Can the law protect journalists from unknown gunmen?

By Mohammed Hussein:

On April 26, 2013, about 60 lawyers and journalists gathered to create a Net of Volunteer Lawyers to advocate journalism in Kurdistan and the rest of Iraq. This Net has been formed to assist journalists who plan to go to court to complain against people who attacked them, said Rahman Gharib, general coordinator of the Metro Center, a nonprofit NGO advocating journalists’ rights.

“The network of lawyers could be effective when journalists want to go to courts to advocate their abused rights.” Gharib said. He added that there are also cases when journalists have recourse to the courts to protect their rights, but they haven’t got anything from their attempts.

But Gharib was realistic: “The problem is not with the law but with the non-implementing of the law.”

The main obstacle to freedom of speech is the rulers’ mentality; “We have a ruling elite who do not believe in freedom of speech, and they look at criticizing as defamation,” he said, adding that there should be more space for freedom of speech if there is a need to fight corruption and have free media.

About what the law and the judiciary system can do to protect journalists, a prominent Kurdish journalist, Asos Hardi, who is the director of the Awene Press and Publishing Company, said: “Whenever the KRG’s (Kurdistan Regional Government’s) rulers want to do anything against journalists or a free media they just do it, and all laws and governmental institutions can be used as they want.”

Hardi explained how laws like the press law, the law of demonstration, and laws related to some political rights were routinely abused by the KRG’s officials during the February 17 2011 protests in Sulaimanyah province.

Likewise, an Asaysh officer, who talked on condition of anonymity, said: “What I care about is not journalists’ rights or even human rights in general; I just do what my officials want me to do.”

This attitude is not an uncommon one although rarely is it publicly stated.

Azad Osman does not doubt the link between his more critical coverage of the 2011 protests and the midnight attack on the Radio Dang station. On March 6, 2011 a group of unidentified gunmen with formal Asaysh uniform came and took some of its equipment and destroyed the rest, said the general manager of the station.

After the attack

The radio is located in the center of Kalar market, south of Sulaimani province, where it was protected by special guards as usual. After the attack, the KRG compensated the radio, but it has not identified the attackers even though more than two years have passed and this case is under investigation in the Garmyan court.

“Judicial institutions have not done enough for my radio’s case, so I don’t have any hope to find the attackers because they belong to the KRG’s security forces and Peshmarga,” Osman said.

This incident is one of several that journalists face, which they see as attempts to intimidate and silence them.

Laws in Kurdistan have been used effectively to punish journalists who report issues showing the rulers in a bad light and trying to expose  “corrupt practices”. However, the laws do not protect them when they face unknown gunmen’s attacks. Sometimes governmental institutions even use laws to threaten journalists in order to force them not to report on issues allegedly related to corruption, said Sherwan Sherwani, the editor-in-chief of monthly magazine Bashur.

He explained how, in the first issue of Bashur, he had published news based on a formal document about alleged corruption, involving the waste of 206 million Iraqi Dinars in the municipality of Akre, a district in Dhok province in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. In May 2011, 170 days later, police arrested him because of this report, without a warrant, and so they detained him for two days until he was freed on bail of 5 million dinars.

He said that the court finally punished him, not for the content of his report on the waste of 206 million Iraqi Dinars, but for a photo of Akre’s municipal authority that was published with the report.

The day after he was freed, police arrested him again due to a complaint by Nihad Barzani, one of the brothers of  the KRG president, Masud Barzani.

His second arrest was for an interview, in the ninth issue of Bashur, with a local businessman who had accused Nihad of extorting 32 million US dollars from him, which was considered as defamation by Nihad Barzani.

This time Sherwani was arrested in Erbil, seven kilometers away from Pirmam, where Barzani’s family lives and Sherwan was supposed to be tried; but he was sent to Dhok’s prison and then brought back to Hewler’s prison and finally to Pirmam’s prison. He added:  “I saw four different jails while passing these seven kilometers, so all these routine procedures were a plot to detain me in prison as much as possible”, until he was freed on bail of one million Iraqi dinars. This is why he considered it such a political and illegal punishment.

Not just Sherwini himself, even Reporters Without Borders has stated, in a report on its website on 27 April 2012: “Sherwani’s detention was arbitrary and illegal under the Law of Journalism in Kurdistan (Law No. 35).”

The Law of Journalism in Kurdistan (Law No. 35) was made by the KRG parliament and signed by Kurdistan President Masud Barzani in 2008. According to this law, journalists must not be arrested under any circumstances, and no legal procedures shall be taken against the journalist if 90 days have passed since the date of publication. But Sherwani’s case shows how the law could not be effective in preventing governmental forces from abusing journalists’ rights.

Azad Ahmad Ameen, the head of the Kurdistan Journalism syndicate, a non-governmental organization that tends to support the KRG’s decisions, mentioned the law 35 – which changed journalists’ punishments to paying a financial fine – as such a good achievement.

“There is a proper judiciary system and laws in Kurdistan, although sometimes political decisions badly affect the situation,” Ahmad added. He also criticized journalists for “not having basic knowledge about laws.”

But, argued Gharib, even with these laws the KRG’s courts can punish journalists according to old Iraqi  laws, which means they can also use old laws to put journalists in prison and punish them harder.

Azad Ahmad’s evaluation of the whole problem was totally different to that of Dr. Kamal Said Qadir, the Kurdish writer and legal expert. Said Qadr was arrested by Asaish on Oct 26, 2005 because of his critical articles about the KDP (Kurdistan Democratic Party) and KRG President Massoud Barzani.

“After a trial that lasted 15 minutes I was sentenced to 30 years in prison, but when international pressure started to support me and the US intervened in my case, I was freed,” he said.  “What I saw was really farce not trial.”

There is no independent court in Kurdistan while all the judges are appointed by the ruling parties – and especially the KRG’s president – so that, for these judges, implementing the ruling parties’ orders is more important than the laws, he added.

Radio Dang is still working and depends on advertisements to finance itself and it is satisfied with its limited income. The Radio Dang manager is convinced that the attackers of the station were employed by the government. He has a witness who saw the attackers and said they were wearing soldiers’ uniforms, the same that KRG forces have. Moreover, on the same night there were more than 1,000 police, Asaysh and Peshmarga gunmen deployed in Kalar market because of the protests of February 17. “That is why I’m sure the attackers belong to these governmental forces,” said Osman.

Back to Sherwani, who gave another example of the use of governmental foundations to abuse journalists’ rights. He said that, after Nihad Barzani’s complaint and without informing him, the court restricted him from travelling. “In March 2013, when I wanted to travel to Iran, I was told that I can’t travel.” Sherwani said.

After he was released the court did not tell airports and checkpoints that he was free and that the “travel ban” which was put on him should be ended. “I’m still concerned about this issue whenever I go somewhere outside of the KRG.” Sherwani said.

The most critical example of this problematic relationship between independent journalists and the law in Kurdistan is that of Sardasht Osman , a 23 year old freelance journalist who was kidnapped in Erbil, the capital of Kurdistan, on May 4, 2010 and whose body was found two days later in the city of Mosul. Osman wrote a satiric article, entitled “I will marry Barzani’s daughter”, which explained the privileges that might be offered to anyone who belongs to the KRG president’s family, and he also wrote some articles that criticized corruption in Kurdistan.

On September 15, 2010, an investigative committee formed by the KRG issued a report claiming that Osman had been killed by Hisham Mahmud, a member of Ansar al-Islam, an extremist group, for not carrying out work that he had promised to do for them.

But the report did not show any evidence for this assertion, and the CPJ (Committee to Protect Jornalists) and some local NGOs said that the report lacked credibility. And on February 13, 2013, in Erbil criminal court, Hisham denied everything that had been published in the report about him being the killer of Sardasht Osman. Finally, the “Irbil court decided to free him in his last trial.” according to Awene, a local Kurdish independent weekly newspaper.

The only case that was investigated properly and where the gunmen were found is Asos Hardi’s case. Hardi was attacked in the early evening of August 29, 2011, by gunmen who were bodyguards of a PUK official.

Explaining how his case was investigated, Asos said that the local situation and political context had an essential role; especially, the orders for reform that president Barzani had issued a few days before the attack, which included preventing arbitrary attacks on journalists and activists. Besides this, the international and local reactions to the attack created a situation in which was difficult for the “unknown gunmen” to disappear. All these factors forced KRG officials to let the court do its work.

The impact that unknown gunmen make on Kurdish media morale is not the same for all victims. For Radio Dang’s staff it was really discouraging, said Azad Osman. Some of their volunteer journalists could not continue working there because of the threat they felt; some were forced by their families to leave the radio.

But Sherwani said these problems do not affect his duty, and added: “I will continue as I have started.”

Several Asaish officials and Ministry of Interior officials, who were contacted for this report, refused to be interview.

This article was produced for one of the new journalism courses offered by the English department at the American University of Iraq-Sulaimanya. 

Mohammed Hussein lives in Sulaymanyah where he is an editor for Awenene.com and an international study student at the American University of Iraq-Sulaymanyah . He has also worked as a translator and translated three books into Kurdish.

muhe79@yahoo.com