NUJ Manchester Branch Leads Support for Iraqi Journalist
The
Manchester and Salford NUJ branch has launched a campaign in support of
a political journalist who fled Iraq in 2010 after being threatened as a
result of newspaper articles he had written at the time of the
elections.
Rzhwan
Amin (Jaf), who had been living in Tameside, Greater Manchester, is now
in Morton Hall immigration removal centre, Lincolnshire, after being
detained when he went to report at Dallas Court Home Office Reporting
Centre, Salford, on January 8th. Rzhwan, aged 32, wrote political
reports for a newspaper in Kirkuk, a city which is disputed territory in
Iraq and has one of the country's biggest oilfields on its doorstep.
He
left Iraq after he was summoned to appear at a meeting of the Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan party (PUK) to discuss his journalism – he was
warned by a friend not to attend because it was a trap. PUK, whose
leader is Jalal Al Talabani, the president of Iraq, has a history of
dissension with other Kurdish political organisations.
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