June 2010
On team during this
period were Peggy Gish, Marius van Hoogstraten, David Hovde, and Chihchun Yuan.
Documenting Deaths
and Damages from Cross Border Attacks
On 21 June, members of
the CPT Iraq team, along with a representative of Human Rights Watch, began a
two-day trip to the Choman District.
Two weeks earlier, Iran shelled the area around the tents of two Bedouin
families they visited there. Team
members saw artillery shells on the ground around the encampment. The team members visited Weza village
and talked with relatives of Basoz, the fourteen-year-old girl whom Iranian
artillery killed three weeks earlier while she was making tea. In Haji Omeran, team members
interviewed a family who said Iran shelled the area around their tents and
gardens for seven to eight days.
The team members talked with the mayor and heard of the subdistrict’s
efforts to respond to the needs of the 223 displaced families. Near the border crossing, a first
officer of a Kurdish base showed the team members from a distance a newly
constructed Iranian military base in Iraqi territory.
Advocating for IDPs
to Receive Governmental Assistance to Form Village
Team members
accompanied a leader from the Zharawa IDP camp to a meeting with the Director
of the Board of Investments in the Suleimaniya Governate on 23 June 2010. IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons)
from nine villages have collectively purchased the land the Zharawa camp is on
and want to build houses there.
The Director of the Board of Investments said that financial aid is
available for building new homes, but that the land needs to be registered
properly. He said the Governor or
Mayor is responsible for land registration. In a meeting later that morning with the Governor, the
Governor said that aid is only for new IDPs, not old. He said that IDPs cannot receive aid if they leave the camp
and rent houses in town. He also
said that the Mayor has authority to deal with this matter.
On 28 June, the team
visited the Zharawa IDP camp and met with some of the leaders. Families have begun to move back to the
camp from town, to see if they can receive aid, or because they can no longer
afford to rent in town. Only two
or three families have animals left to sell.
“We ask that the
bombing stop. Or, if that is not
possible, we want to live here.
But, we need help from the government or from any organization,”
people told the team members. At
the leaders’ request, CPT contacted a committee of NGO’s to find out what aid
might be available to them. They
also set up a meeting with the mayor for them. People in the camp are planning peaceful actions they can
take to advocate for themselves while they wait to see if the government will
respond.
Team Publications
Yuan completed a video
of the 16 June 2010 concert for bombing victims (See previous update.) The link to the video is https://www.cpt.org/work/iraq/videos.
