Exclusive report - travel crackdown ahead of Iraqi poll

Reporter Laura Cesaretti returned from Iraqi Kurdistan earlier this week and told us: 

Due to the parliamentary elections, in all of Iraq and the Kurdish Regional Autonomy, the authorities have expanded security measures in order to prevent a decrease in voter turnout. Flights at Erbil International Airport were closed from the 28th of April until 6pm today causing not minor inconvenience for people travelling abroad. Also for those who travelled by land, traffic between one city to another was extremely regulated and tight. On Monday at the Ibrahim Khalid border, the crossing point between the Iraq Kurdistan Region and Turkey, people were left waiting for more than 7 hours to complete the security checks. “Why do you not want to vote?” immigration police asked all Iraqis citizens who were trying to exit the country. According to many travellers, although Iraqi’s legislation allows people with two IDs to vote even in Istanbul or Ankara, the procedure for the exit stamp was delayed in order to discourage people from voting abroad. “They will never let us go”, said a couple heading to Turkey on holiday. “That is why they keep us waiting here - added Ashraf, a 55 year-old businessman travelling to Urfa. “They hope we get tired and we go back home”. Despite the waiting, all 48 people on the bus managed to enter Turkey in the end. However, many of them were all but excited about their participation in the democratic process and disenchanted about the outcome of the election.