Police arrests teacher and protest organizer

Badal Abdulbaqi Aba Bakr Barwari has been working as a teacher in Duhok for over 27 years and is an activist defending teachers’ rights, most recently in relation to the delayed payment of wages of teachers in the KRI. 

On 16 May 2020, teachers and civil servants attempted to gather in Azadi Park in Duhok to protest the delayed payment of salaries by the KRG authorities. Protesters told Amnesty International that security forces as well as armed men in civilian clothing blocked the protesters from reaching the park and immediately began to push and drag some of them away. At least 167 protesters, among them teachers, civil servants, and media workers were arrested. Most were released on the same day, but Badal and at least 12 others remained in detention. Of those 12, five remain detained after local authorities brought forward charges under the Article 2 of KRI Law No. 6 of 2008 for the “the misuse of electronic devices” for their role in organizing the protest.

On 12 May, these protest organizers, among them Badal Abdulbaqi Aba Bakr Barwari, had applied to the local authorities in Duhok for a permit to protest as per the Protest Law No. 17 of 2010 of the KR-I. However, this request had gone unanswered. The law stipulates however that prior notice of 48 hours grants permission automatically even if unanswered. 

Amnesty International has in the past documented the violent dispersal and mass and pre-emptive arrest of protesters in the KR-I and specifically in the governorate of Duhok. In January 2019, Asayish members carried out a wave of arrests in the governorate of Duhok, of tens of protesters, activists, journalists, and individuals who may have been bystanders during a protest. Asayish members also arrested a journalist and two online activists in the area of Baadre, Duhok governorate, who according to their relatives, were on their way to Duhok to join a peaceful gathering.