurdistan’s Federal President has a historic role in ensuring national unity in both Bashur and Kurdistan at large. The President of Federal Kurdistan has a responsibility to represent the Kurds’ will for a free life against Turkey and other forces that object to Kurds’ unity and freedom. We believe the requirements of this role will be fulfilled, with the awareness created by the struggle in four parts of Kurdistan and the truth it uncovered. Nechirvan Barzani’s political experience of decades is at the level to allow him to fulfill this role.” The message is the first to be issued from the KNK, who is close to the PKK, to a KDP official due to the historical rivalry between the two parties.