Prayers for Peacemakers 18 July 2018 Iraqi Kurdistan
Pray for the Kurdish villages that are under heavy bombings from the Turkish armed forces. Pray for the families that have lost their loved ones and those who have been displaced from their lands. Pray for an end to support of Turkish aggression against the Kurdish people in the region as well as western ambivalence. And especially keep the family of Dunya Rasheed in your prayers as they mourn her lost life.
On 30 June, nineteen-year-old Dunya Rasheed, a high school student from Halenia, Iraqi Kurdistan was killed as she harvested nuts with a group of family and villagers. The village lands of Halenia are in close proximity to a Turkish base that has been constructed within Iraqi Kurdistan. Turkish soldiers shot a rocket directly into a group of thirty villagers, mainly children, while they were harvesting. This rocket struck Dunya Rasheed, piercing her basket full of nuts before passing through her body and immediately ending her life.
Unfortunately, these bombings are now happening daily along the border with Turkey. Last year CPT counted fifty bombings in a four-month period. This month there were over fifty in just two weeks. Turkish soldiers have crossed far into Iraqi Kurdistan and are building bases as far as thirty km over the border claiming to be trying to rid the area of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The conflict between the Turkish government and the PKK has spanned over thirty years without solution.
“Over this time, the villagers are who have suffered the most. We need a political solution,” said the mayor of Dunya Rasheed’s village’s sub-district. This heavy increase in violence has been causing mass displacement of villages and loss of life. Please call your government representatives and urge them to withdraw support for the violent Turkish military invasion taking place within Iraqi Kurdistan and instead support a political solution to this long conflict. Also please demand that your government completely ends its support for weapons profiteering in the Middle East.
