Hours before the PUK statement was released, 100 members of Asayish raided the offices of the semi-independent NRT channel in Sulaimaniyah, ransacking the office, confining the staff in the building for hours and taking all three channels of the Nalia Corporation off the air.
The security forces have conducted a wave of arrests of activists and organizers on Dec. 19 across the three provinces in the region after six protesters were killed and over 100 wounded, including members of the security forces. Offices of other political parties that share power with the two main ruling parties were torched by protesters in towns across Sulaimaniyah province and the Kurdish areas in Diyala.
The Kurdistan region was plunged into a financial crisis in early 2014, when Baghdad and Erbil failed to reach an agreement on sharing the oil wealth of the country. Erbil, backed by the Turkish and Iranian governments, defied the central government and started exporting oil through the Turkish port of Ceyhan and to Imam Khomeini port in southern Iran.
The KRG managed to add another 300,000 barrels per day to its oil exports when the peshmerga took over several oil fields in Kirkuk as the Islamic State (IS) swooped across Iraq in the summer of 2014, sending thousands of Iraqi soldiers fleeing for their lives. But after defeating IS, Iraqi forces backed by Iranian advisers turned on the Kurds in the disputed areas and retook Kirkuk from the peshmerga on Oct. 16, leaving a hole in the coffers of the KRG. For the last two months, its 1.4 million civil servants have not received their salaries, causing wide resentment and anger.
While the protesters maintain that their anger is due to the mismanagement of the economy and widespread corruption, Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) officials maintained in interviews across their affiliated media channels that there is a regional conspiracy against the unity of Kurdistan.
As usual, Nichirvan Barzany makes promises, he never fulfill, he and his uncle and family stashed 700 billion USD in Swiss banks, he pays from revenues from costumes , only one third and takes 2/3 for himself, they become so greedy that no one ever believe in him or entire Barzani family
This year they care not for the welfare of kurdish people whom sacrificed a lot for them , no heating oil , and it is cold in the mountains , they sel it on black market with as much as 5 times its actual costs , make money from crises , increasing benzine they have to go once and for ever prices by 20% percent,