Fleeing repression, Iran's Kurdish activists struggle to find refuge in Iraq
The Kurdistan Region of Iraq has become a key escape route for an unknown number of Iranian Kurds fleeing brutal repression and torture in Iran, but most fail to find security and stability in Iraq.
ERBIL — Since his release from an Iranian prison a month ago, Kayvan Samadi has been hiding in a safe house in the autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq, waiting for his wounds to heal.
“I am getting better day after day, but I’m not what I was before prison,” he told Al-Monitor, sitting in the guest room of a safe house in Iraqi Kurdistan. Samadi has seen seven doctors since arriving in Iraq on Christmas day, escaping Iran after three weeks of detention and torture last October.
Samadi, a young medical student in his 20s, was jailed by Iranian security services for treating hundreds of people wounded while demonstrating against the regime. A trained paramedic working with the Iranian Red Crescent since 2017, Samadi refused to stay put when protests erupted last September in his home city of Shno.
“The head of the Red Crescent there prohibited us from treating demonstrators, and because of this a lot of people died,” he said. “I saw it as my responsibility to help people.”
