The blast at the office of NRT TV in the mainly Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah came after Human Rights Watch criticised the government for targeting journalists.
On Friday evening, the station aired a brief criticism of Mullah Mustafa Barzani, father of Kurdistan Regional Government President Massoud Barzani.
Hundreds of Barzani’s Kurdistan Democratic Party tried to storm the building, but were turned away by riot police. The KDP denied being behind the explosion.
HRW said journalists were being unfairly arrested and detained in Iraqi Kurdistan.
“These are dark days for freedom of expression in Iraq’s Kurdistan region,” Sarah Leah Whitson, HRW’s Middle East director, told AFP.
“Instead of ensuring the justice system investigates high-level corruption, the Kurdistan regional government is ignoring its own laws to protect free speech and assembly, and using ‘laws’ that are not in force to silence dissent.”
February 11th, 2013
