The Persian-language Sobh-e-Now daily has, in an article, drawn a comparison between two controversial referendums held in recent days: One on the secession of the Kurdistan region from Iraq and the other on Catalonia’s independence from Spain. The full text of the opinion piece follows:
The whole world has witnessed two plebiscites held one week apart, one in West Asia (the Middle East) in Iraq’s Kurdistan region and the other in Europe, in Spain’s Catalonia. In Kurdistan, Kurdish leaders backed by the Israeli regime and behind-the-scenes interactions with Western officials, held the vote in a dictatorial manner; however, in Spain’s autonomous Catalonia region, police raided polling stations, seized ballot boxes and apprehended voters to prevent the referendum. The Spanish prime minister officially announced he would not allow a plebiscite on Catalonia’s independence to be held.
Had the Iraqi government treated those holding the referendum on Kurdistan’s secession in the same way the Spanish government treated pro-independence Catalans, would the Western governments have remained silent as they did vis-à-vis the violence shown by their Western ally? Would the Spanish government allow a repressive and anarchic regime like the Zionist regime of Israel to be present in Catalonia freely and provoke the leaders and people of that region to demand secession?
Indubitably, the double standards and hypocritical behaviour of Western governments regarding similar international events are not lost on people around the world and will result in hatred of such behaviour.
Over the recent years, we have witnessed similar double standards exist toward terrorist groups in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, etc. If terrorists carry out operations in the streets of London, Paris and Madrid, they deserve to be killed, but if these very same terrorists commit crimes in Damascus, Baghdad and Beirut, they are not reproached.
Moreover, they get together in Paris or another place in Europe in the name of a free army of Jihadi groups of the Mojahedeen Khalq Organization (MKO), and receive financial and arms support from Western and Arab governments.
