• Thursday, 28 March 2024
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Struan Stevenson: Kurdistan is really a shining example of how democracy and good governance can reach to the economic growth, can provide jobs, can provide a good standard of living for cit

Struan Stevenson: Kurdistan is really  a shining example of how democracy and good governance can reach to the economic growth, can provide jobs, can provide a good standard of living for cit
Gulan: How do you see Maliki’s cutting of Kurdistan’s share of budget?

Stevenson: we in the European parliament are against this behavior. Maliki would now go ahead and spend the money from the budget without parliamentary approval, which is completely illegal, and also he said that he would sever the budget contributions to the KRG, to the Iraqi government employees in Kurdistan. That is also completely illegal. So in other respect he is acting though more like a dictator instead of democratically elected prime minister and this exacerbates the already dangerous situation in Iraq where is militaries are in open conflict with the tribal chiefs in Anbar province and in some of the other Sunni majority provinces. Moreover, he is waging genocidal war against his own people using weapons supplied by both America and Iran. As a European parliament, I have called on Secretary General, Banki Moon, to stop supplying--and tell the Americans to stop supplying-- weapons to Nuri Al Maliki because he is using these weapons controlling his own people. So the prospect of civil war in Iraq where thousands of people were estimated--nine thousand people-- died last year and already this year thousands of people have been killed in Iraq. Now, the situation is becoming desperate and the elections which is supposed to be taken on the thirty of April seems almost impossible for Sunnis and Anbar province that the very least to take part in these democratic elections because many thousands of them have to flee their homes in Faluja and Rumadi to seek safety. They will not be able to vote, and fearing that the war is waging between the Iraqi troops and the tribes in Anbar. It will be impossible for the normal voting to take place, but of course maybe this is what Nuri Al Maliki wants; maybe he would rather prefer that the Sunnis are not able to participate in democratic elections because his peers wished that he should be reelected and the Sunni participations are no favorable to his reelection.

Gulan: what will be the future of Iraq with a dictator ruling like Maliki and in which there are terrorist Emirrates?

Stevenson: of course this is becoming a very desperate situation. When Maliki was elected, as you remember, he actually lost, Da’ewa lost the elections at the last general election by two seats, but with the support of the Americans and the pressure from Iran he was able to put together a coalition that gave him authority and provided him with the second term in office as the prime minister and he has continued that role, but the Erbil agreement which was signed with the presence of the American ambassador and president Masoud Barzani allowed him and mandated in to hand over control of the key departments of defense, interior, and security and intelligence to representatives of the ministers of the opposition Alawia party, and he has never done that, he has retained control on all of the key ministries within his own prime minister in office giving them almost dictatorial powers and with his increasing sectarianism and authoritarian regime, Iraq has executed more people than any other country in the world apart from neighboring Iran and China. People are brutally arrested and accused of terrorism, tortured and very often raped both men and women in prisons and later confess on their brutal torture choked out on Iraqi national television …. Where they made confessions and the men taken away and executed and United Nations has described as almost a converabelt of executions. I described it recently as like taking cattle to the slaughters. This is completely unacceptable as it is a brutal abuse of human rights on a massive scale. This kind of dictatorial behavior by Maliki has now been exacerbated by his genocidal campaign against the Sunnis in Anbar province who he seems to have accused all of them of being terrorists and he is now killing men, women, and children. This situation is intolerable and in European parliament we cannot do anything rather than condemn it. Then for him, the life of the parliament is affectively over, a parliament which is democratically elected is trying to say that the parliament is trying to take away power from his cabinet. He is required to answer to the parliament, he and his cabinet are servants of the parliament, not masters of the parliament. So he is acting even more like a dictator than a reshaper of a reform.

Gulan: Why do you think, after knowing all these things, Iran and the United States support Maliki, and why is his coalition still holding together?

Stevenson: so the question now is why the coalition is still holding together. Muqtada al-Sadr has withdrawn and said he is no longer participating in politics inside Iraq. Maliki has fallen down with Hakim. It is time that the Sadrist, the Hakim factions return all their support for Maliki and bring down his government and then make an interim government representing all of the people of Iraq so they can hold safe, democratic elections and see the return of a democratic elected party that is non-sectarian, that is a party representing the wishes of all people in Iraq, not simply the Shiite, a party that respects human rights, women’s rights, freedom, democracy, and justice, and until that happens, I am calling for a boycott, an economic boycott, with sanctions against Nuri Al-Maliki for the vigorous campaign and spiral situation towards civil war that he is presiding over.

Gulan: what is your view about Barzani’s recent statements about having unexpected respond if Maliki continues to harass KRG?

Stevenson: the reasons why the British government and the Norwegian government and other governments have formally recognized the genocide of the Kurds as a genocide, and the reason why I have called the European parliament equally to recognize formally a Kurdish genocide is because this must be a lesson in history for all the democratic people in the world, even we should have in our school children to learn that this kind of genocide must never be allowed to happen again, but if we allow the emerging dictatorship party to continue on its major part, then if I was living in Kurdistan would be very afraid that history could repeat itself in the same country and through the same kind of despotic tyranny that happened before under Saddam because we have seen similar outrages against the human rights happening now with the lack of justice, with the sectarian government with a political control of genocidal campaign against the Sunni population. I would fear that the lessons of history from the Kurdish genocide have not been learned and that we could see the repeat of Anfal unless the world wakes up and America stops sending weapons to Nuri Al Maliki and we tell Tehran that they must stop interfering in internal affairs of Iraq and they must stop selling weapons to Maliki. So I would be very much afraid and again I say we need to see a democratic election with a return of non-sectarian party and all the people of Iraq including representations of the Kurds. You know, president Barzani is now regarded globally as the most reliable, the most democratic leader and politician from the whole of Iraq. This is becoming increasingly obvious.

Gulan: do you expect any big decision on the part of Kurdish people soon?

Stevenson: I know that now Kurdistan has built their new oil pipe line to Turkey, because of the crisis in Crimea, the EU has now very worried that gas supplies and energy supplies from Russia will be severed because all of their energy coming from the Ukraine. So we will be increasingly reliance on supplies of energy from Kurdistan through Turkey. That of course made Nuri Al-Maliki and his government in Baghdad very angry because they are already taking legal advance against Kurdistan because of having disputes over disputed oil revenues. So it is really very worrying for us here in Europe, we cannot afford to see energy supplies from Turkey stop constructing because of the problems that could arise inside Iraq, so we need to see these disputes resolved as well, and the whole situation is becoming so dangerous and unstable that I think we need to have president Barzani taking a leadership role on behalf of the whole of Iraq on the world situation.

I can tell you that the Sunday Times which is one of the main prestigious newspapers in Europe they have a travel supplement telling people in Europe for they can spend their holidays—last week it contains two page articles recommending holydays in Kurdistan. Now this is such a sea change for Kurdistan being recognized as a place of economic growth and such safety and such historical and cultural background that even the newspaper like the Sunday Times are recommending the European citizens to go there on Holidays. This demonstrates very clearly the start of deference between the well managed economically growing Kurdistan and the rest of Iraq which is plunging into potential civil war and a place very dangerous to go for any person even for business not even for holidays. Kurdistan really is a shining example of how democracy and good governance can reach to the economic growth, can provide jobs, can provide a good standard of living for citizens and I think the people of Kurdistan should be proud of that as the world should recognize and praise Kurdistan and provided with reassurances for the future safety from the problems that is beginning to explode in the rest of Iraq.
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