Multiple protesting students have over the past few days taken to Twitter and other social media platforms to comment on Saturday’s meeting held by Masrour Barzani with a number of students who, according to the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) Department of Media and Information, were representatives of 14 different public universities across the Region.
“I have felt your uncertainty about your future. I have heard your calls for more jobs and fairness in the economy. Though reform takes time, I’m confident that with your help better days are ahead,” Barzani captioned a video of the meeting he tweeted on Sunday.
Co-chair of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) Bafel Talabani also met with a number of students on Sunday. The protracted meeting lasted several hours behind closed doors, although some of the faces were familiar, having also sat down with the prime minister a day earlier.
“We sat down. I wanted to know what the problems of these students are. We understood each other very well,” Talabani told reporters following the meeting.
In a leaked sound-recording from the meeting with Talabani, a passionate student called on him claiming he already knew their problems.
"All these years we have been waiting for things to get fixed, and it has not been fixed," the student said, adding that "reform should be done through you [ruling parties], can you give us hope that changes will be made, so if it does not get fixed, will you give up power?"
The meetings came in response to wide student protests in different areas of the Kurdistan Region demanding restoration of a living allowance. The government used to pay a monthly stipend of 40,000 to 100,000 dinars ($27 - $67) per student. It was one of the expenses the government cut when it introduced austerity measures like salary cuts to cope with the financial crisis caused by the war with the Islamic State (ISIS), low oil prices, and budget disputes with Baghdad. Without the funds, some students have problems buying food or paying for accommodation.
The protests erupted as the KRG faced increased international scrutiny as growing numbers of Iraqi Kurds have been seen attempting to illegally migrate to Europe in recent weeks, with the tragic deaths of at least 27 people, many of whom were from the Kurdistan Region, last Wednesday.
Estimates on the number of people who have left the Kurdistan Region so far this year in an attempt to reach Europe vary, but a Polish politician told Rudaw last month that he had evidence to suggest that “probably 70,000” migrants were on the Belarus border, attempting to enter Poland.
Protesting students not invited to meetings
Following their conversations, Barzani and Talabani both claimed to understand the students’ grievances. For the students who were faced with teargas and water cannons just a week earlier, however, this was both insulting and false. Not only do they not believe that officials understand their concerns, they do not even consider the participating students to be their representatives.
Shano Bakir, who for the past week has been one of the loudest student voices on Twitter, claims that people who had actually attended the protests were not invited to the meetings.
“We were not told about the meeting, we only found out when it began,” Bakir, who was part of the protests in Sulaimani, told Rudaw English on Saturday. “They pick students who are affiliated to parties, and student representatives in the university have in the first place been chosen as representatives because they are supporters of the ruling parties.”
During the meeting with Barzani, a student from Zakho stood up and, before asking the prime minister his question, identified himself as a member of the Kurdistan Students’ Union.
The union is a body of student representatives, whose main task is to represent students in university affairs and negotiate for better academic rights.
Bakir and other protesting students believe that members of the union are party affiliated, and the only way to become part of the union is through pledging allegiance to one of the ruling parties.
According to Bakir, members of the students’ union are “privileged”. They get elected by parties “without any vote from students, and that gives them the power to get away with many things.”
“At times, even professors are intimidated by them as they cannot fail them, even if they do not attend classes or exams,” she said.
A close aide from Talabani’s press office, who preferred to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the matter, told Rudaw English on Tuesday that the students were protestors, and not party affiliates.
A student who attended Talabani’s meeting also denied that the participants were party affiliated.
“The people who participated were frontline protestors and organizers, they were not party affiliates,” Zana Ali, who is also a student representative in the Sulaimani university council, told Rudaw English on Tuesday. “The students were picked randomly and based on their activity in the protests rather than political affiliation.”
Rudaw English spoke to the deputy head of the Kurdistan Region parliament’s committee for Education, Higher Education, and Scientific Research, and he said that they are in Sulaimani investigating the events of last week and will later submit a report to parliament.
“We are now in Sulaimani investigating the events, we have also asked to see a group of students who we will meet in a bit,” Muslim Abdullah said on Monday.
In response to questions over the selection of the students they were to meet with, Abdullah said that they were not aware of the process.
“Before we came, we spoke to the head of the University of Sulaimani and said we want to also speak to the students and talk about the events of the previous days, we do not know who they are, we do not know who picks them,” Abdullah said.
Rudaw English reached out to the head of the university, but he was not immediately available for comment.
Protestors reject party affiliation
Other students are concerned that the participants of these meetings are unaware of the protestors’ grievances and demands as they have not participated in the demonstrations in the first place.
“There are students that have been tear gassed and have been hurt, and yet they were not the ones invited to meet with the officials, instead they invited people who we have not even seen in the protests,” Karo Kawa told Rudaw English on Monday.
“The students we see there are all representatives picked by the political parties, they were invited to meet with these officials and we did not even know about it until the meetings were underway,” he added.
Students had previously told Rudaw English that the protests were spontaneous and, despite attempts by parties to control the protests, the protestors have continuously refused to affiliate parties with themselves.
Shaswar Abdulwahid, the head of New Generation, an opposition political party that performed well in Iraq’s October parliamentary election, tried to join the protesters, but footage on social media showed students telling him to leave and not politicise the protests.
“They do not represent us at all, we have said this before, no single student represents everyone and we have not officially picked someone to represent us and deliver our message,” Bakir said.
Leaders draw different conclusions from meetings
In their meetings with students, both Talabani and Barzani drew different conclusions.
Barzani told the students that in a country where education is free, it was not possible to give stipends directly to them, and he called on students to cooperate with the government in facing education issues.
Talabani, on the other hand, called on the government to do better.
“I was honestly expecting the government to look out for them better. These are our sons and daughters. Unfortunately they couldn’t meet their demands enough. We will find a mechanism so that the party can meet their demands more,” he said.
Despite the remarks from both leaders, the students are insistent on their demands and deem three demands as their priority.
“Our main three demands are stipends, for those security forces who assaulted students to be arrested and tried in court, and for parties to not interfere in universities,” Bakir said, adding that they will not stop demonstrating unless their demands are met.
The protests in Sulaimani province took a violent turn with security forces using tear gas and flash-bangs, both labeled as being made by the Turkish company Aksav, pictures sent to Rudaw English show, as well as water cannons, rubber bullets, and electric batons.
Hundreds arrested
According to the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), between November 21 and 26, in Sulaimani province alone, 603 protestors were arrested by security forces.
“This includes students, teachers, government employees, activists, and normal people, however most have been released and no student remains in detention right now,” CPT’s Kamaran Osman told Rudaw English on Monday.
Osman added that day-to-day arrests of activists continued in the province, with another activist who had participated in the protests arrested on Sunday.
This is not the first time Sulaimani students have protested. In March, grade 12 students gathered in front of the education directorate calling for education reforms. Security forces fired live ammunition into the air to disperse the demonstrators.
Last December, teachers and other civil servants protested to demand the full payment of their salaries that had been slashed under austerity measures. They had not been paid in full or on time for most of the year.
Large protests took place in numerous towns in Halabja and Sulaimani provinces. Eight civilians and two Peshmerga were killed.
In June, Amnesty International published a public statement on what they called the “ongoing crackdown of protests by way of arbitrary arrests and harassment” in the Kurdistan Region.
The statement concluded that, “the KRG authorities have an obligation to uphold basic human rights of freedom of expression, assembly and press freedom,” and called on authorities in the Kurdistan Region to “put an end to their ongoing crackdown of protests by way of arbitrary arrests and harassment.”
Deputy Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Region Qubad Talabani criticized his government’s approach at getting closer to students on Sunday, saying that instead of listening to their demands, they actively made them “angrier”.
“Thousands of students have taken to the streets of Kurdistan against their government, and they have demands. Us, the government, instead of getting closer to them, and understanding them, and trying to calm them down, we bring up an old video and accuse students of disrespecting the sacred flag of Kurdistan. Without moving a muscle and looking for the truth of this video, we made students angrier at us,” he said while referring to an almost two-year old video of cars driving over a Kurdistan flag that went viral during the protests, stirring up controversy.
The KRG and several members of the parliament issued statements condemning student protesters for disrespecting the flag, unaware that the footage was dated.
Following his meeting with students, Bafel Talabani also apologized for the violent crackdown on last week’s protestors, in a statement published on Tuesday.
“I am deeply saddened by the unjust violence that has been executed against a number of students. I sincerely ask for pardon from my sons, daughters, sisters, and brothers who tread towards a glimmering future with hope,” he said, pledging to make “immense changes”.
The source close to Talabani said that the statement came upon the request of the students he met with.
