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Iran
- The Kurdish region’s farmlands and forests continued to be targeted by fire. On Thursday, fire struck a forested parkland outside of Marivan and resulted in the incineration of the entire park. Kurdish environmental activists accused the Iranian regime of setting the fire. In Ilam, large fires burned thousands of acres of farmland while additional fires occurred in Sarpol Zahab and Qasr-e Shirin cities in Kermanshah province and Sarvabad city in Kurdistan province.
- Iranian security forces killed one Kurdish border porter (Kolbar) and wounded another three last week. On Thursday, Iranian border guards ambushed and killed a Kolbar named Mohammed Zada near Baneh. Two more Kolbars were wounded in Piranshahr and Sardasht near border crossings with Iraqi Kurdistan. On Thursday, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) injured a Kolbar in Sardasht’s District of Choman. According to the Kurdistan Human Rights Association (KMMK), the IRGC confiscated the vehicle’s cargo after wounding the driver, a 30-year-old man named Sirwan Azizzada. Since the beginning of 2019, 33 Kolbars have been killed and 78 wounded in Iranian Kurdistan.
- In Divandareh, a Kurdish teacher was sent to prison to serve a one-year sentence for participation in mass protests held throughout Iran last year. Omed Shamhedi was charged with “attempts to disrupt national security.” In Bokan city, a book store owner named Mustafa Rahimi was arrested and taken to an undisclosed location by Iranian intelligence officers (Ettela’at). Ettela’at detainees are routinely arrested without warrant and held without trial for extended periods. On Monday, another Kurdish bookstore owner, Ismael Bokani, was shot dead by an unknown gunman in Mehabad city. Bokani had previously served a one-year prison sentence for activism. The Iranian regime has recently increased efforts to repress Kurdish civilian activists.
- In Oshnavieh (Shinno), municipal workers held a three-day strike to protest wages which have remained unpaid by the government for four months. Since 2018, most Kurdish municipal workers in the region have protested unpaid wages and continually late payment of salaries.
Iraq
- Prime Minister-elect Massrour Barzani traveled to Sulaymaniyah and held meetings with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Movement for Change (Gorran) to discuss the ministerial candidate for the new cabinet. Barzani was elected by the Parliament to form the new Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and given 30 days to form the cabinet. Both the PUK and Gorran will internally finalize nominees for the positions before sending the list to Barzani. The parliamentary elections held in September 2018 created disputes between the parties which were recently resolved via agreement, though the Kirkuk governorship remains a point of contention between the PUK and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).
- In Kirkuk, a warrant has been issued against Rakan Said, the current acting governor of Kirkuk, for eight charges of corruption. The Integrity Commission brought the issue to the court’s attention after documents were discovered showing Said spending public money on his guest house, reconstruction of the liberated areas, and other provincial contracts. Kurds have accused Said of attempting to reinstate the Arabization policies of the Ba’athist regime in the Kurdish area since the federal government seized control of Kirkuk and appointed him acting governor. Thirteen of Kirkuk’s Kurdish neighborhoods have been excluded from reconstruction in 2019.
- The Turkish military incursion into Iraqi Kurdistan continued amid more air and artillery strikes on border areas between Iraq and Turkey. On June 12, airstrikes hit the main road between Duhok city and Amedi District. The continuing Turkish operations have led to the abandonment of hundreds of Kurdish villages. Last May, Turkey launched a military campaign targeting the Kurdistan Worker’s Party’s (PKK) headquarters located in the Qandil Mountains.
Syria
- William Roebuck, the Deputy Special Envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS (Dae’sh), headed a delegation to the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES). Roebuck held meetings with senior Kurdish officials in the AANES and, according to Kurdish media outlets, his visit focused on the region’s security issues and U.S. support for the Syrian Democratic Forces’ (SDF) fight against Da’esh.
- Northeastern Syria experienced multiple IED attacks last week. On Thursday, three IEDs exploded in ar Raqqa, wounding one civilian. Two IEDs targeted a road near a park and the third exploded near ar Raqqa’s city center. On Saturday, an IED explosion injured two civilians in al Hasakah. On Monday, a car bomb hit the Kurdish city of Qamishli. The VBIED targeted Qamishli’s internal security office, wounded seven civilians, and damaged numerous homes and buildings. Dae’sh’s increasing presence in Deir az Zor has led to an uptick in terrorist activity throughout northeastern Syria. On June 12, the SDF announced the arrest of another Dae’sh cell in al-Jarthi village in Deir az Zor province.
- Syria’s Kurdish region continued to face widespread arson attacks targeting agricultural lands. According to the Autonomous Administration, around 35 million dollars’ worth of wheat and other crops have been burned since the beginning of May. More fires were set in Kobane’s rural areas, Qamishli, and Amuda town this week, while thousands of acres have been burned in Iran, Iraq, and Syria since the end of April. Dae’sh has claimed responsibility for setting numerous fires in Iraq and Syria, though in Qamishli, the Kurdish administration accused the Syrian government of preventing fire trucks stationed near the airport under regime control from assisting efforts to extinguish the fires.
Turkey
- Turkey’s ruling party, the Party of Justice and Development (AKP),and opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), have made increasing efforts to appeal to Kurdish voters in the lead-up to Istanbul’s rerun election. The former co-chair of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), Selahhttin Demirtas, endorsed the opposition candidate, Ekrem İmamoğlu, from his prison cell. The HDP did not participate in the rerun elections in an attempt to garner more support for the CHP versus Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP. Demirtas’s statement of support for İmamoğlu is his first official public endorsement of the CHP.
- The Turkish government launched a new wave of arrests targeting Kurdish activists last week. On June 12, Turkish police detained 33 Kurds for protesting the destruction of a historic town after the AKP-led government built a dam. In Urfa, the Turkish military detained 5 people in Halfeti, Suruç Birecik, and Hilvan districts and accused them of “spreading terrorist propaganda.” On Monday, 35 Kurds were arrested by the police in Adana.