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March 15th, 2018 
Awake Goy 
nsnbc : The Metro Center for Journalists Rights and Advocacy (Metro Center) reported that Iraqi federal authorities are delaying or outright denying visa applications for foreign journalists waiting to travel to the Kurdistan Autonomous Region (KAR).
The Sulaimani-based Metro Center stated on Tuesday that journalists who want to visit Erbil, the seat of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) face obstacles during visa procedures.
One of the obstacles, said the NGO, is that Iraqi embassy officials ask journalists applying for visas about the nature of their planned report and “if the subject is related to the Kurdistan Region, their visa will be denied”.
The head of the Metro Center’s board, Rahman Gharib, told Kurdish Awena newspaper on Tuesday that “the number of foreign journalists in the Region has dropped by 90 percent” since some 100 foreign journalists attended a press conference with former president Masoud Barzani ahead of the September independence referendum.
The center expressed concern about the delayed or rejected visas, noting that the issue is not limited to visas, but also extends to residency permits. Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) residency permits are not recognized in Iraq, so journalists are “not allowed to step out of the airports,” Metro stated. Airports in the Kurdistan Autonomous Region are controlled by the federal authorities.
Metro called on relevant parties and the international community to “lift all strict procedures against journalists traveling to the Kurdistan Region and to end procedures which strain media freedom and information rights.”
CH/L – nsnbc 15.03.2018
Source Article from https://nsnbc.me/2018/03/15/baghdad-delays-and-denies-visas-for-journalists-visiting-kurdistan-autonomous-region-metro-center/
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