PEREGRAF- Sangar Salar
The protests in Sulaimaniyah and Halabja governorates and the Raparin and Garmian administrations during 2020 did not yield much in the way of practical changes, but the explosion of youth anger about the situation in the Kurdistan Region exacerbated ongoing partisan tensions in the Kurdistan Parliament, according to an investigation by PEREGRAF.
Following the protests, lawmakers set up a fifteen-member committee to investigate the causes and conduct of the demonstrations, which occurred largely in areas controlled by the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and the Change Movement (Gorran).
Months later, differences among the committee members have prevented many of them from signing onto a final report to send to the Parliamentary leadership.
Committee member Badriya Esmail of the Kurdistan Justice Group (KJG) told PEREGRAF that she refuses to sign onto the report because she wants it to also cover protests that happened in Erbil and Duhok governorates, which are controlled by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP).
"I had a note that the committee should not only be about [protests in] Sulaymaniyah, but they did not allow the Badinan protests to be put into the frame of the committee's work," she said, referring collectively to Erbil and Duhok, where the Badini variety of Kurdish is spoken.
"They did not even allow us to visit the families of the victims of those demonstrations," she added.
The protests in Sulaimaniyah, Halabja, Garmian, and Raparin started on May 1, 2020, sparked by frustrations over poor living conditions and delays and cuts to public sector salaries.
"The main demand of the demonstrators was to ask for basic services," demonstrator Rebwar Najm told PEREGRAF.
"Since 1991, there have been problems with water, bad roads, and electricity and the authorities have not been able to solve them," he added.
The demonstrations took place periodically during 2020, peaking in December with a ten-day wave that left nine people dead, including seven protesters who were killed by the security forces as part of a crackdown to put an end to the protests. A number of local offices of political parties were burned by demonstrators.
Since then, few things have changed, with the public demanding the same things as they were before they went out into the streets.
The protests were essentially unorganized, which has allowed the Kurdistan Region’s political parties to exploit the protests for their own benefit.
"The lack of results from the demonstrations is due to the experience of the political authorities since 1991, during that time they have succeeded in suppressing dissent, often through military force," Najm said.
"I think the demonstrations have not come to an end because the demands of the citizens have not been implemented, so they can occur at another stage and at another time," Najm said.
New Generation Movement lawmaker Kawa Abdulqadir and a member of the Parliament’s committee looking into the protests told PEREGRAF that some members have argued that the report includes a recommendation that members of the security forces who killed protesters be taken to court, but so far it has not yet been included in the draft.
Abdulqadir said he would not sign the final report if the accountability recommendation was not included. If the rest of the committee by-passes those who refused to sign the report, then the minority would take a public stance on the issue.
"The reason for the protests is that the people have poor living conditions," Abdulqadir said.
"The people are unemployed and hungry. There is injustice. There is a bad government. So, the people protested. There is no other reason besides this point to explain why there were demonstrations," he added.
According to the New Generation MP, the draft report cited "a lot of unpleasant reasons" as causes for the protests.
Sources told PEREGRAF that the draft suggests that the demonstrations were sparked by poor living conditions, public sector salary cuts and delays, the lack of public services like water and electricity, the "misuse of networks and some media outlets not complying with the law," and that Baghdad had not been sending the Kurdistan Region’s budget share.
The report's draft recommendations called for the people who died during the demonstrations to be considered as "martyrs" and their families as eligible for compensation.
It additionally called for disapproval of decentralization of power in the Kurdistan Region, increasing the role of civil society, and taking legal action against parties and groups who used the protests in negative ways.
"We can call the wave of recent protests a mass explosion or a mass uprising. What happened was the explosion of grief and suffering of the people as a result of the injustices committed by the Kurdish authority," Salar Mahmud, a member of the Disgruntled Teachers' Council, told PEREGRAF. The Council played a significant organizing role at the beginning of the demonstrations before distancing itself from the protests once they turned violent.
"The demonstrators were mostly unemployed youths with empty pockets and homeless," he said.
"They were far from all voices, colors, identities, and ideologies and the sorrows and sufferings of life excited them to express their anger on the streets," he added.
According to Mahmud, the demonstrations were different from those that came before in three ways: they were angrier, larger and more widespread, and created danger for the authorities.
"What they did in the days of the demonstrations against the government and political forces showed that the demonstrators want the end of this authority," he added.
While none of the underlying causes of the demonstrations have been fundamentally addressed, Mahmud said that he thought that the protests put the authorities on notice.
"I think that if the authorities do not understand the message of the demonstrators and do not take their demands seriously, they may like the death and end of their power."
Ahead of what turned out to be the final demonstration of the December protest wave in Sulaymaniyah, a group of former Gorran lawmakers joined forces with activists under the name of the "Congress of Dissenting Voices."
"The dissenting voices had one aim: the departure of the authority from power. It did not work because, of course, this authority does not want to step aside and used heavy weapons and forces against us," Aziz Rauf, one of the founders of the group, told PEREGRAF.
On the day of the protest, which was held in front of the Sulaimaniyah provincial building, the main organizers of the Congress of Dissenting Voices were arrested. They were held for four days before being released.
"The demonstrations didn't come to an end, they were brought down by force and defeated. The forces that came to the province against us, if they had fought like that in Kirkuk, Tuz Khurmatu, and Sinjar, they would not have been taken," Rauf added, referring to parts of the disputed areas captured by the Iraqi Security Forces following the Kurdistan Region’s independence referendum in 2017.
He said that the Congress of Dissenting Voices is not a political movement or a political organization, but a group of people who shared a "common sadness." It gathered them for a moment, during which there "a lot of bloodshed in the cities and towns and many sacrifices."
"Many young people were martyred and the city of Sulaimaniyah was silent. We were a group of allies who decided to move protests to the streets," Rauf said, adding that they wanted the current leadership of the Kurdistan Region to step aside.
Like Esmail, the KJG MP, he sees similar problems both in Sulaimaniyah and Halabja and in the areas controlled by the KDP in Erbil and Duhok.
"In Erbil, you can speak, but you cannot show any action. The authorities will kill you and then come to your funeral. As we saw with our own eyes, the authorities went to the homes of the victims and they took photos with their families," he said.
Although there were no large demonstrations in Erbil and Duhok during the latter part of the year, a number of people were arrested on the pretext of trying to protest.
"We will not stop protesting, that spirit remains in our world, but the political leadership is not with us and the people have no confidence in the political forces," said Rauf.
"We will continue to criticize until a new worldview and politics is created."