Protest in Kirkuk Against Kurdish Rule

From AINA , with thanks to Nicolei, who comments: "It seems that the Arabs' cry for the "right to return" applies only to the Palestinian Arabs."

Demonstrators from both Turkmen and Arab Shiites ethnic groups turned out for a rally held in the northern oil-rich city of Kirkuk Friday night, to denounce the a transitional law and its article 58, which if implemented, would give the right of return to tens of thousands of Kurds to Kirkuk.
Local Sadr spokesman, Sheik Ahmed al-Lamy said, "Kirkuk must remain a city that belongs to all religions: Turkmen, Christian, Arabs and Kurdish, and that it must not be dominated by Kurdish rule alone."

Interim Foreign Minister Kurd Hoshyar al-Zebari said that the government was committed to resettling displaced Kurds, but also placed importance on the arbitration over property disputes that may arise between the Arabs and the Kurds.

2 Comments

Robert Crawford | March 23, 2005 7:47 AM

Kirkuk must remain a city that belongs to all religions: Turkmen, Christian, Arabs and Kurdish

What an odd way to put it. I only see one religion listed there; the other three are ethnicities, and if I'm not mistaken, share the same religion.

waterdragon52 | March 23, 2005 9:03 AM

Same religion, Robert, but probably different sects, with the Kurds largely Sunni and the Turkmen largely Sufi.

Noticeably absent from discussions about Iraq: 200,000+ Iraqi Jews and their descendants, most of whom fled Iraq between the 1930s and 1970s to the UK, US and Israel. Saddam made a big PR practice of installing Palestinians in the deserted Jewish homes. The last wave were fleeing Saddam and were helped to escape by the Kurds through the north of the country. Once they were the elite of Iraqi society, but they were systematically driven out by repressive laws passed after the Brits made Iraq into an entity.

When asked about whether Iraqi Jews would enjoy the right of return to Iraq, interim gov't. officials said they were not prepared to consider that possibility.

Nonetheless, a few Israelis and Americans of Iraqi Jewish descent, including lawyer and film maker Carol Basri, managed to vote in the Jan. 30 elections, raising the usual imaginably pathetic squawking from the Islamists.