Hawar Abdulrazaq
BasNews, Washington

United States based Kurds have opened a petition on the White House website calling on the Barack Obama administration to recognize Kurdistan independence.

As a rule of the petition, they have to collect 100,000 signatures for it to be discussed by the government and congress in Washington.

Along with the petition, which is named “Support Kurdish Independence”, there is some brief information about Kurdish history in Iraq.

“For over a century, the Kurdish people have been repeatedly tortured, gassed, and brutally repressed in every country they live in. Denied an independent state of their own, the Kurds have suffered innumerable injustices at the hands of the people ruling them, including but not limited to a horrific genocide at the hands of Saddam Hussein in the late 80s,” the message from the petition says.

Recently, the President of Iraqi Kurdistan, Masoud Barzani, announced that Kurds have the right to announce an independent Kurdish state in northern Iraq and would start working towards it.

The message continues, “The Kurds, already given self-autonomy in part of Iraq, have proven themselves more than able to run a country and are currently fighting against the malicious terrorist group, ISIL. As such, the Obama Administration should support Kurdish Independence for the betterment of the region and the world”.

Recently Kurdish independence has become a hot topic among the international community, after ISIS attacked Mosul and other cities in northern Iraq. The Iraqi army withdrew from disputed Iraqi regions followed by Kurdish Peshmerga forces going in to the area which they currently control.

Furthermore, on Saturday, about 100 people waved flags in a demonstration for an independent Kurdistan in front of the federal building in downtown Nashville, Tennessee. The city is the home of largest Kurdish community in United States.