A member of the Mesopotamia Workers’ Association was targeted by an armed attack in the city of Sulaymaniyah in southern Kurdistan (northern Iraq). The victim was seriously injured and hospitalized. 

The victim of the attack is Huseyin Arasan, a native of Mardin, who was born in Izmir in 1978. He had to leave Turkey due to political persecution and lived in Sulaymaniyah.

Arasan was hit by three bullets and hospitalized with serious injuries. The attack took place in front of the association building. No information on the perpetrator is available yet, and the authorities have not made any statements.

The Mesopotamia Workers’ Association is made up of people who are politically persecuted in Northern Kurdistan and have been recognized as refugees by the United Nations. Many of them have been in Turkish prison for years because their legal political activities have been criminalized by the judiciary, or they are currently facing long prison sentences on so-called terror charges.

Attacks against Kurdish activists and intellectuals continue increasingly in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The Turkish intelligence service MIT and Parastin, the intelligence service of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), are held responsible for the attacks. The target of the attacks are mainly Kurds who have come to southern Kurdistan because of political persecution in Turkey.

Since September 2021, five people have been murdered in targeted attacks. Most recently, Huseyin Türeli was shot dead in a shopping centre in Duhok on 18 April. Jineology (Women’s Science) activist Nagihan Akarsel was shot dead in the street in Sulaymaniyah on 4 October 2022. On 28 August 2022, the Turkish intelligence service MIT killed the author and historian Suheyl Xurşîd Ezîz, a member of the general assembly of the Tevgera Azadî (Freedom Movement), in front of his house in Kifri. On 17 May 2022, Zeki Çelebi was the victim of an armed attack in front of his restaurant in Sulaymaniyah and succumbed to his injuries one day later. On 17 September 2021, a member of the Committee of the Families of Martyrs, Yasin Bulut (Şükrü Serhed), was murdered in Sulaymaniyah. The day before, Ferhad Bariş Kondu from southern Kurdistan was seriously injured in an armed attack in Sulaymaniyah.