Kurdistan Presidency: Baghdad’s Attitude to Journalist’s Death Sectarian, Dangerous

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – The Kurdistan Region Presidency has warned of attempts by Iraqi leaders, among them Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to take the death of journalist Muhammad Bidaiwi out of its judicial context and using it to settle political scores with the Kurds.

“It's regrettable that the Iraqi prime minister used the strange and ugly phrase of "blood for blood" after the incident,” said the office of President Massoud Barzani in a statement. “This is outside the law, governance and the culture of co-existence and democracy.”

The statement expressed condolences to the family of Bidaiwi, an Iraqi academic and journalist who was shot dead by a Kurdish presidential guard in Baghdad on Saturday.

“We offer our condolence to the family and all journalists,” read the statement. “We hope that a just court takes legal procedures to investigate the incident and settles the case.”

In the meantime, President Barzani’s office described the reaction of Iraqi authorities as unfortunate and that it may lead to ethnic tensions in the country.

“After the incident, the statements of some Iraqi politicians have worried the Iraqi public and are considered as a threat to peace and co-existence,” said the statement. “They further intensify the complicated (situation) and cause turmoil between the citizens.”

The Kurdish presidential statement echoed the public view in Kurdistan that Iraqi leaders are using Bidawi’s case to incriminate the Kurds as a whole and a means to settle political scores with the autonomous region.

It mentioned in particular other journalists and academics killed in Baghdad in recent years whose cases have been ignored by the Iraqi legal authorities.

“In recent years, 400 university professors have been killed, but nobody felt responsible for their blood and Baghdad authorities did not make any attempt to find the perpetrators,” read the statement.

The official statement stressed the Kurdish-Arab ‘brotherhood’ and coexistence among Iraq’s different ethnic and religious groups and that the overreaction of some Iraqi leaders could drive a wedge between these groups.

“Because a Kurdish citizen was involved in this unfortunate incident, they (Iraqi leaders) want to exploit it politically and turn it into a dangerous matter and an attempt to cause division among the ethnic components of Iraq.”

The statement criticized Prime Minister Maliki’s use of the word “blood for blood” in solving Bidaiwi’s death.

“If the Iraqi authorities view the events through this logic, then the question is, who would pay for the blood of 5000 martyrs in Halabja, 182,000 Anfal victims, 8,000 Barzanis and 12,000 Faylis?” read the statement, referring to the genocide campaign carried out against the Kurds by the Iraqi regime in the 1980s. “Despite this sacrifice of the Kurdish people, the Kurds were never willing to say: "blood for blood.”

The presidential statement went on to say that the Kurds had voluntarily decided to be part of Iraq and “live in peace and as brothers,” but that “if the authorities in Baghdad do not want this brotherhood we could sit down with them and end this problematic relationship once and for all.”