PDKI - Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan

Public meeting- The Kurds in Iran - A forgotten struggle

14/07/2004 | KurdishMedia.com

“Our vulnerability as Kurds in Iran and the possibility of facing the same fate as was faced by our people across the border was not lost on our elders. Kurds, whether living in Iran, Iraq or elsewhere, live in fear. As members of a minority, in some cases unrecognized and with little or no legal protection, Kurds struggle for survival in a world that makes no room for the weak and unprotected.” -
Reza Jalali, a Kurd from Iran and writer

Public meeting

Wednesday, 14 July, 7pm

The Kurds in Iran:A forgotten struggle

The meeting is hosted and chaired by Hywel Williams MP and held in Committee Room 16 House of Commons, Westminster, SW1 (nearest station: Westminster) Speakers include Said Shams Researcher and political analyst, Mohammed Aliyar, Iranian Kurdish human rights campaigner, Judith Vidal-Hall, Editor, Index on Censorship; Dr Anke Stock, lawyer, Kurdish Human Rights Project, Hugo Charlton, Chair of the Green Party.

The campaign of the Kurds in Iran for their political, social and cultural rights forms part of the ongoing struggle of the Kurds in all four parts of Kurdistan for a peaceful and democratic solution to the Kurdish question which must be at the heart of a just settlement for all the peoples of the Middle East. Only justice can bring about reconciliation.

The meeting will begin with the showing of a short documentary by a Kurdish journalist who visited the region recently, about the hardships of Kurds who live near the Iraq/Iran border.

The meeting is supported by Peace in Kurdistan Campaign, Liberation and Kurdish Student Society SOAS University

For information call
Tel 020 7250 1315 or mobile 0795 864 7705 - 07969 551 476

Kurds of Iran

In the last ten years the struggle of the Kurdish people for self determination has increasingly attracted the attention of world opinion with struggles in Iraq and Turkey taking centre stage. In contrast, the fight of the Kurds of Iran against the Islamic fundamentalist regime has gone under reported and under researched. That Iranian Kurdistan continues to be a stronghold of Kurdish resistance is evidenced by the recent diplomatic dispute provoked by Berlin’s decision to mark the murder of the prominent Kurdish politicians. Dr Sharafkandi, Fattah Abdoli, Homayoun Ardalan and Nouri Dehkordi in that German city in 1992. The Berlin memorial in April this year led to rejoicing and open defiance among Kurds in Iran.

Kurds of Iran have been vocal in their support for the Iraqi Kurd’s struggle in the post-Saddam Iraq. Indeed, in the aftermath of the February 2004 suicide attacks on the two main Iraqi Kurdish parties (Masud Barzani’s KDP and Jalal Talabani’s PUK) in Howler (Erbil), townsfolk across Iranian Kurdistan took to the streets in solidarity with their Iraqi Kurdish compatriots. More serious from the point of view of Tehran has been the periodic outbursts of discontent from the population directed against the central government. For instance, during early 1999, pro-Ocalan demonstrations in Iran’s Kurdish region quickly turned into anti- government protests, leading to 30 deaths and hundreds injured.

It should not be assumed that the Kurdish struggle inside Iran has been merely a reaction to events in other parts of Kurdistan. Iranian Kurds have a long traditional of national struggle dating back to the 1880s.

In the early days, nationalism was restricted to the traditional aristocracy of Kurdish society, the Sheikhs (religious leaders) and the Aghas (landowners). In 1881 Sheikh Uybdullah, a powerful religious-tribal leader sent fighters under the command of his son from the then Ottoman (now Turkish) province of Hakkari into Iranian Kurdistan in a bid to unite the Kurdish tribes under his rule. Although the revolt was crushed, Iranian Kurdistan continued to be characterised by disorder. In 1919, following the First World War, another tribal leader, Simku, acting this time from within Iranian Kurdistan, supported a movement for limited Kurdish autonomy. This movement was again suppressed. Ensuing decades saw the creation of the modern Iranian nation-state under the autocratic Reza Shah, involving the degradation and suppression of the Kurdish language and culture in a similar vein to the anti-Kurdish policies of Kemalist Turkey.

When the Shah’s pro-Nazi leanings led to his removal during the Second World War and with it the occupation of large parts of the country by Britain and the USSR, this resulted in the growth of the Komala J.K nationalist organisation and the declaration of the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad in 1946 under the leadership of Qazi Mohammad. Mahabad has since achieved mythic status in all parts of Kurdistan. During its brief existence the Republic enacted numerous reforms for secularism, modern education and woman’s emancipation. However, the evacuation of British and Soviet troops let the central government suppress the Republic and execute Qazi Mohammad. Although defeated, the Republic spawned both the Iraqi and Iranian Kurdistan Democratic Parties and gave the Iraqi Kurdish leader Mustafa Barzani his political baptism (he served as the Republic’s military leader).

Later decades have been characterised by centralised power and continued oppression of the Kurdish identity. As the Shah’s regime began to deteriorate in the 1970s Kurdish opposition gradually coalesced around two principle parties, the left Komala and the larger secular nationalist Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran under the French educated Dr. Qasimlu. In 1979 the KDPI occupied much of Iranian Kurdistan around Mahabad. Once the Khomeini regime was installed, Tehran returned to the polices of the Shah, bringing the Kurds back into the fold by force. By the early 1980s, and despite the threat from Iraq, the Islamic regime occupied most of Iranian Kurdistan and sent the KDPI across the border into Iraq. After the Iran-Iraq War in 1988, Dr Qasimlu attempted to enter into peace talks with Iran but was murdered in 1989 by Iranian agents in Vienna.

Today the Kurdish region suffers from multiple oppressions, with Kurdish culture still only partially recognised. Kurds belonging to the minority Sunni sect are subordinated by the Iranian Shia government while economically the region suffers from underdevelopment and a growing drugs problem, now devastating a new generation. These are just some of the challenges that the Kurds in Iran continue to confront on a daily basis.