"You are Nothing; We will Kill You!"
The Most Dangerous Country in the World for Journalists
By PATRICK COCKBURN and TERRI JUDD
CounterPunch
Baghdad
"Hot-headed and buoyed by youthful defiance, Sardasht Osman ignored the death threat texts that flashed up on his phone and his brothers’ pleas to tone down his articles criticizing the Kurdish regional government. In a piece entitled “Farewell”, he said he was prepared to meet his killers. “I fear neither death nor torture,” he wrote. “Whatever happens I will not leave this city, and I will wait for my own death. I know this is the first bell ring for my death but at the end it will become a ring bell for the youth in my society.”
It was to be his last article. The 23-year-old was heading into the University of Salahaddin in Erbil when he was grabbed by two men in a crowded area full of armed guards and bundled into a car, his books left strewn in the street. Two days later his battered body was found 50 miles away in Mosul outside the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) headquarters. He had two bullet wounds through the mouth, a symbolic punishment for someone who has spoken out......"
The Most Dangerous Country in the World for Journalists
By PATRICK COCKBURN and TERRI JUDD
CounterPunch
Baghdad
"Hot-headed and buoyed by youthful defiance, Sardasht Osman ignored the death threat texts that flashed up on his phone and his brothers’ pleas to tone down his articles criticizing the Kurdish regional government. In a piece entitled “Farewell”, he said he was prepared to meet his killers. “I fear neither death nor torture,” he wrote. “Whatever happens I will not leave this city, and I will wait for my own death. I know this is the first bell ring for my death but at the end it will become a ring bell for the youth in my society.”
It was to be his last article. The 23-year-old was heading into the University of Salahaddin in Erbil when he was grabbed by two men in a crowded area full of armed guards and bundled into a car, his books left strewn in the street. Two days later his battered body was found 50 miles away in Mosul outside the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) headquarters. He had two bullet wounds through the mouth, a symbolic punishment for someone who has spoken out......"
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