Kirkuk /Nina/ Report by Marwan Al-Ani: Kirkuk Governor Rakan Saeed Al-Jubouri accused Kurdish parties and the Ministry of Justice of obstructing the work of the government committee specializing in the file of the disappeared and postponing its work until after the elections.
Al-Jubouri said in a speech at a gathering in Kirkuk Governorate: “The special committee for following up on the file of the disappeared is supposed to begin its work by collecting information as of November 15, and it was supposed to complete its work within a specific time period of two months only.”
He added, “The committee visited Kirkuk Governorate and the Kurdistan region, but we were surprised that the committee’s work stopped based on the recommendation of Minister of Justice Khaled Shwani, who made the issue dependent on the local elections scheduled to be held on the eighteenth of this December.”
The Governor of Kirkuk confirmed his refusal to link the issue of the disappeared, which is one of the most prominent humanitarian files in Kirkuk, to the local elections.
The results of the committee’s work were supposed to be announced in the middle of next January, but due to the delay and cessation that occurred, the beginning of work on the committee may begin on this date.
In mid-November, a government committee began search and investigation operations for hundreds of missing people from the Kirkuk Governorate in the north of the country.
The director of the Office of the Human Rights Commission in the governorate, Dhamia Muhammad, confirmed that the office officially recorded about a thousand cases of absence and enforced disappearance in Kirkuk in the recent period.
She explained: “The Office of the Commission receives complaints and appeals from individuals, groups and civil society organizations regarding all previous and subsequent violations, which are at the core of the work of the High Commission for Human Rights and contained in its Law No. 53 of 2008, paragraphs 5 and 6, as the Commission’s cadres in the Kirkuk office received (934 ) An allegation of loss and enforced disappearance.”
Al-Jubouri accused the regional authorities of missing thousands of Kirkuk residents throughout the years that preceded the law enforcement operations.
Last month, the Central Committee for the Disappeared announced the start of collecting information and registering the names of the disappeared, according to Saeed Al-Jayashi, Chairman of the Committee, who confirmed that this committee will be different from the previous committees that were formed in this regard, but did not reach any result.
Al-Jayashi said, “The special committee for Kirkuk held meetings in Baghdad and received lists of the names of the disappeared from the Kirkuk administration. It decided to establish a new mechanism for collecting information by forming a subcommittee in Kirkuk managed by the local government, and whose membership includes all the security services and the Human Rights Commission.”
The head of the Parliamentary Human Rights Committee, Arshad Al-Salhi, warned against exerting political pressure on the work of the government committee for the displaced of Kirkuk.
Al-Salhi called for the current government committee to be different from previous committees that were previously formed without results.
He added: “The Human Rights Committee provided the previous governments with forms for the disappeared in Kirkuk, which reached the committee through the families of the victims, community figures, and political parties in Kirkuk, but the previous governments did not deal with these requests and forms seriously.”
He expressed his hope that this committee would be different from its predecessors, stating: “If the committee reaches positive results regarding the disappeared, it will leave a positive message to all Iraqis on the one hand and to the international community on the other hand.”/ End
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