KRG to take legal actions over Baghdad cutting Kurdistan’s landlines
In a recent decree, Iraq’s Media and Communication Commission has requested all telecom companies in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region to cut off their connection with landlines in the Kurdistan Region.
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (Kurdistan 24) – In a recent decree, Iraq’s Media and Communication Commission has requested all telecom companies in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region to cut off their connection with landlines in the Kurdistan Region.
“It is part of collective punishments against the Kurdistan Region,” Fatih Ismael, a spokesperson for Newroz Company, a communications and landline company based in Erbil, told Kurdistan 24 on Thursday.
“The order came from Baghdad directed at the three telecom companies in Iraq and the Kurdistan Region - Asia Cell, Korek, and Zain. Baghdad asked them to cut service to landlines in the Kurdistan Region,” Ismael said.
He mentioned that the companies Asia Cell and Korek, which are based in the Kurdistan Region, have cut services to landlines without prior consultation with the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) Ministry of Transportation and Communication.
The disconnection affects all three landline codes beginning with 066, 062, and 053, the spokesperson stated, saying people would not be able to use cell phones to call a landline number nor the other way around.
Baghdad imposed a series of punitive collective measures against the Kurdistan Region following last year’s Sep. 25 referendum on independence for the region which saw an overwhelming majority favoring statehood.
“Legally speaking, Baghdad has no reason to cut off the Kurdistan Region’s landlines,” Omed Ahmed, a spokesperson for the KRG’s Ministry of Transportation and Communications, told Kurdistan 24 on Thursday.
“The landlines were established in the Kurdistan Region in the 1970s, at a time when the KRG did not exist. Baghdad itself gave landline codes to the Kurdistan Region,” Ahmed said, stating that mandatory registration with the Iraqi Federal Government was “just an excuse.”
He also mentioned that should Baghdad refuse to reactivate landlines in the Kurdistan Region, the KRG would take legal measures against the federal government in court.
Disconnecting landlines in the Kurdistan Region has negatively affected people’s affairs with the government and company offices as those establishments rely on landlines.
Editing by Nadia Riva