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Controversy renewed over fate of communist
party in Iraqi Kurdistan
8.2.2011
By Hemin Baban
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February 8, 2011
ERBIL-Hewlęr,
Kurdistan region 'Iraq', — A senior leader of the
Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) party has accused
Nawshirwan Mustafa, head of the Gorran opposition
movement, of being responsible for banning the
Kurdistan Communist Workers’ Party (KCWP) almost ten
years ago, while Mustafa was a senior member in the
PUK.
But, a Gorran spokesman denies the allegations,
saying the decision to ban the KCWP was taken by
PUK’s Political Bureau, and was not the personal
decision of Gorran’s current chief.
The allegations by Mulla Bakhtyar, head of the PUK’s
Political Bureau, came during a recent interview
with Kurdish daily newspaper Hawler. In response to
a question regarding punishment for political views,
Bakhtyar referred to Mustafa’s past Marxist-Leninist
ideological views, saying that “the only political
organization outlawed in Kurdistan was the KCWP,
which was banned by Nawshirwan Mustafa, not the PUK
or the Kurdistan Democratic Party [KDP].”
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File photo. |
The PUK, led by Iraqi
President Jalal Talabani, and the KDP, headed by the
semiautonomous Iraqi Kurdistan region’s President
Massoud Barzani, are Kurdistan’s two ruling parties.
In a statement by the KCWP, the group confirmed
Bakhtyar’s allegations, saying Mustafa had banned
their party when he was PUK deputy secretary
general.
In 2006, Mustafa, along with several other senior
officials, split from the PUK and later formed his
Gorran (meaning “Change” in Kurdish) movement for
the Kurdish parliamentary elections in 2009.
His party currently has 25 lawmakers in the 111-seat
Kurdistan parliament.
The KCWP’s offices in Sulaimani were raided in July
2000 by PUK armed forces, leading to the execution
of five of the group’s cadres.
“Now, 10 years after those events, Nawshirwan
Mustafa is no longer part of the PUK, nor the
KDP-PUK government, but the KCWP still remains an
outlawed party,” read the KCWP statement. “The PUK
leadership is still not ready to apologize for those
crimes [against the KCWP].”
Speaking to Rudaw, a senior KCWP official said his
party had problems with the PUK, claiming that
Bakhtyar had said in the past that the PUK had
“taught the KCWP a lesson.”
“If what Mulla Bakhtyar says is true, why has the
PUK not issued a statement saying what was done [to
the KCWP] was Mustafa’s doing, since he is no longer
part of the PUK,” said Nawzad Baban, a member of
KCWP’s Political Bureau. “Mulla Bakhtyar’s words are
not true.”
Baban added that, despite completing the legal
procedures to obtain a license to operate in
Kurdistan, his party had still not been granted the
license.
“The PUK and KDP do not want to give us a license,
even though the [Kurdistan] Interior Ministry has
approved it,” he said. “Two years after we applied
for the license, our application has been rejected
by the Council of Ministers,www.ekurd.netunder
the pretext that some of our party’s aims contradict
the Iraqi Constitution.”
Responding to the allegations about Gorran’s leader,
the group’s spokesman, Mohammed Tofiq, said the KCWP
was banned by the PUK’s Political Bureau, and not by
Mustafa.
Tofiq added that it was expected that Bakhtyar would
make such allegations.
“We at Gorran support licenses being granted to all
political parties, including the KCWP,” said Tofiq.
Copyright, respective
author or news agency, rudaw.net
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