Kurdistan

Amedi is an ancient city in the mountains of Iraqi Kurdistan where people from all over Iraq come to enjoy the historic atmosphere, cool weather and beautiful mountains.  It is a tourist destination for people fleeing the heat during the summer months.

As villagers from Bagova led our CPT-Iraqi Kurdistan team down the road we were all keenly aware of the large Turkish outpost lined with razor wire and bunkers of sandbags looming just over the next hill to the left. We were also aware of the large mountain to the right, a suspected area of operations for the PKK. We scanned the hilltops for military movement, but it wasn’t until we stopped that we noticed the young boy tending his family’s sheep in the field between these two forces. He was in that same field three weeks earlier, unnoticed by fighter jets, as Turkish bombs rained down.

It was just twenty-three days after the New Year when the Turkish jet fighters bombed Matin Mountain in Deraluk and the villages around it in Iraqi Kurdistan. This airstrike marked the first incident of killing and targeting civilians in 2019.

When I was a child I dreamed of being a journalist. Of sharing stories with the world and uncovering the truth. It seemed so glamorous and important, changing the world with the mighty pen. I didn’t understand then what the glamour of bringing information to the public could really look like. I didn’t understand that many journalists are murdered, tortured, imprisoned, threatened and bullied because of their work.

We pray for the immediate release of CPT-Iraqi Kurdistan partner Sherwan Sherwani and other journalists and civil society activists whom the government has imprisoned in Duhok, Iraqi Kurdistan. We pray for strength to endure and freedom for all political prisoners in Iraqi Kurdistan and around the world. We also pray for their families and loved ones and for a day when freedom of expression is lifted up and cherished around the world.