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Journalists and activists who were convicted after criticising the Kurdistan Regional Government are facing grave danger as they continue their months-long hunger strike to protest their unlawful detention, a civil society group told Medya News.
Some 60 prisoners from Badinan, an area in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq’s Duhok Governorate, have been on hunger strike since mid-July demanding their basic right to a conditional release after serving the necessary period of their prison sentences.
A representative from the Community Peacemaker Teams (CPT), the organisation which has been monitoring the prisoners, said the authorities had cut all means of contact with one hunger striker, while another had faced severe health difficulties and possible torture.
“One of the Badinan prisoners, Guhdar Zebari, has been punished by officials for speaking to people outside the prison about the hunger strike and their conditions,” CPT told Medya News.
“Zebari has since disappeared. He was initially separated from the other Badinan prisoners and moved into a separate cell with people he didn’t know and was not allowed to use the phone or speak to people in the prison,” said CPT.
It has been 11 days since Zebari’s family and lawyers have heard from him, and his current location remains unknown, CPT said.
The organisation added that another prisoner sentenced under the same laws as the Badinan prisoners, Ramazan Ali, had been removed from the prison temporarily after becoming paralysed as a result of the hunger strike.
“We are told that he has been tortured by authorities. Before he disappeared, Zebari recorded the cries of Ali when he was returned to prison,” the CPT said, adding that the recording had been published on social media.
A hunger strike is an act of last resort used by people who have been deprived of all other agency. It is an act that prisoners are being forced to resort to with alarming frequency in Iraq, where the Kurdistan Regional Government has attracted rising public protests over corruption and repressive activities, and is responding by cracking down hard on dissenters.
The Badinan prisoners include journalists and civil rights activists who were convicted in a widely criticised trial in February 2021 for “espionage and conspiracy to endanger national security”.
The only evidence presented was their work as journalists and that they had spoken to foreign consulates about human rights. Yet they were publicly condemned before the beginning of the trial by Masrour Barzani, the Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Region.
After witnessing several court sessions involving Badinan prisoners, the CPT wrote that they were “confident that if given a fair trial, all of the prisoners would be immediately released. The lack of evidence is astounding.” Prisoners have been forced to sign testimonies under torture that they had not even read and have been denied visits from their lawyers.
The July 2022 hunger strike is the Badinan prisoners’ second, after also carrying out a mass hunger strike last year. The final catalyst for the ongoing action was the authorities’ refusal to let them out of prison on conditional release after they had served two thirds of their sentences, as is not only expected practice but had also been specifically agreed.
