Mohammed Amin, head of the farmers’ defense committee in Kirkuk’s northwestern Sargaran district, told Rudaw that he will be tried at a court in the Dibis district after “a complaint was filed by the Joint Operations Command regarding the events of February 17 this year.”
Amin was pulled from his tractor by his scarf during a confrontation with Iraqi soldiers on February 17. He later filed a complaint against the soldier involved, who was briefly detained and then released. The Iraqi defense ministry and the soldier responded by filing separate lawsuits against him, and he is now facing charges of “sabotage and rioting.”
“The soldiers tried to pull me down from my tractor and assault me forcefully, and now they want to punish me through court,” he lamented.
Two other Kurdish farmers are also set to face trial at the court after complaints were filed by Arab settlers, according to Amin.
In 1975, the Iraqi government declared several Kurdish villages in Kirkuk as prohibited oil zones and stripped their residents of land rights. By 1977, through Baath Supreme Revolutionary Court Decree No. 949, those lands were redistributed to Arab settlers.
After the fall of the Baath regime in 2003, Iraq adopted Article 140 of the constitution, aimed at reversing such demographic changes. However, implementation has stalled for years.
In January, Iraq’s parliament passed a land restitution law to return property confiscated from Kurds and Turkmen during the Baath era. The legislation covers approximately 300,000 dunams (around 750 square kilometers) in Kirkuk and other disputed areas, and follows a July 2023 Council of Ministers decision to revoke Baath-era decrees.
Ratified by the Iraqi presidency in February, the law was championed by Kurdish and Turkmen parties determined to reverse decades of demographic engineering by the Baath regime.
In March, the justice ministry announced the formation of a specialized committee to oversee the law’s implementation and suspended all land dealings in Kirkuk. Justice Minister Khalid Shwani then stated that enforcement would begin within two months. However, farmers say they are still waiting.
On Monday, two Kurdish farmers were rearrested in northwestern Kirkuk after Arab settlers accused them of illegally using their land.
