Metro Center announces that during the two days of special and general voting in the sixth session of the Kurdistan Regional Parliament, (30) complaints were received, including (25) obstructions, 2 attacks on media teams, (3) Cyber-attacks.

During the campaign for the sixth session of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) parliamentary elections, a significant part of the media in the Kurdistan Region was able to provide complete information on the parties and policies of the lists and candidates through programs, reports and other media content, communicate the entire electoral process to their recipients In addition, during both private and public voting, they were responsible for monitoring the transparency of the electoral process and highlighting the shortcomings of the process, partly maintaining a high level of professionalism, accuracy and impartiality in coverage.

Those who did not respect the rules and behavior approved by the Iraqi High Election Commission and turned the media into a platform for using hate speech, intimidation, inciting violence, erasing others differently and misleading information, mislead the audience of the Kurdistan Region, are becoming very well known.

Monitoring the electoral process is another important task of the media in a democratic system. Free and diverse media is an important factor in consolidating transparency and accountability and the foundation of good governance, in which human rights are linked to the development process.

In this regard, visual, audio, written, electronic and new media in general play an important role in the democratic process, without the media and their freedom of work, we cannot talk about holding clean and fair elections. Any obstacle to this task is an attempt to hide information from public opinion and tarnishes the process.

Metro Center noted that most of the violations occurred in the special voting and the least violations in the general voting, which is the first time that happens in the general voting in the Kurdistan Region.

Metro congratulates the Kurdish people on holding successful and non-violent elections, and calls on the Kurdistan Regional Government and the Election Commission to investigate the violations against journalists and to solve the shortcomings of voting equipment.

According to the official statement of the Kurdistan Regional Government, the process has been monitored at a high level domestically and internationally, including (1830) people from (16) consulates and (15) foreign organizations, (109) journalists from (22) international media agencies Political, (98) local organizations, (43,139) agents and observers of political parties and (9,610) local observers monitored the process. Also, 48 local media outlets have been registered with the commission to cover the process.

The following are the violations on public and private voting days:

• On October 18th, the day of the special voting for the sixth round of the Kurdistan
Parliamentary elections, a security force attacked Gali Kurdistan Channel team (Akram Darwesh and Bekas Aso) in Baadre town who were forcibly expelled and prevented from covering the voting process in the region

• On October 18, Kurdistan 24 reporter was prevented from covering the special voting
day of the sixth session of the Kurdistan Parliament in Halabja.

• On October 18, the day of the special voting for the sixth session of the Kurdistan Parliament, Mojo's reporter was prevented from entering Kurdistani Nwe polling station in Raperin.

• On October 18, the day of the special voting for the sixth session of the Kurdistan Parliament, a Kurdistan 24 reporter was prevented from leaving the polling station in Koya. Someone in civilian clothes threw him out of the polling station.

• On October 18, the day of the special voting for the sixth round of the Kurdistan parliamentary elections in Halabja, an employee of the Mojo office was attacked and threatened not to approach the polling station.

• On October 18, the day of the special voting for the sixth session of the Kurdistan Parliament, Burhani Haji Mohammed Bamoki polling station in Halabja obstructed reporters of media channels (Rudaw, Payam, Zoom, Kurdistan TV, Sepedah, Channel 8, KNN, Gali Kurdistan, NRT, Ava Media, 964, Dangi New radio, Al-Iraqiya)

• On October 18, the day of the special voting for the sixth session of the Kurdistan Parliament, the team of Sepedah TV (Aziz Mohammed, Mohammed Mahdi) was prevented from covering the Gulan polling station in Akre district.

• On October 18, the day of the special voting for the sixth session of the Kurdistan Parliament, Payam was prevented from covering Zerin polling station of the Soran Independent Administration.

• On October 18, the day of the special vote, Mojo Kurd announced that after posting a video, their page faces a cyber-attack which led to deletion of their video. Zhian page also told Metro Center that for the same purpose they were cyber-attacked and their page was hacked, then, Roon Media Institute said their page and posts were attacked.

• On October 20, the day of the general election of the sixth session of the Kurdistan Parliament, the team of Bwar News (Nabaz Rashad, Idris Jorjis), (Kurdsat News, Kurdistan People) were prevented by the employees of the commission.

• On October 20, the day of the general elections for the sixth session of the Kurdistan Parliament, Maimun Dabagh, an employee of the internal forces, prevented the Kurdistan Press team (Mohammed Khusraw, Mohammed Hamad) and attacked their reporter.

• On October 20, the day of the general election of the sixth session of the Kurdistan Parliament, the Khawkurk teams (Balen Haji, Rebaz Sian) and the Wagon team (Dana Sabah, Hakim Mam Rash) were prevented.

• On October 20, the day of the general election of the sixth session of the Kurdistan Parliament, the Apora team (Diako Hussein, Lezma Goran) were prevented in the Barzani Namr polling station in Erbil.