A March 8 meeting of thousands of men and women celebrating International Women's Day at a hall in the city of Erbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan, was attacked by armed Islamist groups. In addition to the harassing and assaulting of large numbers of women's movement activists, there was an armed attack on the rally organising committee.
Members of the Workers Communist Party of Iraq, who were guarding the rally, forced most of the attackers to leave, disarming a number of them and handing them over to city police. Two WCPI representatives were summoned by police later in the same day to attend a negotiation session, at which they were arrested and mistreated.
The same Islamist groups, reportedly backed by the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), sent threatening messages to communist, women's movement and WCPI activists in the Badinan region earlier in March. Iranian-backed Islamist leader Adham Barzani also renewed his fatwa against WCPI leader Rebwar Ahmed and the financial reward for his execution. In the towns of Diana and Kholifan, public figures were threatened and harmed to force them to publicly support the fatwa.
The WCPI issued a condemnation of the terrorist acts of these Iranian intelligence backed Islamic bands and the support shown to their methods by the KDP and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK).