MP accuses Kurds of “illegitimate” campaigning

BAGHDAD / IraqiNews.com: A Yazidi parliamentarian has accused Kurds of “illegitimate campaigning,” a charge denied by a Kurdish lawmaker who threatened to file lawsuits against those who make such “groundless” accusations. “I have photographic evidence pointing to violations committed by the third division of the Iraqi army, which pastes the posters of the Ninewa Fraternal List on their vehicles,” Ameen Farhan Jijo told IraqiNews.com news agency. The Ninewa Fraternal List encompasses the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), the Kurdistan Islamic Union (KIU), the Assyrian National Congress, the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP), the Kurdistan Communist Party, and the Kurdistan Socialist Party. Jijo, who is also the secretary general of the Yazidi Reform and Progress Movement, said that it has made a complaint to the Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) in Ninewa province and attached the photographic evidence. Meanwhile, MP Saadi al-Barzanji from the Kurdistan Alliance (KA) rejected the accusations as “fabricated and unfounded.” Barzanji urged the IHEC to conduct a field investigation into the issue, threatening to “sue those who brought the charges.” Yazidis are primarily ethnic Kurds. Most of them live near Mosul, with smaller communities in Armenia, Georgia, Iran, Russia, Syria, and Turkey. The estimates of their population size vary, partially due to the Yazidi tradition of secrecy about their religious beliefs. Yazidis worship seven angels, in the form of peacocks, who are subordinate to the supreme god who created the universe. SS (S) 1