Kurdistan Human Rights Network

The second branch of the Court of Appeals in Van, south-eastern Turkey, has upheld the six-year, three-month prison sentence handed down to Kurdish environmental activist and former political prisoner Mahyar Ahmadi from Sanandaj, Kurdistan Province. Ahmadi, who was arrested on 12 September 2023 by Turkish border guards at the border between the Kurdistan Region of Iraq and Turkey, was sentenced by a Turkish court in...

Zanyar Aziznezhad, a 37-year-old Kurdish asylum-seeker from Saqqez in Kurdistan Province, who has been detained in Turkey for around four months and is currently being held in a camp in Kocaeli in the north-west, is at risk of being deported to Iran. He was arrested by Turkish police near Istanbul on 4 July this year while attempting to cross into Europe from Turkey. Aziznezhad, who was...

Turkish authorities today moved at least 20 Iranian and Afghan asylum seekers from a refugee camp in Edirne, north-west Turkey, to an undisclosed location for deportation. Shahla Chorkeh, the wife of Amir Kahrizi, one of the asylum seekers, shared her concerns with the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN) and said: "Today, my husband informed me through a short phone call that at least 20 Iranian...

Kurdish refugee Anwar Nillufary is on his third hunger strike since 2017 in front of the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) in Athens, Greece, demanding his resettlement in another country. Nillufary had gone on hunger strike on two occasions in 2017 and 2020. The first one lasted 64 days while the other was 73-day-long. On 14 September 2021, the Kurdish refugee went on his third strike. His...

Swedish authorities have refused to grant asylum to an Iraqi Kurdish political activist, Hana Nasour, ordering the police on 8 October to deport her to Iraq. Hana Nasour, who grew up and was an activist in Iran, fears that the Iranian intelligence ministry would “pose a threat on her life” in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, she told the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN). “Security forces...