Killing Of Journalist Inflames Iraqi Kurds
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ERBIL, Iraq -- Hundreds of university students tried to storm the local Parliament building here in the capital of the semiautonomous Kurdistan region on Monday during an angry protest against the recent abduction and killing of a Kurdish journalist.
The journalist, Zardasht Osman, 23, had been critical of the authorities and the entrenched patronage system, and many of the protesters accused security and intelligence forces of being behind the killing.
The students scuffled with baton-wielding riot police officers. Some waved their shoes and threw water bottles and pieces of broken glass at soldiers and police officers.
"Whose hands are stained with the blood of Zardasht?" they asked.
Mr. Osman, a freelance journalist and student, was kidnapped last week at the entrance of his college in Erbil. He was later found dead with two bullets in the head on a highway in Mosul, about 50 miles to the west.
The killing sent shock waves through the tightly controlled Kurdish region of northern Iraq, which has prided itself over the past few years on being, unlike the rest of the country, a secure haven for foreign investors, including dozens of oil and gas companies.
Traffic came to a standstill in parts of Erbil on Monday as students, most of them dressed in black, marched from the spot where Mr. Osman was abducted to the Parliament building. A group carried a mock coffin draped in black with the word azadi, meaning freedom in Kurdish, scrawled on it. Many waved portraits of Mr. Osman.
"Democracy is a delusion here," said one protester, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution for his comments.
As they reached Parliament, which is barricaded behind giant blast walls, many tried to enter but were forcefully pushed back by the riot police.
First Published May 11, 2010 2:01 am
