30 March 2006

1. "Kurdish riots continue for second day in Turkey", hundreds of Kurdish youths went on the rampage for a second day in this southeastern Turkish city Wednesday, hurling petrol bombs at the police and vandalizing shops. The violence in Diyarbakir, the central city of the mainly Kurdish southeast, broke out Tuesday following the funerals of four Kurdish rebels, who were among 14 militants killed in a major security operation in the region over the weekend.

2. "Three Killed As Kurds Riot in Turkey", riot police fired water cannons and used pepper spray to disperse stone-throwing Kurdish rioters Wednesday in a second day of violence that an official said left at least three people dead and 250 injured in southeastern Turkey.

3. "Turkey faces obstacles on EU course", although Turkey's negotiations on joining the European Union are only in an early stage, they are already running into obstacles due to some members' reticence about the vast Muslim country joining.

4. "Three Iran Guards killed in Kurdish clash", three members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards were killed in a clash with Kurdish rebels in the country's restive western borderlands, Iran's student news agency ISNA said on Wednesday.

5. "The Iranian government is strong. But not that strong.", in the mountains with a Kurdish opposition group trying to bring democracy to Iran.

6. "Prosecutions threaten freedom of expression in Kurdistan-Northern Iraq", Amnesty International is greatly concerned by the prosecutions of two critics of the Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq and the threat these pose to freedom of expression in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region.

1. - AFP - "Kurdish riots continue for second day in Turkey":

DIYARBAKIR / 29 March 2006

Hundreds of Kurdish youths went on the rampage for a second day in this southeastern Turkish city Wednesday, hurling petrol bombs at the police and vandalizing shops.

The violence in Diyarbakir, the central city of the mainly Kurdish southeast, broke out Tuesday following the funerals of four Kurdish rebels, who were among 14 militants killed in a major security operation in the region over the weekend.

The authorities called in reinforcements from neighboring regions, including paramilitary police and special commando forces, to shore up security in what appear to be the worst street battles in southeast Turkey for years.

Groups of angry youths, some wearing masks, pelted the security forces with sticks and stones in several neighborhoods, shouting slogans in favor of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), to which the slain rebels belonged, and its jailed leader Abdullah Ocalan.

Many attacked the security forces with petrol bombs, threw up barricades on several streets and burnt tyres, disrupting traffic in the city, which has a population of some 550,000 people.

Public buildings and shops were stoned.

Riot police, taking cover behind plastic shields, fired tear gas at the protestors and sprayed them with pressurized water from armored vehicles.

Many shop owners kept their businesses closed, fearing the vandalism that left the streets of the city littered with stones and broken glass.

On Tuesday, the protestors set fire to a bank, torched several vehicles and smashed the windows of police stations, health centers and party buildings.

Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu said 42 people were injured, among them 36 policemen, and 80 demonstrators, including one in possession of a gun, were detained after Tuesday's incidents.

Two policemen were stabbed and one of them was in serious condition, medical sources said earlier.

The country's main Kurdish party, the Democratic Society Party, urged an end to the violence, while blaming the unrest on the government's failure to meet Kurdish demands for greater cultural and political freedoms.

The Kurdish conflict in Turkey has claimed some 37,000 lives since the PKK took up arms for Kurdish self-rule in 1984.

2. - AP - "Three Killed As Kurds Riot in Turkey":

ANKARA / 30 March 2006 / by Selcan Hacaoglu

Riot police fired water cannons and used pepper spray to disperse stone-throwing Kurdish rioters Wednesday in a second day of violence that an official said left at least three people dead and 250 injured in southeastern Turkey.

Gov. Efkan Ala said 2,500 to 3,000 rioters, including many children, participated in the two days of clashes in Diyarbakir after funerals for Kurdish guerrillas killed by Turkish troops last week.

The guerrillas were among 14 killed by soldiers in the province of Mus in a two-day fight that ended Saturday. They belonged to the Kurdistan Workers Party, which has been fighting for autonomy in southeastern Turkey since 1984.

Ala said three Kurds were killed and 250 people were injured, including 130 security forces, and several government offices, private businesses and banks were damaged in the melees — among the worst in decades.

The Turkish army moved combat vehicles to the outskirts of the city, the largest in the Kurdish-dominated southeast, after clashes broke out Tuesday when thousands of protesters rampaged, hurling firebombs at armored police vehicles and smashing windows at a police station.

About 200 rioters took to the streets again on Wednesday, blocking streets with burning tires and hurling stones at riot police. They also smashed the windows of the local businesses and set a truck on fire before they were dispersed by security forces firing into the air and using a water cannon and tear gas.

Paramilitary troops stationed outside the governor's office also quickly repelled a group of stone-throwing protesters.

"Three protesters have unfortunately died," the Diyarbakir governor said. "One of them died in a traffic accident while trying to escape."

Ala did not say how the two other rioters had died, pending autopsy reports, but he added that security forces had detained 200 people.

Turkey's regional governors are state-appointed and are in charge of local security.

Authorities were still assessing damage in the city as municipality workers cleaned the wreckage of burned cars and broken glass littering the streets from the previous night.

"The aim of the perpetrators and rioters of this incidents is to destroy the unity of our country and the environment of safety," Interior Minister Abdulkadir Aksu said.

"Our security forces will find and hand over the perpetrators, collaborators, provocateurs and their affiliates to justice and they will be given the punishment they deserved," he added.

Authorities boosted security in Diyarbakir. A long convoy of armored personnel carriers rumbled toward a major military base on the outskirts of the city as authorities called in police reinforcements from nearby cities.

Further west in Adana, some 3,000 Kurdish protesters attending the funeral of another slain guerrilla also clashed with police on Tuesday, prompting the officers to detain several people.

Tensions have been running high in the southeast, where autonomy-seeking Kurdish guerrillas have escalated attacks recently.

Turkey is under pressure from the European Union, which it wants to join, to grant more rights to its sizable Kurdish population that it does recognize as an official minority. But Ankara has ruled out any dialogue with the Kurdish guerrillas whom it regards as terrorists.

3. - Reporter.gr - "Turkey faces obstacles on EU course":

29 March 2006

Although Turkey's negotiations on joining the European Union are only in an early stage, they are already running into obstacles due to some members' reticence about the vast Muslim country joining.

Turkey began EU membership talks in October, but only after frantic last-minute wrangling to overcome objections by Austria, which had argued for Ankara to be offered something less than full EU membership.
The EU and Turkey are now getting down to the long process of detailed negotiations on 35 subjects, known as chapters, to bring Turkish laws into line with EU norms.

Having successfully launched talks on the first chapter regarding science and research, getting talks going on a second chapter education and culture is proving to be more difficult as EU states struggle to agree on what conditions have to be met by Ankara.

Led by France, several member states want the chapter to require minorities' rights in the country to be beefed up despite opposition from the European Commission, sources said.

"For this chapter, several delegations led by France have had the idea of adding a reference to the political criteria of Copenhagen," one EU source said on condition of anonymity.

In 1993, the EU agreed in Copenhagen on criteria that have to be met in order to join the bloc, including political conditions such as democracy, rule of law, human rights and respect for minorities.

Normally questions about minority rights should be raised during talks on a chapter for fundamental rights.

Turkish Economy Minister Ali Babacan, who is also the country's chief negotiator in EU accession talks, told the Anatolia news agency on Sunday that Ankara was expecting an invitation soon to start talks on the education chapter but that it did not want new strings attached.

"We believe that this letter should not contain political elements," he said.

4. - Reuters - "Three Iran Guards killed in Kurdish clash":

TEHRAN / 29 March 2006

Three members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards were killed in a clash with Kurdish rebels in the country's restive western borderlands, Iran's student news agency ISNA said on Wednesday.

The Revolutionary Guard "agents" were killed in fighting on Tuesday with a Kurdish group called PJAK. Their bodies were transferred from the border to the nearby city of Salmas, the report said.

Iranian officials were not immediately available for comment. Iran's Revolutionary Guards are an ideologically driven branch of the country's armed forces.

Security experts say PJAK is an Iranian wing of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) whose armed struggle regained momentum in southeastern Turkey after it called off a unilateral ceasefire in the summer of 2004.

The PKK Web site said seven Iranian soldiers were killed and 11 injured in a clash with PKK guerrillas. It said Iranian forces launched an operation against the rebels on March 25 in an area it identified as Kelares, near the border between Iran and Turkey. It said there were no PKK casualties.

It was not immediately clear if the two reports were referring to the same incident.

Iran's western cities, home of the country's Kurdish minority, have simmered with tension since July when riots erupted in a city in the area. There have been several civilian and police deaths in violence since then.

Iranian officials have said the violence was not ethnically motivated but Kurdish leaders say Tehran's discriminatory treatment of their people is stirring unrest.

Kurds consist 6 million of Iran's 67 million population, many of whom live in the mountainous northwest bordering Iraq and Turkey, also home of Kurdish minorities.

5. - MotherJones.com - "The Iranian government is strong. But not that strong.":

In the mountains with a Kurdish opposition group trying to bring democracy to Iran.

KANDIL / 29 March 2006 / by David Enders

The simple, cinderblock and sod-roof, dwellings of the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK) don't look much different from those of the surrounding villages in Iraq's Zagros mountains. The plumbing is outdoors and the water comes from mountain streams. Nor do the men and women in the village look much different from those elsewhere in the region—most wear traditional Kurdish clothing, baggy coveralls sashed at the waist, and it's not uncommon to see people with Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders.

It's only in conversation that the men and women of the PJAK camp, most of whom hail from Iran, begin to distinguish themselves from Iraqi Kurds, who tend to be subsistence farmers with little education. My first night in the PJAK camp, I was treated to a broken-English crash course in the group's ideology—a variant of democratic socialism combined with a call for the Iranian government to adhere to the European Union's convention on human rights.

The group has been exiled to the mountains of northern Iraq during its struggle to bring democracy to Iran, but the members of PJAK remain surprisingly optimistic. They began organizing underground cells and demonstrating in Iran in the mid-1990s, but after facing persecution by the Tehran government in 1999, many members fled and set up a base in Kandeel. In 2004, the group began carrying out small-arms attacks inside Iran against military targets, in response to Iranian aggression against Kurds in the country's western provinces. BBC Persia reported that PJAK killed 120 Iranian police officers during a six-month period in 2005. It is currently one of the largest—if not the largest—Iranian opposition group, claiming 4,000 members in Kandeel and thousands more inside Iran.

PJAK claims that its numbers have risen steadily since its formation, and that its existence is convincing many of Iran's approximately 3.7 million Kurds—about 7 percent of the country's total population—that the theocratic government in Tehran can be challenged both militarily and politically.

"The Iranian government is strong," says Akif Zagros, 28, a former journalist and a founding member of PJAK. "But not that strong."

Since the creation of modern Iran, the Kurdish minority inside the country has endured oppression—as have Kurds in neighboring countries. The Islamic Revolution in 1979 initiated a jihad by the Shiite government against the Sunni Kurds. Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, declared that Kurds were not autonomous and had no reason to seek cultural rights. Such discrimination continues to this day. Kurds in Iran, for instance, are not allowed to receive Kurdish-language education in school—as was the case in Saddam Hussein's Iraq and, until 2004, in Turkey.

In addition to cultural discrimination, Iranian Kurds complain that they do not receive the same services—such as petrol subsidies—as Iranians in other parts of the country, and that the Kurdish provinces, despite being oil-rich, are economically depressed.

Iran's previous president, Mohamed Khatami, attempted to reverse some of this discrimination by including Kurds in the government, authorizing the creation of Kurdish-language chairs at universities, and easing restrictions against Kurdish political activity. But these small steps have been reversed with the election of hardline president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad last year.

PJAK's location in Kandeel is remote—to get to the leadership, one must ride to the end of a two-track road accessible only by 4x4, and then hike for a few hours. But that has not discouraged many young Iranian Kurds from seeking refuge here.

"If I hadn't left Iran, I might have been hanged," says 24-year-old Karwan Agri, a computer engineering student from Markezi in western Iran. Agri says he was part of a PJAK cell at his university, and decided to flee Iran and travel to Kandeel two months ago, after Ahmedinejad's election and a subsequent increase in crackdowns on members of Kurdish political parties. PJAK in particular has received much attention because of its latter-day militancy.

"After Ahmedinejad's election, the situation changed. Freedoms that had existed in Iran before, under Khatami, disappeared. There is now an atmosphere of violence. Eighty percent of university students are opposed to Ahmedinijad's ideology. I know more than 100 students who have left to the mountains since his election."

Zagros says PJAK's armed operations only target the Iranian military and police in response to aggression against Kurds. (To date, there is no evidence that the group ever engages in terrorism against civilians.)

"Defense takes two forms. Some of it is organized here, some of it is organized spontaneously by people in Iranian Kurdistan," he says.

PJAK isn't seeking independence for Iran's Kurdish provinces; rather, the group is calling for an end to the rule by mullahs in Tehran. It is the only Kurdish group in Iran calling openly for the government to reform, although Zagros says his group would negotiate with the mullahs if the latter were willing to end Iran's discrimination against its Kurdish population.

"If the Iranian government accepts our demands, we are ready to talk to them," he says.

In the meantime, the group is focusing on assisting and empowering the Iranian population.

"PJAK supports helping people get off heroin," said Diller, a Kurd from Mariwan, a western Iranian city where PJAK is active. (There are currently an estimated three-to-four million heroin addicts in Iran.) Diller, who is not a member of PJAK, works on the dangerous smuggling route from Iraq to Iran, carrying contraband alcohol across the border because, he says, there is no other employment. "The Iranian government doesn't care about Kurds. They don't supply our cities with the same services they do for the Shiites."

Like the better-known Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Turkey, which advocates for an independent Kurdish homeland, and which has used these mountains as a base since 1991 in a guerrilla war against the Turkish government that has claimed more than 30,000 lives, a major component of PJAK's fight is for women's rights.

"Our aim is to be an alternative to the leadership of Iran, and we organize women toward this aim. The Iranian government deprives women of their freedom," says 26-year-old Golistan Dugan, a female member of the group's leadership council. "Here in the mountains the women are organized."

Dugan left Iran in 1999, in the wake of Kurdish demonstrations following the arrest of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan in Turkey. The protests provoked crackdowns by Tehran.

PJAK members claim 45 percent of their membership is female.

"We want not only to include Kurdish women but also Iranian women," Dugan says.

Women in PJAK receive the same political education and military training that the men do, and "daughter guerillas" have participated in the attacks against Iran that began in 2004.

According to the group's charter, 12 of the 21 members of PJAK's elected legislative council must be women; as well, three of the seven members of the leadership council, selected from the legislative council, are women. The group also has three educational subcommittees—focusing on secular democratic education for youth, democracy, and women.

"We send [the people we train] back to Iran to organize underground among the women, young people and university students," Zagros says.

Many of the group's members say they are inspired by Ocalan, and pictures of him and his wife—as well as those of Vian Jaff, a PKK member who recently self herself on fire in Turkey—adorn the walls of PJAK dwellings. But unlike the PKK, the members of PJAK eschew Kurdish nationalist rhetoric, and would prefer a democratic Iran to the formation of a greater Kurdistan.

Zagros says the PJAK, which counts membership abroad in the Kurdish diaspora in Europe and Russia—which is a major source of the group's funding—has had contact with other Iranian dissidents, including the Mujahideen e-Khalq (MEK), a communist opposition group whose members inside Iraq continue to languish in U.S. custody at Camp Ashraf near the Iranian border, where they have been since shortly after the invasion.

"There is just talk, a primitive agreement, but in our plan there is a widening agreement," Zagros says, declining to elaborate further.

Both the MEK and the PKK remain on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations, but the Iranian government has accused the U.S. of supporting PJAK. Zagros denies this, saying the group has had no contact with the US military or diplomats.

"Our demand is democracy—we accept and welcome [American] support," Zagros says. "But only in accordance with the interests of Kurdish people."

At a PKK base on the other side of the mountain, Abdul Rahman Chaderchi, a member of the PKK's political council, confirms the PKK's support for PJAK and decries the U.S. government's hypocrisy in supporting autonomy for Iraq's Kurds but not for other groups.

"We want the U.S. to see all Kurds with the same eyes," he says.

Kandeel is essentially under PKK control—as one gets deeper into the mountains, checkpoints manned by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, the party loyal to Iraqi president Jalal Talabani, give way to PKK outposts. The PUK avoids putting pressure the PKK because of both local sympathies for Kurdish national groups and the fact that it wants to avoid sparking armed conflict. PJAK says they have no relationship with the PUK, and Zagros criticized the autocratic nature of Iraq's Kurdish parties.

"This ideology is opposite to ours," he says.

The PJAK leadership would like to receive the same level of support from the United States that the PUK enjoys, although the specter of an American military intervention in Iran makes some PJAK members uneasy.

"Outside intervention is not good for Iran right now, because the people are not ready for it, and it might be damaging," says Agri, the former computer-engineering student.

Regardless of what happens on the international stage, however, Zagros says that, for now, the group is planning a response to the arrests of Kurds in Iran during Nowruz—the traditional Zoroastrian new year, celebrated by Kurds and Persians on the vernal equinox on March 21.

"The party is allowed to respond to the blood of a martyr," Zagros says.

6. - Amnesty International - "Prosecutions threaten freedom of expression in Kurdistan-Northern Iraq":

29 March 2006

Amnesty International is greatly concerned by the prosecutions of two critics of the Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq and the threat these pose to freedom of expression in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region.

Kamal Sayid Qadir, an Austrian national of Kurdish origin, has been imprisoned since October 2005 for allegedly defaming Kurdish political leaders, while high school teacher and journalist Hawez Hawezi is facing prosecution, also on defamation charges.

Kamal Sayid Qadir was first tried in December 2005 before the Second Criminal Court in Arbil. He was charged with defamation arising from two articles which he had published on the internet, in which he strongly criticised the leadership of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), one of the two parties holding power in the Kurdish-dominated region of northern Iraq. The trial did not satisfy international fair trial standards and at the end of it Kamal Sayid Qadir was convicted, although he denied the charges and reportedly presented evidence to support his criticism of KDP leaders, and given an extraordinarily heavy sentence of 30 years’ imprisonment. This sentence was subsequently overturned by the Court of Cassation, which sent the case back to a criminal court in Arbil for re-trial. On 26 March 2006, the court imposed a new sentence of 18 months’ imprisonment.

While imprisoned prior to his December 2005 trial, Kamal Sayid Qadir was reportedly held incommunicado for three days in solitary confinement and denied food, water or access to toilet facilities. He says Kurdish intelligence officials coerced him into signing a statement relating to the defamation charges that were brought against him. He is also reported to be in fear for his own safety because of threats made against him by Kurdish intelligence officials and supporters of the Kurdish leaders.

Amnesty International does not have all the details related to his case but is concerned that Kamal Sayid Qadir may be a prisoner of conscience, who should be released immediately and unconditionally. The organization is also calling for a prompt, independent investigation into his allegations of ill-treatment in pre-trial detention and for any officials found responsible for such ill-treatment or other abuses to be held to account.

Hawez Hawezi, a 31-year old high school teacher and journalist, was detained on 17 March 2006 by security forces affiliated with the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the other main party in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region. He was released on bail two days later, but also faces defamation charges for a recent article that he published in the Kurdish weekly newspaper Hawlati which criticised the local Kurdish authorities. He is reported to have been assaulted by PUK-affiliated security officials while being driven to the detention centre in Sulaimaniya after his arrest.

Amnesty International is calling on the Iraqi government and local Kurdish authorities to ensure that the charges against Hawez Hawezi are dropped immediately and unconditionally, and also to ensure that his allegations that he was assaulted by PUK officials are promptly investigated and that any officials found responsible are held to account.

Amnesty international is also calling on the Iraqi government and the Kurdish authorities in northern Iraq to ensure full protection of the right to freedom of expression and to review and amend existing legislation which criminalises the peaceful exercise of the right to freedom of expression.