Man covers himself in mud to protest deadly traffic accidents in Kurdistan
A Kurdish performer covered himself in mud to protest the prevalence of car accidents on a road locals have nicknamed "The Road of Death" on Tuesday.
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – A Kurdish performer covered himself in mud to protest of the prevalence of car accidents on a road locals have nicknamed "The Road of Death" on Tuesday.
Huner Tahir, a theatrical actor from Erbil Governorate’s Koya district, stood in the middle of the road for hours in the sweltering summer heat, acting out the common Kurdish phrase of "qwr basari," which translates literally to "mud over the head."
The term is used to mean “someone is at the limit of their anguish and despair,” Tahir told Kurdistan 24 in an interview. “For the Kurds, ‘working with mud’ is the only thing we can do.”
“I am demonstrating for the victims and sending a message to the relevant authorities to take responsibility and work to repair the road to prevent the recurrence of incidents."
He said his performance was in response to the number of deaths from accidents that occur all too often on the busy road between Tahir’s hometown and the regional capital, prompting locals to give the highway its grim nickname.
The day before, three people died and three more were injured in an accident on the same route when a large freight truck slammed into a Jeep, said local officials.
It is a busy two-way road pointing east from Erbil to the district of Koya. In recent months, because of the closure of the main Erbil-Kirkuk highway, it has become the primary means of transport from all provinces in the Kurdistan Region to Kirkuk, and between other cities. Traffic on the small road is now far beyond its capacity.
On Oct. 16, Iraqi Security Forces with the Iran-backed Hashd al-Shaabi militias overran the country’s disputed territories in response to the Kurdistan Region's controversial independence referendum, held the month before. Peshmerga forces withdrew as far as Pirde, a predominately Turkmen town that lies on the Erbil-Kirkuk road.
The blockage has put a more significant strain on other roads as large freight trucks designed to travel on larger roads also use the route, contributing to an even swifter deterioration of the asphalt. Unsafe and speeding drivers used to less congested highways, and not used to sharing the road with such large trucks, are reported to be making various mistakes at an increased rate, including driving into other oncoming vehicles.
Six hundred and eighty-nine people were killed in vehicle-related incidents in the Kurdistan Region in 2017, and 249 more injured, according to figures released by the traffic directorate in January.
The year before, 817 people were killed and another 1,188 wounded.
The Directory for Erbil Traffic Police (ETP) will be releasing the statistics for the number of accidents for the first six months of 2018 in a press conference on Wednesday.
Editing by John J. Catherine
