Iraq's Kurdistan regional government (KRG) should put an end to restrictions on movement for most Kurdish refugees at the Makhmour camp near Erbil, which have stripped them of access to proper health care and jobs, a major human rights watchdog said Wednesday
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 27th November, 2019) Iraq's Kurdistan regional government (KRG) should put an end to restrictions on movement for most Kurdish refugees at the Makhmour camp near Erbil, which have stripped them of access to proper health care and jobs, a major human rights watchdog said Wednesday.Restrictions on Kurds, perceived as sympathetic of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) armed group, were imposed in July after the murder of a Turkish diplomat by a suspected PKK gunman. Human Rights Watch noted that many residents have lost their jobs outside the camp and have difficulty getting health care in Erbil hospitals. Two mothers miscarried after being turned back by soldiers guarding the site.
"It should not take mothers losing their babies for KRG authorities to realize these restrictions are excessive," Sarah Leah Whitson, middle East director at Human Rights Watch, was quoted as saying in a statement.
The camp, about 37 miles southwest of the Kurdistan region's main city of Erbil, houses at least 12,000 ethnic Kurdish Turkish nationals who fled Turkey in the 1990s amid a crackdown on the outlawed PKK. The camp was given an official status by the United Nations in 2011 but residents have been having trouble getting local identity cards that would allow them to go to other cities.
