Terrorist groups based over the border in Iraq have incited peaceful protesters and have 'nefarious terrorist goals,' Iran's delegation to the UN claimed in a letter to the organization's Security Council. DW's CathrinSchaer asks: 'What's the truth?'
Iran recently bombed sites in northern Iraq, saying "terrorists" there were behind Iran's ongoing anti-government protests. What's the truth?Terrorist groups based over the border in Iraq have incited peaceful protesters and have"nefarious terrorist goals," Iran's delegation to the United Nations wrote in a dramatic letter to the UN Security Council in mid-October.
"There are probably some people among the protestors that sympathize with political parties, but there is no protest leadership that's affiliated with any of them," Faraz Firouzi, a human rights lawyer and spokesperson for Norway-based Kurdish-run group the Hengaw Organization for Human Rights, told DW."It's mostly the younger generation —— who have been the leaders out on the streets.
According to Hengaw, the security crackdown on protesters has been particularly harsh in Iran's Kurdish-dominated areas, where 62 protesters have been killed and 4,000 people injured to date.The Kurdish people, estimated to number around 30 million altogether, are one of the largest ethnic groups in the world without their own country.
Reports from the region suggest a greater military presence than usual at the border crossings into Iraqi Kurdistan and anybody who isn't traveling for work is treated with suspicion. If more dissidents are crossing into Iraqi Kurdistan, they are probably doing so via long-established, illicit paths between the two countries' long, porous and mountainous border.
These parties also have military wings, some of which have undertaken missions against the Iranian government on the Iranian side of the border. One of the more militant groups, the Kurdistan Free Life Party, or PJAK, reportedly has around 3,000 fighters based in the mountains on the Iraqi side of the border.Image: Shwan Nawzad/AFP/Getty Images
Most of them don't even want to stay in Iraq, Firouzi noted. Life in Iraqi Kurdistan is often hard for Iranian Kurds, who have difficulty obtaining long-lasting official residency, receiving benefits or finding work. Security is also a problem: There are multiple reports of Iranian dissidents being assassinated, or kidnapped and taken back over the border.
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