PM:10:41:26/08/2025
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By Arian Taugozi, Member of Iraqi Parliament – New Generation Movement (NGM)
On the morning of August 12, 2025, our leader, our brother, and the voice of thousands, Shaswar Abdulwahid, was taken from his home in Sulaymaniyah by PUK security forces. They say this arrest is about an old legal case, but anyone who lives in Kurdistan knows the truth: this is not about justice. This is about silencing a man who refused to bow his head to corruption, a man who dared to speak for the people when others stayed quiet.
For years, the file used against him sat untouched. It was meaningless until the ruling parties felt threatened by the rise of our movement. The timing speaks louder than any words Shaswar was arrested not because of the past, but because of the future he represents. A future they fear.
Let us be honest: in today’s Kurdistan, the judiciary does not stand on its own feet. It is under the shadow of politics, controlled by the very same hands that rule over our lives. Even the leaders of the PUK and KDP themselves admit this reality. When those in power openly confess that the courts are not free, how can anyone pretend this is a lawful process?
Shaswar’s imprisonment is nothing but political.
Since his detention, his family has been kept from him, his health has been put at risk, and his hearings postponed again and again. What should be a fair legal process has been turned into a punishment in itself a slow attempt to break him down and weaken our movement. But they underestimate him, and they underestimate us.
By every measure, Shaswar is a political prisoner. He has not been jailed for a crime; he has been jailed for telling the truth. For building a movement that belongs to the people, not to the ruling elite. For demanding that salaries be paid, that corruption be exposed, that dignity be restored to our citizens. That is his so-called "crime.”
His detention is a message from the ruling powers that anyone who dares to challenge them will be crushed. But we send a message back: we will not be silenced. Shaswar’s release is not just about his freedom it is about the future of Kurdistan. It is about proving that opposition has a place, that the judiciary can be independent, and that political battles should be fought at the ballot box, not inside prison cells.
This fight is bigger than one man. It is about the right of every Kurd to live in a land where justice is not for sale, where security forces protect the people instead of repressing them, where no one is jailed for their beliefs. Shaswar Abdulwahid may be behind bars today, but his courage cannot be caged. His ideas cannot be silenced. His vision of a democratic Kurdistan remains alive in all of us. And as long as that vision lives, so does our struggle.