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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — An international human rights monitor accused Kurdistan Region authorities on Tuesday of "unlawfully" shutting down the offices of opposition television outlet NRT during protests over civil sector pay delays and wider economic strife this summer.
NRT's offices in Duhok and Erbil – cities controlled by the ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) – have been shut since August, a move Human Rights Watch (HRW) said "raised concerns that the closure is politically motivated."
"Kurdish authorities have unlawfully closed two offices of a private media outlet, NRT, for over a month, apparently for covering protests and for broadcasts critical of the ruling party," the HRW news release read.
“If NRT broke the law, surely the authorities would have taken the appropriate measures to take the outlet to court,” said Belkis Wille, senior crisis and conflict researcher at HRW. “But party officials have instead chosen to take actions outside of the scope of the law.”
Members of NRT's management said at the time of the closures that they believed they were being targeted because of their coverage of a wave of protests and strikes in August, as the government struggled to bring the coronavirus pandemic under control, ail a weakened economy, and pay its civil servants.
NRT’s news director Rebwar Abd al-Rahman told HRW on August 19 that the Asayesh security forces raided their office in Dohuk and "held the staff there for several hours, then ordered them to go home, seemingly in response to the protest coverage."
Security forces "said that they had instructions from a KDP official to close down the offices," Abd al-Rahman reportedly told HRW, and NRT's offices were closed on the very same day, with no court documents presented.
NRT's coverage of an August 20 demonstration in Zakho, close to the Iraq-Turkey border, was said to be a main reason behind the closure of their offices.
The demonstration was started by truck drivers condemning a government decision to allow Turkish drivers to enter the Kurdistan Region, reversing an earlier move that required drivers to transfer their cargo to local vehicles in an attempt to help limit spread of the coronavirus. Many Kurds, who had been left jobless by the pandemic had picked up work as drivers collecting cargo at the border, feared they would lose their new source of income. Clashes between demonstrators and security forces injured at least eleven people.
NRT's Duhok and Erbil offices have remained shut, HRW noted, adding that the channel has remained on the air as its headquarters in Sulaimani were not shut by authorities.
KRG's coordinator for international advocacy Dindar Zebari told HRW on August 23 that NRT and its owner, opposition leader Shaswar Abdulwahid Qadir, “consistently aimed to exploit the freedom media agencies enjoy in [the Kurdistan Region] for their own political agenda … they usually resort to provocative propaganda campaigns amid critical circumstances, such as during the war against terrorism and coronavirus outbreak.”
In a parliament session on Monday, Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Region Masrour Barzani accused opposition groups of jeopardising government measures it took to prevent the spread of COVID-19, saying some sides had "politicized" state efforts.
Scrutiny of press freedoms in the Kurdistan Region was recently stoked further by a draft digital bill condemned by some journalists and politicians for failing to distinguish between private, commercial, and journalist social media accounts when introducing fines for defamatory or threatening posts.
Parliament later shelved the draft, and the committee that wrote the bill is to hold consultations with concerned parties with the aim of redrafting it.
International media watchdog the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has already called on authorities to “cease harassing broadcaster NRT.”
“This escalating harassment of NRT is unfair and undemocratic, and begs the question why authorities are so scared of the broadcaster that they have to shutter its offices,” said CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa Program Coordinator Sherif Mansour said in August. Zebari told CPJ that “NRT was suspended “for the meantime” for alleged incitement stemming from its coverage of recent civil unrest.”
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