Shafaq News- Erbil

Erbil marked the 46th anniversary of “Feyli Martyrs Day” on Saturday, as participants called for justice, compensation, and answers on the fate of the missing, describing the occasion as a “painful milestone.”

Speaking with Shafaq News, Dawood Asaad al-Feyli, an official at the Feyli Kurds Union, noted that deportation campaigns forcibly expelled thousands of families —mainly to Iran— after stripping them of citizenship and rights, while “thousands of young men were detained,” with around 22,000 still unaccounted for.

The community, he added, is demanding legal recognition of its victims within the Martyrs Foundation, the return of confiscated land and property, and guarantees of political and social rights, affirming that about 1,200 Feyli Kurdish families currently live in Kirkuk and that efforts are ongoing to present these demands to both the federal government and the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

Hundreds of thousands of Feyli Kurds —a Shiite Kurdish community concentrated in Baghdad and eastern Iraq— were deported to Iran in the 1970s and 1980s, while thousands were detained or disappeared. Many families are still seeking information about their relatives, as efforts to compensate victims and restore confiscated rights remain limited.

Read more: Feyli Kurds mark “Martyr Day” in Baghdad, renew calls for justice and rights