Kurdistan region President Masoud Barzani welcomed the decision of Iraqi presidency council to consider what had been done against Kurdish people from oppressions, mass killings and chemical bombardments as genocide by all the standards.
Kurdish region president office chief of staff Dr. Fuad Hussein announced in a statement that, President Barzani had described the decision as important and hoped that Kurdish people not to face such sufferings again.
The statement reads as follows:
After Iraqi national assembly on 14th April of 2008 approved a law bill considering Anfal campaign and Halabja chemical bombardment against Kurdish people as Genocide, Iraqi presidency council in its 26th resolution upheld the assembly’s approval and described the crimes against Kurdish people as genocide.
Kurdistan region president warmly welcomes such important decision and hopes that Kurdish people will not e subjected to such sufferings and oppressions, and all realize what has happened to this nation.
Such decision is an evidence of the tragic facts in the history of Kurds. At the time we welcome that resolution, we also confirm that we will continue on serious and common working with the federal government of Iraq to end the aftermath of those catastrophes came over our nation, and reduce the size of the sufferings and miseries of the victims.
Fuad Hussein
Chief of Kurdistan region presidency office

Geneva  - The Greens party parliamentary group supported the families of Iranian opposition in Iraq. It called on the International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) to intervene to protect opponents, threatened with deportation by the authorities in Baghdad.

In a letter addressed to President of the ICRC, Jakob Kellenberger, the Greens parliamentary group expresses great concern about the situation of refugees
in the Iranian city of Ashraf, north-east of Baghdad.

Some 3500 opponents of the Iranian regime have been refugees since the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003, under the protection of U.S. forces. The Iraqi authorities call for the transfer of control of Camp Ashraf to the Iraqi security forces. Iranian opposition fears that Baghdad, at the request of Tehran, expels them to Iran.

Humanitarian law

"Under the international humanitarian law, residents of Ashraf can neither be extradited to Iran nor deported from Iraq, nor displaced inside the Iraqi territory, "  says the letter, signed by the president of Greens parliamentary group, Therese Frösch.

"In order to protect theses people, we ask the ICRC to do its utmost to ensure that the Ashraf region remains under the control of the multinational forces,"
Swiss Greens continued.

The ICRC said that it is in contact with all parties in this case. The residents of Ashraf are protected by provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention. Some fifty representatives of families of Iranian opposition have held a daily sit-in since August 25 outside the UN in Geneva.

A festival for the Kurdish culture is expected to be held on September 19 in Moscow.
The festival will be arranged within the activities of Committee of inter-regional relations and national policy of the Moscow City.

A large number of Kurdish artists from Kurdistan region of Iraq and Artists Associations in Moscow and other Russian cities will participate in the festival.
The festival is conducted in Svetlanovski Hall at (15-22).
For more information, you can contact the following phone numbers:

5147520 – Matlab Osmanov
89037927189 – Yuri Daseni
89265273116 - the committee organizing the festival
KURDSAT

Four people dead as a major flood occurred in Choman district, north-west of Hawler province in Kurdistan region of Iraq.

Heavy rain started on Wednesday evening, destroying many buildings and hundreds of hectares of lands were covered by mud.

The heavy rain lasted for several hours; 3 members of one family drowned in Kania-Rash who were in the area for grazing cattle, and another shepherd and 120 head of sheep were drowned in Wadi-Balayian.

Flooding cut the main road between Choman-Soran-Hajiomaran and paralyzed traffic.

Public Statement by Amnesty International

Amnesty International is concerned about more than 50 imprisoned members of Iran's Kurdish minority who are currently on hunger strike in prison in protest against continuing torture, executions and other gross abuses of human rights. There are growing concerns for their safety as a result of their hunger strike.

The hunger strike was launched by a number of prisoners on 25 August 2008. Reliable sources indicate that those protesting now include 15 prisoners who are being held in Sanandaj, 33 at Oroumiye, three at Saqqez and four who are being held in Tehran. The hunger strikers include three women's rights activists - Zeynab Beyezidi, Hana Abdi and Ronak Saffarzadeh, all prisoners of conscience who should be released immediately and unconditionally and at least eight prisoners who were sentenced to death after unfair trials.

The hunger strikers are calling for an end to the use of torture and other ill-treatment of prisoners and for an immediate end to executions and the use of the death penalty. They are also calling for better prison conditions and independent inspection of Iranian prisons by national and international human rights bodies, for an end to the use of internal exile as a method of punishing dissent and for an end to official discrimination against the Kurdish minority, including prisoners.

There is little to indicate that the Iranian authorities will accede to the hunger strikers' demands even though the prisoners have termed their hunger strike 'unlimited'. To date, the authorities have not expressed any reaction to the demands or to the hunger strikers themselves.

The prisoners' demands reflect longstanding problems in Iran which affect the Kurdish minority and many others who oppose or criticise the authorities (see, for example, Amnesty International's report, Iran: Human rights abuses against the Kurdish minority, published July 2008.

Amnesty International continues to call for an end to torture, executions and other human rights violations in Iran, including discrimination against Kurds and members of other ethnic and religious minorities. The organisation also continues to call for the immediate, unconditional release of all prisoners of conscience, including the three women's rights activists who are among the hunger-striking prisoners, and for the suspension of all death sentences, including those against hunger strikers Arslan Oliya'i, Anvar Hossein Panahi, Habib Latifi, Farhad Kamangar, Farhad Vakili and Ali Haydariyan.

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For more information please call Amnesty International's press office in London, UK, on +44 20 7413 5566 or visit our website at http://www.amnesty.org

East Gulf Team
Middle East and North Africa Programme
Amnesty International
International Secretariat
1 Easton Street
London WC1X 0DW
United Kingdom