|
|
 |
|
|
| |
| |
 |
MEMBERS |
|
| |
|
|
WCPI Radio to Launch Radio Bopeshawa
By Nick Grace
January 25, 2001
with special thanks to Dan Henderson
The Worker-Communist Party of Iraq (WCPI), CRW has learned, will resume short wave broadcasts on Friday, February 2, from an undisclosed transmitter location.
A source within the WCPI has revealed that Radio Bopeshawa will broadcast one-hour programs three days a week on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays on 9460 kHz in Arabic and Kurdish between 1500 and 1600 UTC (6 to 7 PM local time in Baghdad). "Bopeshawa," meaning "Forward" in Kurdish, is also the name of the party's newspaper.
WCPI previously broadcast The Voice of the WCPI from Sulaymaniyah, Iraqi Kurdistan on 75 meters short wave from but it was pulled off the air on July 27, 2000, at the behest of the Iranian government. WCPI cadre and webmaster Fatah Mamand, reached by e-mail, told CRW in an e-mail that the station had broadcast programs in solidarity with its sister organization in Iran, the Worker-Communist Party of Iran, angering Tehran.
"There were meetings between Iran and Iraq's authorities," Mamand said, "to close down opposition each others activities. Iraq promised to close down the radio of Mojahideen (Voice of Mojahed) and Iran promised to close down the TV (station) of Hizb Al-Dawa (Islamic Movment in Iraq) wich was broadcasting from Iran."
Tehran was also concerned about WCPI, said a source who wished to remain anonymous. "(F)rom the beginning of the station," he aledges "they tried to close it down and give us problems." The final straw, he says, "was a... conspiracy between the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) and Iran."
"In 1996, the PUK armed forces surrounded the station to close it down but they were not successful due to a strong resistance from our security personnel and (the) protest of the neighborhood, and nobody opened fire."
Last July, however, the PUK took a stronger approach.
"They surrounded our party headquarters... and they ambushed one of our party vehicles with five of our members inside and they killed all of them... Then they asked our party to have a meeting with our high-ranking officials. In the meeting they informed our delegation that they were hostages until all of our bases in PUK controlled-territory and the radio station was closed. Thus they forced our delegates to approve such thing as a condition of their release."
Members of the PUK contacted by e-mail declined requests for an interview.
The studio facilities and transmitter, he says, were moved to Irbil, which is controlled by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), "so that the PUK could not confiscate them." Even within KDP- controlled territory, however, the station remains off the air since "we would have to talk to KDP authorities... and compromise our policies."
The Voice of the WCPI was run by approximately 30 volunteers who were "supported only by the memberships collected from our members outside Iraq." Its signal, he says, was well heard in Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey since its first transmission in 1996.
Radio Bopeshawa's programs are expected to reach a wider audience and will be effectively heard throughout Iraq and the Middle East.
Until a mailing address has ben established, listeners are invited to contact the station via e-mail at radio@wpiraq.org.
|
|
|
| |
 |
INTEL SNAPSHOT |
 |
|
| |
| Radio Bopeshawa | | | | | Broadcast by the Iraqi Communist Workers Party from commercial transmitters in Armenia. | | |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
