US calls on Kurdish authorities to investigate murder of Doski Azad

Fazel Hawramy
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - The United States government condemned the killing of Doski Azad, transgender woman in the Kurdistan Region, and called on authorities to hold those responsible for her murder accountable. Duhok police were informed of the killing on Monday night. Azad was reportedly murdered by her brother, who later fled the country through the northern land border with Turkey.
 
Police found the lifeless body of Azad with signs of having been shot twice, in the head and chest. The killing of Azad, which appears to have happened on Friday, has sparked outrage among civil society groups and foreign diplomatic missions in the Kurdistan Region.
 
On Thursday, the US government issued a strongly worded statement through its consulate in Erbil urging the Kurdistan Regional Government to find the perpetrators of this so-called “honor” killing and subject them to the “fullest extent of the law”.

 

Members of the LGBT+ community in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region are often persecuted by security forces and conservatives. They are subjected to arrests, verbal abuse, and even murder.
 
Related: Trans woman killed by brother, perpetrator flees
 
A crackdown on LGBT+ people in Iraq in 2009 saw deaths numbering “in the hundreds," according to information given by a well-informed official at the United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) to Human Rights Watch (HRW).
 
This is not the first time a transgender person has been killed under the pretext of honor in the Kurdistan Region. The mother of another transgender person told Rudaw in July that she feared that her husband and son had killed her child.
 
“To say that the LGBT+ community was appalled by this heinous crime is an understatement. We are extremely alarmed by the continuous human rights violations against the LGBT+ community in the region,” Netherlands-based Kurdish LGBT+ activist and founder of Yeksani, an LGBT+ rights group, Zhiar Ali told Rudaw English on Wednesday.
 
“We are now demanding the government to take action, and creating more pressure than ever before. We have as much right as everybody else to live here in peace,” he added.