ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Kurdish parties in the Iraqi parliament unanimously boycotted a session on Wednesday in protest over the exclusion from the agenda of a bill that would return land confiscated under the Baath regime to the original Kurdish and Turkmen owners.
“We… announce our displeasure and severe criticism of the position of some blocs and political forces within the legislature,” read a joint statement issued by the Kurdish parties who are unhappy that these blocs were not advancing a bill that seeks to “do justice to those who were harmed and suffered under the policies of repression and displacement” during the Baathist era.
“The Kurdish factions objected. We will not participate in the parliamentary assembly until the draft law is added to the agenda and put to a vote,” Jamal Kochar, a member of the Iraqi parliament from the Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU), told Rudaw on Wednesday.
The bill has gone through its first and second readings, but has not been put on the parliament's agenda for a vote. Kochar said that both Sunni and Shiite parties opposed the bill.
Multi-ethnic regions known as the disputed areas, particularly the oil-rich Kirkuk province, have long been a point of contention between the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) and the Iraqi government. In the 1970s, Kurdish and Turkmen lands were seized by the Baath regime under the pretext they were located in prohibited oil zones and the land was given to Arabs who were resettled into the area.
Following the fall of the Baath regime in 2003, Iraq began a policy of de-Arabization under Article 140 of the constitution, which aims to reverse the demographic changes imposed by former dictator Saddam Hussein.
In July 2023, the Council of Ministers unanimously approved a draft law revoking all Baath-era rulings that had confiscated agricultural lands from Kurds and Turkmen in Kirkuk.
However, restoring the land to its original owners requires the passage of an additional bill in parliament.
Disputes over land ownership in the province continue. Kurds and Turkmens say the Iraqi army has requested that they vacate lands to make way for military bases. The farmers staged weeks of protests last summer. In late July this year, Kurdish farmers complained that the Iraqi government was still pursuing the matter, taking over their land and setting up fences to expand a military base.
There are also fears that the previous provincial administration in Kirkuk sought to revive the Baathist-era policy of Arabization. In April, Fahmi Burhan, head of the Kurdistan Region’s board for disputed territories, stated that over 92,000 Arabs had been relocated to Kirkuk since 2017 and urged Kurdish political leaders to stop the “new Arabization.”
Nahro Mohammed contributed to this report.
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