Newspapers and journalists in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region have been bombarded by a barrage of lawsuits from regional political parties, media rights groups and editors say.
“In recent months, more and more lawsuits have been brought against the Kurdish media,” rights watchdog Reporters Without Borders said in a report on its Web site titled “Iraqi Kurdistan: Lawsuits raining down on news media.”
“Newspaper editors, nowadays, seem to be spending their time in the corridors outside courtrooms,” the watchdog said.
The slew of lawsuits are “an attempt to crack down on press freedom, and intimidate journalists and confuse their daily work,” said Rahman Ghareeb, director of the Metro Center to Defend Journalists.
Dozens of lawsuits have been filed by various political parties this year over articles published in independent Kurdistan periodicals, editors said.
“There are nine lawsuits against our newspaper,” said Kamal Rauf, editor in chief of the Hawlati newspaper.
“The aim of the lawsuits is to intimidate and force the press to keep from engaging in the work of the independent media,” he said.
“There are more than 27 lawsuits against our magazine,” said Ahmed Mera, the editor in chief of Lvin magazine.
He said these include “six political lawsuits” filed by Kurdistan President Massud Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), a complaint from the public prosecutor over an article about Barzani’s salary and other “lawsuits by political officials, security agencies and companies.”
Mera speculated that one intention of the lawsuits is to take up journalists’ time with court appearances, thus preventing them from working.
“Our presence in the courts leads to a waste of time. This is the goal of the parties — to prevent us from practicing our work,” he said.
In another report on its Web site, Reporters Without Borders said that one lawsuit filed by the KDP, one of the two main parties in Kurdistan, sought “US$1 billion in damages” from magazine Rojname.
The lawsuit was over an article that “accused the KDP and its ruling coalition partner, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan [PUK], of helping to smuggle refined petroleum products into Iran in violation of the international sanctions,” the report said.
The KDP has said it is merely defending itself with the lawsuits.
“The reason for the KDP resorting to filing a large number of lawsuits against journalists is ... self-defense,” Ari Harseen of the party’s media office said.
Harseen said the party “stresses the coexistence with others, including free media.”
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani’s PUK, the other main party in the region, said it preferred not to resort to litigation.
“We are trying to clarify and refute and respond to the materials that are offensive to the PUK through the media” and prefer not to go to court, party spokesman Azad Jandiani said.
“We believe in resolving the existing tense relationship [between political parties and the media] through dialogue to reach a common formula and to get out of the crisis between us,” Jandiani said.
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