Kurdish Activists Confirm Damning Human Rights Report

Human rights advocates in northern Iraq say the findings of a new report accusing Kurdish security forces of systematic mistreatment of detainees come as no surprise, and express scepticism that international pressure will end such practices.



In a report issued on July 3, the New York-based group Human Rights Watch said the security forces in Iraqi Kurdistan routinely torture detainees and deny them the right either to have a fair trial or to challenge their detention.



The Kurdish Regional Government has pledged to investigate the allegations of abuse.



Human Rights Watch investigators interviewed more than 150 detainees and Kurdish security officials from April to October 2006. The advocacy group recommended that Iraqi Kurdistan significantly change its detention and legal practices by requiring that detainees be either charged or released, denouncing torture and ensuring fair trials.



The kind of violations outlined in the 58-page report were not news to human rights activists in Iraqi Kurdistan.



"We know that arrests have been made without warrants; torture has been carried out; and detention facilities operate with minimal human rights criteria," said Sarwar Ali, a lawyer and a human rights activist at Democracy and Human Rights Development in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah.



Iraqi Kurdistan's main political parties – the Kurdistan Democratic Party, KDP, and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan – each have their own security force, both called Asayish. The Asayish units function independent of government agencies and answer to their respective political party masters more than to the executive, according to Human Rights Watch and local Kurdish activists.



"The party security establishments function outside the law, and many people are detained for several years without charges," said Ali.



Detainees told Human Rights Watch that security forces beat them with cables and metal rods and placed them in stress positions for prolonged periods. Most detainees were not officially charged and many were deprived of legal counsel, trials and visitors while in prison, the organisation maintained.



"Most of the [detainees] so far don't know what they are charged with," Mike Eisner, an adviser to Human Rights Watch, told IWPR. "They have no lawyers, and their families don't know where they are and how long they will be in prison."



Some detainees who had been acquitted were still being held, and most detention facilities were severely overcrowded and unhygienic, according to the report. Human Rights Watch also expressed concern at reports that United States and Iraqi government forces had transferred detainees who had not been formally charged to Kurdish detention facilities.



"The Kurdish authorities talk a lot about the principles of freedom and human rights, but this report and the US State Department's [human rights] report prove that democracy and human rights are no more than words in this region," said a lawyer, who asked not to be named because he works for the government.



"Asayish has the utmost power."



The Asayish forces are tasked with detaining individuals suspected of security-related crimes including terrorism. However, they have also detained journalists and protesters - usually for short periods of time - and have also been accused of holding members of opposition Islamic parties. Security forces frequently claim that these detainees are suspected terrorists, while Islamic party members say they are political prisoners.



A security source in Kurdistan’s capital Erbil, who spoke on condition of anonymity as is customary, denied that Asayish tortures or otherwise mistreats its detainees.



"We never resort to abuse," he said.



Jamal Abdullah, a spokesman for Omar Fatah, deputy prime minister in the Kurdistan Regional Government, admitted there were "some illegal activities”, but he insisted, “These are carried out by individual members of the security forces. They are not acting on instructions, and it is not systematic."



Abdullah said the Kurdistan government is taking the Human Rights Watch report seriously. Prime Minister Nechirvan Barzani ordered copies of the report sent to the Asayish in Sulaimaniyah and Erbil - where the PUK and KDP, respectively, are dominant.



Abdullah said the government would investigate all cases of mistreatment "in a manner consistent with human rights principles".



Human Rights Watch said it was given full access to Asayish detention facilities and held several meetings with Kurdish officials. The organisation said the regional government had reviewed some cases and released hundreds of detainees, but it maintained that these efforts "have not translated into any discernible improvement for most detainees in Asayish detention facilities".



The organisation also criticised the Kurdistan National Assembly's human rights committee for not putting more pressure on the government to change its policies after committee members visited detention facilities.



The Kurdish government released 70 prisoners in June under a new amnesty law, but Goolnaz Aziz, a member of the human rights committee, said this did not apply to detainees held without charge.



The report could tarnish the image of Kurdistan’s government, which promotes the northern region as a progressive, safe "other” Iraq.



"We are part of the new political process in Iraq, and one of the major roles is to guarantee human rights at the prisons and detention centres. Such reported cases of abuse negatively impact the reputation and the credibility of the Kurdistan Regional Government," said Abdullah.



Rebeen Ahmed Hardi, a prominent writer and critic in Sulaimaniyah, said the international community may be surprised by the report because the KDP and PUK have "painted a beautiful picture of Iraqi Kurdistan".



"It's too optimistic to think that the Kurdish parties will change their dictatorship-like behaviour immediately. It has become a part of their mindset," he said.



Hardi said international pressure would probably not change human rights policies in the region.



"Pressure needs to be mounted on the parties within Kurdistan," he said. "Newspapers, intellectuals and the public should talk about those violations and other issues constantly until the parties respond."



IWPR correspondents Talar Nadir in Erbil, Rebaz Mahmood in Sulaimaniyah, and IWPR’s Kurdish editor Mariwan Hama-Saeed, currently in the United States, contributed to this report.