Most Massive Anti-Govt Protest in Sulaimani

Thousands of anti-government protesters raised Iraqi Kurdish flags in Sulaimani Friday, demanding radical changes in the government.------- Photo by Namo Abdulla for Rudaw.

SULAIMANI, Iraqi Kurdistan: Around 7,000 Iraqi Kurds protested Friday in Sulaimani, the largest demonstration so far in nine days of continued unrest in the city, in which protestors have expressed their rage against corruption and nepotism in the semiautonomous Kurdistan region, demanding its government to step down.

“Down, down, down!” was the refrain chanted continuously throughout the day by the largely younger protestors, including students, teachers, lawyers, clerics, laborers and doctors. 

Although demands differed from profession to profession, everyone interviewed by Rudaw uttered one common slogan: “The Kurdish government is corrupt.”

The Friday protest started early in the morning, before the usual Friday prayers, when thousands of people – just as the Egyptians recently had done before them – prayed in Sulaimani’s central Bardarki Sara square, which the protest movement has now renamed “Freedom Square.”

Large speakers have been installed on a stage in Freedom Square, from where everyone is free to address the crowd with their grievances, but no pro-government statements are being tolerated.

On Wednesday, politicians from Kurdistan’s two ruling parties and an author loyal to one of these parties were chased away by the angry mob as they tried to address the audience.

However, politicians with Kurdistan’s major opposition party, Gorran, which won most of Sulaimani city’s votes in the July 2009 Kurdish governmental elections, have been welcomed to speak on the stage with wild applause and whistling. 

Although most of the protesters are Gorran supporters, the movement is not solely Gorran-driven. They are protesting about lack of basic services, such as electricity, governmental corruption and nepotism in the hiring of government employees.

Many people told Rudaw they were jobless despite being well educated.

“Enough corruption, enough shedding of the blood of our young people,” said a wailing 16-year-old Hana Hakim, whose father, Hakim Mohammad, became a symbol of the Sulaimani movement, when he threatened to burn himself to death in protest against government corruption a few days before the protests began. “Look, my dad wanted to set himself on fire. Why? Just give up your [governmental] posts.” 

Ms Hakim’s father, who stood next to her, said if the protestors’ demands were not met, he was “still ready” to burn himself to death in front of parliament.

Although three protestors have so far died and more than a hundred have been wounded as a result of clashes with security forces in the Sulaimani demonstrations, the Friday protest was peaceful.

However, protests in other areas of Kurdistan Friday were not as peaceful. In Kalar, a town located 140 km south of Sulaimani, one died and 27 were wounded, according to Arkan Mohammed, a spokesman for Kalar’s hospital. 

In addition, a child, aged 10 to 12 years old, was killed, and five were injured in Chamchamal.

Sulaimani’s protests are expected to continue until protestors’ demands are met.  Meanwhile, most universities in Erbil, the region’s capital, were closed Thursday until April 1st, after students had announced plans to stage a massive protest.

Erbil has been largely blockaded by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the dominant party there, and people from other Iraqi and Kurdish cities have largely been prohibited from traveling to Kirkuk city, according to government officials and eye-witnesses in these cities.

Friday was announced as a “Day of Rage” in Baghdad and other Arab-dominated Iraqi towns and cities. Thousands of people poured on to the streets of Bagdad and demanded more accountability from their elected leaders.

But, Kurdistan’s protests are of a different nature, as they pose a direct threat to the hold on power of Kurdistan’s two ruling parties, who won in elections two years ago.

Although the next parliamentary election is scheduled for 2013, both Gorran and the demonstrators have demanded early elections. A meeting was held Friday between Gorran leader Nawshirwan Mustafa and top PUK officials, including Hero Ibrahim, who is PUK leader in Sulaimani and wife of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani.

PUK media outlets have reported that the PUK is willing to dissolve the current government and hold early elections, if other parties, including the PUK’s staunch ally, the KDP, agree. Both Gorran and the PUK agreed in the Friday meeting that Kurdistan must have a more inclusive government.