IV. Intimidation by Kurdish authorities

During the arabization and Anfalcampaigns, minority groups sufferedalongside the Kurds and were similarly forced to “correct” their nationality to identify asArabs or risk expulsion from their home communities. Today, minority members speak of their fear of being forcibly assimilated once again, thistime by the Kurds. Many Yazidis, fearful from continued attacks by Sunni Arab extremists, have agreed to support KRG annexation, under the assumption that they will be better protected, while those who remain recalcitrant are dealt with harshly.

The root of the problem is the near-universal perception among Kurdish leaders that minority groups are, in fact, Kurds. None of the senior Kurdish leaders whom Human Rights Watch spoke with acknowledged that either the Yazidis or Shabaks were a distinct ethnic minority group or entitled to be treated as such. They saw the Yazidis as “original Kurds” and referred to Shabaks simply as “Shabak Kurds.”

“Yazidis and Shabaks are Kurds; 90 percent of them agree with this,” Khasro Goran, Nineveh’s former deputy governor, told Human Rights Watch.[137] “Yazidis are the real Kurds because they never converted to Islam, but we did. They are the original Kurds. The only important issue for every nation is language—the only language they speak is Kurdish.”

Goran insisted that the language of the Shabaks is Kurdish as well. “I know why [the Shabak] are telling you they are not Kurds—they are under a lot of pressure since they live so close to Mosul. If they say they are Kurds, then they are attacked.”

The Kurdish constitution passed by the KRG on June 24, 2009, explicitly lists Kurds, Turkmens, Arabs, Chaldeans, Assyrians, Ashourians, and Armenians as citizens of the Kurdistan regions. Notably absent from the list as distinct ethnic groups are the Yazidis and Shabaks.[138]

Intimidation through Violence

Kurdish authorities have sometimes dealt harshly with Yazidi and Shabak members who resist attempts to impose on them a Kurdish identity. In one incident, Kurdish intelligence officers arrested two Yazidi activists, Khalil Rashu Alias and Wageed Mendo Hamoo, in May 2007. The two told Human Rights Watch that Kurdish authorities imprisoned the pair for almost six months and tortured them for resisting what they called the Kurdish colonization of their territory in Sinjar.[139]

According to Hamoo, on May 1, 2007 at 4:30 a.m., Kurdish intelligence officers broke down the door to his home in Sinjar and stormed in. They told him that the intelligence unit’s central command had ordered his detention without further explanation. The officers arrested Hamoo, an active member of the Yazidi Movement for Progress and Reform (YMPR) who had been arrested twice before for political activities, and placed his wife and children in the corner of a room while they searched his house.[140] The officers then proceeded to the house of Alias, head of the YMPR’s central committee, and arrested him as well.

At a military camp in Sinjar, the intelligence officers interrogated the two separately. During these interrogation sessions their captors gave Alias and Hamoo two options: accept that they were Kurds and denounce the YMPR, or confess that they were “terrorists.” The pair described how their guards bound them hand and foot and hooded them, and took turns interrogating and beating them separately with fists, shoes, shovels, and cables for a period of about five hours. As a result of the ordeal, for more than a month Alias was unable to stand unassisted. He said his arms turned black from the bruising he sustained. Alias also said his captors initially refused to allow any treatment for his diabetic condition.

Four days after detaining them, Kurdish officials transferred the pair to a military camp, Kesik, between Mosul and Sinjar. After 17 days, Kurdish officials separately interrogated the two again with their hands tied and eyes blindfolded. His Kurdish interrogator asked Hamoo, “What is your language?” When Hamoo replied, “Yazidi,” the interrogating officer responded, “No, Yazidis have no language! Yazidis speak Kurdish.” Hamoo said he replied, “Even if you kill me a hundred times I won’t say that I’m Kurdish.” The Kurdish officer told the guards to take him out to “teach him some manners.” Outside the guards placed what felt like a piece of metal, maybe a knife, at the back of his neck. They ordered him to say a phrase prohibited by the Yazidi religion. If he failed to comply, he was told, “We’re going to behead you just like the terrorists do with your people.” When he refused, numerous guards severely beat him, he said. They took him back to his cell and told him, “If you want to live you have to confess to either being Kurdish or a terrorist.” When he refused both, the beatings resumed; Hamoo said he lost count of how many officers beat and kicked him, breaking one of his ribs. At 4 a.m. the beating stopped and he was thrown back into his cell.

Alias told Human Rights Watch that in another cell four Kurdish officers beat and interrogated him, accusing him of being a “terrorist” responsible for attacks against police as well as Iraqi and US forces. The interrogating officer told him that if he quit the Yazidi reform movement and denounced its principles and agenda, he would be released. After he refused, he said, they laid him on the floor and beat him relentlessly on the soles of his feet and his stomach, shoulders, and chest.

On May 18, Kurdish authorities transferred the two back to the military camp in Sinjar, from where they were moved again the next day to the Lefoog al-Bogag prison. After an Iraqi judge reviewed the case, he ordered them released, but the two remained in various prisons until October 28, 2007. There has been no investigation of their alleged torture.

The details of the case are similar to the detention and beating of Murad Kashtu al Asi, whom Kurdish forces arrested three times and accused of being a terrorist and a member of a Sunni Arab political party, as reported in the press. During the last detention in November 2008, Kurdish forces hit him in the face with the butts of their guns and told him, “If you leave alive this time, then work with us or we will kill you.” [141]

The UN has reported how on December 13, 2008, a group of asayesh disguised as police raided the house of Hussein Majeed, a Shabak, in Bartella and took him to al-Kalak sub-district in Kurdistan where they tortured him. After he managed to escape, he was threatened with death if he reported the incident.[142]

Intimidation through Threats and Detentions

KRG authorities have relied on intimidation, threats, and arbitrary arrests and detentions, more than actual violence, in their efforts to secure support of minority communities for their agenda regarding the disputed territories. A flyer distributed in Sinjar illustrates the coercion that minorities have faced in Nineveh’s disputed territories: “Shengal [Sinjar] is a cemetery for those who want it to be dismembered from Kurdistan.”[143]

In December 2008, peshmerga reportedly arrested more than 50 Yazidis and prevented them from participating in peaceful political activities, according to the United Nation’s human rights office in Baghdad.[144] In 2008 the UN also received reports alleging verbal abuse and harassment of Shabaks by peshmerga forces for their presumed lack of loyalty to Kurdistan and for insulting Kurdish leadership. A representative of the Chaldo-Assyrian community described the Kurdish campaign to Human Rights Watch as “the overarching, omnipresent reach of a highly effective and authoritarian regime that has much of the population under control through fear.” [145]

Intimidation ahead of the 2009 Provincial Elections

According to the UN, allegations of Kurdish intimidation of minorities in the Nineveh Plains increased toward the end of 2008 as provincial elections approached. The electoral support of minority communities was crucial to Kurdish hopes of winning the provincial elections and thereby boosting their territorial claims in Nineveh. The UN has reported that it received reports of death threats being used to warn people off voting in favor of Qusay Abbas, the Shabak Democratic Party candidate who was running against the KDP[146] (for threats and violence directed at Abbas himself, see chapter III). A Shabak construction worker told Human Rights Watch that a KDP official and two armed men wearing peshmerga uniforms detained him in Qarataba, Bashiqa district on December 23, 2008, on suspicion of knocking down Kurdish flags and a poster of KRG President Barzani during a soccer match.[147] He said the KDP official told him, “You, the Shabaks, are Kurds, if you don’t elect our list, we’re going to kill you inside your villages.” They drove him to an unpaved side road and pointed to a deserted area, and the KDP official said, “We can kill you right now and nobody would ever know.”

In Qaraqosh, Human Rights Watch spoke with members of an Assyrian militia financed by the KRG. They said that representatives from the Kurdish list told them they would lose their jobs and face eviction from their subsidized housing complex if they did not vote for the Kurdish alliance.[148] Kurdish officials also instructed them to inform other displaced Christians living in the complex that they would also face eviction if they did not vote for the Kurdish list.

Other minority members complained of restrictions on freedom of movement leading up to the January 2009 provincial elections: non-Kurdish list candidates were not allowed to move freely, and minority communities were prevented from attending campaign rallies.[149] For example, Khudeda Khalef Edoo, a YMPR candidate for the 2009 provincial election from Sinjar, won the Yazidi quota seat on the council even though he faced much better financed opponents bankrolled by the Kurdish list. Using threats of imprisonment, Kurdish authorities prevented him from campaigning in many areas, including Sheikhan and Bashiqa. The authorities also threatened his staff, he said.[150]

While the Iraqi High Electoral Commission received a number of complaints of election irregularities—including allegations from Yazidi and Christian parliamentarians that Kurdish parties tried to intimidate minorities in Nineveh from attending campaign rallies or voting for candidates from the non-Kurdish lists—it did not find these complaints sufficient to call into question the result for the Kurdish List.[151]