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KT News and Comment:
Kamal Said Kadir – and following the assault (Pic – NRT TV)
Independent presidential candidate Kamal Said Kadir was assaulted in Erbil yesterday by security forces attached to the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). This happened when he tried to hold a public rally in protest against the two-year extension to Masud Barzani’s presidential term.
Kamal, who went to hospital following the attack, has been a teacher at the University of Erbil Law School and he was arrested in 2005 by the KDP for criticising the Barzani family and only released following international pressure.
Kamal Said Kadir was planning to stand in the presidential elections that were due to take place this year but have now been postponed, enabling Barzani to stay on in power.
The NRT TV photo shows police officials standing around and doing nothing to help Kamal. The incident is reminiscent of Mussolini’s Italy, where fascist thugs would go around beating up opponents, humiliating them, forcing them to drink castor oil and so on. This is not the first time, of course, that opponents of the Barzani family have been attacked, and even murdered, in Erbil when they have tried to exercise their right to free speech.
This assault is a small sign of the brutality of the Erbil authorities and no doubt it is meant to intimidate other opponents of the Barzanis.
Copyright © 2013 Kurdistantribune.com
This the type of democracy and modernization the KDP and their followers are setting up in Erbil. An attack on this man is equal to an attack on all individuals that want to express their anger on the Barzani family.
I agree. Time has come to realise that this corrupt family is the biggest enemy of us, the Kurds. What is going on in occupied Hawler is no different to what went on in Egypt and Libya and to what is going on in Damascus today.
Where is the opposition? All the eyes and hopes of the youth on the opposition and they have let everyone down.aybe after all we deserve what we have because the alternative is as incompetent.