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| Iraq-Jordan |
| Iraq: Minority Views, Voter Lockout |
| 2005-08-28 |
| Were Assyrians, Turkmen, Yezidis Intentionally Locked Out of the Iraq Election? The January 30 elections in Iraq were a historic breakthrough in the development of Iraq as a free and democratic society. Never before had Iraq had free, fair and transparent elections, with thousands of candidates and hundreds of political parties. Never before had the Christian Assyrians (also known as Chaldeans and Syriacs) been allowed to participate in elections with their own independent parties. Two lists represented the ChaldoAssyrians, the Rafidain list (204), spearheaded by the Assyrian Democratic Movement (ADM), and the Assyrian National Coalition (ANC, 139). ADM was founded in 1979 and has worked since then for the Assyrians in Iraq; it opposed Saddam Hussein, who executed many of its members. ADM has significant membership and presence throughout Iraq and operates and administers various programs and schools, especially in North Iraq. The ANC was hastily organized for the election and has no significant presence in Iraq. Preliminary results show that ADM received most of the votes from Assyrians. But on January 30 the vote was denied to 300,000 Assyrians, Yezidis and Turkmen in north Iraq, and to a significant number of the 500,000 Assyrians in the Diaspora. On January 30 voting boxes and supplies were not delivered to the districts of Al-Hamdaniya (Qaraqosh-Baghdeda), Karamlesh, Bartilla County, Bashiqa, Bahzani, and the district of Al-Shikhan (Ain-Safni), which have a population of 300,000. The voting boxes were to be delivered from Kurdish controlled Arbil. Abdul-Hussein al-Hendawi, head of the Iraqi electoral commission, was contacted early in the morning and he repeatedly gave assurances that the boxes would arrive soon from Arbil, but without any results. An Assyrian government official, who wishes to remain anonymous, stated that no collaboration was received from the Mosul Governor and the Mosul City Council concerning the personnel who must open the centers in the Christian villages. Instead of having the Assyrians manning these voting stations, officials said they were "obliged" to bring Muslims from Karbala, Baghdad and elsewhere to carry out the responsibility in Mosul and the surrounding areas. The Assyrian Democratic Movement protested the lockout in a January 31st communique. The lockout also affected The Turkmen and Yezidi communities in North Iraq. The Iraqi Turkmen Front issued a lengthy document detailing Kurdish voting abuses. In an interview with Radio Free Europe, the leader of the Yezidis, Prince Tahsin-beg, asked for an investigation into the lockout of Yezidi voters. Assyrians, Turkmen and Yezidis held protests on 2/5 and 2/6 in Detroit, Toronto, Stockholm, London and Baghdad regarding the Kurdish lockout of voters in North Iraq. On February 8, in a strongly worded statement, the Al-Rafidayn Democratic Coalition, the main party representing the Christian ChaldoAssyrians, rejected the Iraqi Independent Electoral High Commission's report on voting irregularities and lockouts in North Iraq. The statement specifically criticized the Commission's white-washing of the incident and blasted the decision to open only 93 of the 330 voting centers in the Nineveh governorate on election day. There are an estimated 500,000 Iraqi Assyrians living outside of Iraq, with 350,000 in the US, 30,000 in Australia, 23,000 in Canada, 15,000 in France, 8000 in England and smaller communities in other countries. In the US Assyrians comprise 85-90% of the Iraqi expatriate community; this is because they have been persecuted in Iraq because they are ethnically, linguistically and religiously different, and as a result they have emigrated the most to escape ethnic and religious persecution. The organization responsible for administering the vote for Iraqi expatriates is the International Organization for Migration (IOM). The IOM set up a special website for the Iraq Out of Country voting program and established polling centers in fourteen countries outside of Iraq. When the polling locations were initially announced Assyrians cried foul. The locations in the U.S. were limited to three: Washington D.C., Detroit and Los Angeles. There is a small Iraqi community in D.C., there are 30,000 Kurds and 5,000 Assyrians in Los Angeles, and there are 150,000 Iraqis in Detroit, with 120,000 of them being Chaldeans (Catholic Assyrians). There are 90,000 Assyrians in Chicago, 10,000 in Phoenix; in California there 15,000 in San Francisco and San Jose, 25,000 in Modesto/Turlock and 25,000 in San Diego. There are 5,000 Assyrians on the East coast in Hartford, Boston and Yonkers. The ChaldoAssyrian American Advocacy Council (CAAAC) notified the IOM about the Assyrian population centers and asked for polling centers to be added to the above mentioned cities. The IOM refused, stating that it did not have "time" to add these centers. This was not a satisfactory answer to CAAAC, since the IOM had known 11 months in advance the date of the Iraqi election. CAAAC pointed out that a combined population of 170,000 Assyrians were given no polling centers. In fact, only one polling center was available to serve all Iraqis west of the Mississippi... |
| Posted by:Anonymoose |