In the Kurdistan Region, celebrations are only for the corrupt!

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Hawre Salih Mohammed – Activist

In the Kurdistan Region, which initially began under the banner of democracy and freedom, we have now reached a point where our government seems to have graduated from the school of Lieutenant Mohsin and Ajaj, mastering only one skill: silencing people and keeping them hungry.

Our respected leaders in power apparently believe that the Kurdish people can survive on air alone. They have turned employees’ salaries into something that people neither see nor receive except once every few months. The only thing they seem to know is how to appear on television during Cerebrations, offering congratulations while dressed in expensive suits and perfumes. They fail to realize that in this country there are fathers who are ashamed to look into their children’s eyes because they cannot afford not only Cerebration clothes, but not even a kilogram of tomatoes. Everywhere else in the world, Cerebrations are occasions when governments make life easier for their people. Here, however, the government resembles a nightmare; whenever a Cerebrations approaches, everyone worries about their salary, and nobody knows when it will finally arrive.

If in the past there was a Lieutenant Mohsin during the Ba’ath regime, a figure so feared that people hardly dared to breathe, today we have thousands of modern-day Lieutenant Mohsins. They appear on television wearing suits, speaking eloquently about democracy, while underneath they are busy tormenting people’s livelihoods and crushing their spirits. Even if Lieutenant Mohsin is no longer physically present, it seems his spirit continues to live on in the mentality of today’s corrupt rulers.

This government is truly professional in only one thing: the art of making people hungry and keeping them silent. The Kurdistan Region has become a giant prison. If you criticize, the modern Lieutenant Mohsins come knocking on your door dressed in civilian clothes. If you remain silent, you risk starving. They have stripped the concept of homeland of its meaning for young people. They have forced Kurdish citizens to spend their days worrying not about the future of the next generation, but about whether they can afford even a kilogram of meat for the Cerebrations. This is a form of “white genocide”—the destruction of human dignity through deprivation of basic necessities. If a government cannot provide a poor child with food for a Cerebrations, how can it speak of statehood, sovereignty, and national pride?

What is particularly striking is that while they move like snails when it comes to salaries and public services, they become as fast as a Ferrari when it comes to suppressing dissenting voices. Anyone who says, “I am hungry” or “I want freedom” becomes a target of a mentality that understands only the language of threats and prisons. The style of governance has become so harsh that one can hardly tell whether these people are officials responsible for running a country or interrogation officers from the era of the Ba’ath regime.