People’s Council in Maxmur has two new co-chairs, Rustem Hilalî and Bedran Pîranî

The election committee in the Maxmur refugee camp has announced the results of the elections for the new co-chairs. According to the preliminary result, Fatma Rustem Hilalî and Bedran Pîranî won the election. Both candidates received 2,069 and 2,055 of the valid votes respectively. The following were appointed as chairs of the seven committees of the body: Sedîq Hisên Hilalî, Hisên Fazil Geverî, Eylem Kara Hilalî, Cemîle Repinî, Nusret Şirnexî, Hazim Şirnexî and Leyla Çelîk.

The elections for the co-chairs of the People’s Council and the committees took place on Saturday. In each of the eight districts of the camp, in which the principle of self-government applies, polling stations were set up for voting. Voting was until 5 p.m., after which the votes were counted. The ballot papers were checked three times by the numerous poll workers.

More than 12,000 people live in the Maxmur refugee camp, which is located about 60 kilometers southwest of Hewlêr (Erbil) in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). Most of them were forced to leave their villages in the Botan region of Northern Kurdistan in the 1990s due to the repression of the Turkish state. After an odyssey of several years and life in various camps, they founded the Maxmûr camp on the edge of the desert in 1998. Officially, Maxmur is under the protection of the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), which is only nominally present. The organization left the camp during the attacks by the terrorist group Islamic State in 2014 and has not returned since.