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Sulaymaniyah City, iraq – On May 18, Behzad Mahmoudi, a Kurdish asylum seeker from Iran, set himself on fire in front of the UN office in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), Iraq.
Four years ago, the 26-year-old young man fled his hometown of Bukan in western Iran, hoping to find a better future without persecution and discrimination as many Kurds in Iran have called.
However, when Mahmoud arrived at KRG, he could not find a stable job or income. A desperate way out, he applied to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for temporary shelter and asylum in a third country. But his friend told Al Jazeera that Mahmoud’s request was not answered.
In protest against KRG’s poor living conditions and his belief that the United Nations was delaying in processing his asylum application, Mahmoud stood in front of the United Nations office and poured gasoline on himself and lit a lighter. After a while, his body was swallowed by a ball of fire.
A week later, Mahmoud suffered severe burns and died in the hospital due to his injuries.
The story of this young man reflects the plight of tens of thousands of Iranian Kurds, desperate after fleeing to the Kurdish armed forces in search of a better life.
As many as 35 million Kurds live in mountainous areas that straddle the borders of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Iran, and Armenia. They are the fourth largest ethnic group in the Middle East, but they have never achieved a permanent nation-state.
Nearly 10 million Kurds live in western Iran, along the border between Iraq and Turkey. Since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, ethnic minorities have demanded more political and cultural rights.
The opposition parties-including the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (PDKI) established in northern Iraq-are engaged in intermittent armed struggle with the Iranian government, hoping to establish an autonomous Kurdish state.
Poor living conditions
Mahmoudi’s friend and fellow Iranian Kurdish — who only calls himself Grami for security reasons — are from the West Azerbaijan Province of Iran. He told Al Jazeera that he accompanied his friend on the day of his suicide.
Although 23-year-old Grami also planned to set himself on fire, he gave up this move because once Mahmoudi caught fire, he hurriedly tried to save his friend.
Grammy said that at the time of the incident, both young men were employed as construction workers in Erbil. Since they cannot afford accommodation, they have been living on an unfinished construction site for several months.
“Mahmoudi and I are very close. We work hard, but we always face financial problems, unemployment or can’t afford a stable residence. We have been to the United Nations several times, but they did not respond to our requests for help,” he said. Said in a telephone interview.
He added that when the two went to the UNHCR office in Erbil for the last time, they were not allowed to enter.
“We threatened to self-immolate in protest, but the guard laughed at us and told us that it was best to do it in front of the headquarters,” he recalled.
Seek autonomy
Grammy said that despite the imminent threat of deportation to Iran by the Iraqi-Kurdish authorities and their repeated requests for help, neither he nor Mahmoud received any financial assistance from the United Nations.
According to Grammy, both he and Mahmoud are civilian members of Sazman Khabat or the Iranian Kurdistan Struggle Organization, an armed political organization established by the Iranian Kurds in 1980 to seek autonomy for ethnic minorities. Grammy said that as an activist, he participated in several demonstrations in Iran.
Last year, the 53-year-old Iranian Kurdish Mustafa Salimi sought asylum in Kurdish armed forces after escaping from an Iranian prison. According to reports, the local Kurdish security forces handed him over to the Iranian authorities, who subsequently executed him.
According to reports, Salimi is one of thousands of detainees in Iran’s eight prisons who staged protests for fear of the spread of the coronavirus in prison cells.
After the report, KRG announced the establishment of a special committee to investigate these allegations. The committee’s findings have not yet been announced.
Criticism from the media
Mahmoud’s self-immolation was captured by a camera. A video shared on social media showed that he set himself on fire when several reporters with microphones stood nearby doing nothing.
Speaking of the events leading up to the incident, Grami said that after the two friends bought some fuel, they called a group of reporters to share their plans. They were told to pretend to immolate themselves.
“They assured us that they would prevent us from really burning ourselves. We planned to abandon this plan, but we are ashamed to quit,” Grammy said. “So we moved on and waited for the reporter to stop us, but unfortunately tragedy happened.”
The day after the incident, the KRG media and information department issued a statement condemning the actions of the media organizations present, stating that they “ignored news integrity and ethics, and also ignored the broadcasting laws and guidelines of the Kurdistan region.”
The KRG authorities added that they will take measures to prevent such incidents from happening again.
“We are seeing serious disrespect for journalism professional ethics,” Mem Burhan, a KRG MP and member of the Parliamentary Culture and Civil Society Committee, told Al Jazeera.
“It is inhumane and immoral for reporters to give priority to reporting news rather than fighting fires,” he added.
Brutality
The reporter’s apparent inaction with Mahmoud and the lack of attention from the United Nations triggered sharp criticism on social media and sparked protests against the harsh living conditions of many Iranian Kurdish refugees and asylum seekers in the KRI.
After the incident, dozens of Kurdish refugees from Iran protested in front of the UN office in Erbil. According to reports, the Kurdish armed police used violence to disperse the demonstrators.
The protesters also submitted a letter to UN officials demanding more rights, including humanitarian assistance, temporary shelter and access to health care for asylum seekers.
In the nine-point letter, they also called on the United Nations to “take swift action to deal with the cases of political asylum applicants” and distinguish them from social asylum applicants and refugees.
“Iranian Kurds who seek political asylum from the United Nations are the most marginalized group of Iraqi refugees,” Arsalan Yar Ahmadi, a board member of the Hengaw Human Rights Organization in Kurdistan, told Al Jazeera. “They face all kinds of injustice and discrimination.”
According to Ahmadi, the United Nations stopped registering Iranian Kurds as asylum seekers in the KRI in 2006.
Instead, they are registered as refugees. He said that it is estimated that “there are nearly 30,000 Iranian Kurdish political asylum seekers in the Kurdish Autonomous Region, and their lives will be in danger if they return to Iran.”
Ahmadi said: “These asylum seekers receive very little financial support from the United Nations. They are faced with many problems related to accommodation, paperwork, healthcare, education and finding a job.”
“Consistent Refugee Policy”
UNHCR spokesperson Firas al-Khateeb dismissed these allegations, saying that the United Nations Office in Erbil is handling all asylum-seekers’ cases in accordance with the standards set by international refugee and humanitarian law.
“We are assessing the cases of 10,000 Iranian Kurds based on our consistent refugee policy. We review every refugee or asylum seeker case we receive,” al-Khateeb told Al Jazeera by phone.
“But in order to register someone as an asylum seeker who can apply for UNHCR assistance, we must first make sure that they are actually civilians and not individuals with radical backgrounds.”
He explained that refugees and asylum-seekers should follow “specific” procedures when seeking assistance from the United Nations, adding that the decision to transfer asylum-seekers to a third country is not made by UNHCR, but by the host country.
Although some Iranian Kurds in KRG wish to relocate to a third country, others have decided to stay.
Many of the latter are married to Iraqi Kurds and have lived in Kurdish armed forces for more than ten years. Many people have not yet obtained Iraqi citizenship.
According to Iraqi law, refugees who meet certain conditions can apply for Iraqi citizenship. However, the Iraqi Constitution stipulates that the power to grant citizenship to foreigners is entirely within the purview of the Federal Government of Baghdad. Despite this, it is reported that KRG granted citizenship to several Iranian Kurds in 2006.
On condition of anonymity, an Iranian Kurd in the organization told Al Jazeera that although he received his passport, his identity and residence in the Kurdish region are still unclear.
“The Iraqi government does not recognize KRG’s right to naturalize foreign citizens,” he said. “Our nationality can be withdrawn from us at any time.”
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