Iranian Kurdistan: Encyclopedia II - Iranian Kurdistan - Human Rights sitiuation In Iranian Kurdistan

Iranian Kurdistan - Human Rights sitiuation In Iranian Kurdistan

There are five to eight million Kurdish Iranians residing mainly in the west and northwest of the country in areas contiguous with Kurdish populations in the neighboring states of Iraq and Turkey. Increasing numbers of Kurds also reside in Tehran and in the southwest, where the oil industry provides employment opportunities. Most Iranian Kurds are Sunni Muslims, which, as has been noted, has been an aggravating factor in the Kurds' relations with the Shia central authorities in Tehran.

Kurdish political organizations were enthusiastic supporters of the revolution against the Shah, which brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power in 1979. The Shah had shown himself to be no friend of Kurdish aspirations for greater autonomy and a loosening of Tehran's control over their affairs. From the early days of the revolution, relations between the central government and Kurdish organizations have been fraught with difficulties. The Kurds, with their different language and traditions and their cross-border alliances, were seen as vulnerable to exploitation by foreign powers who wished to destabilize the young republic. Ayatollah Khomeini expressed the view of many in the new clerical leadership when he said:

Sometimes the word minorities is used to refer to people such as Kurds, Lurs, Turks, Persians, Baluchis, and such. These people should not be called minorities, because this term assumes that there is a difference between these brothers. In Islam, such a difference has no place at all. There is no difference between Muslims who speak different languages, for instance, the Arabs or the Persians. It is very probable that such problems have been created by those who do not wish Muslim countries to be united....They create the issues of nationalism... and such-isms which are contrary to Islamic doctrines. Their plan is to destroy Islam and Islamic philosophy.(60)

The honeymoon of the new government was short-lived in the Kurdish region. Sunni Kurds, unlike the overwhelming majority of their countrymen, abstained from voting to endorse the creation of an Islamic republic in April 1979. That referendum institutionalized Shia primacy and made no provision for regional autonomy.

As early as 1979 armed conflict broke out between armed Kurdish factions and the Iranian government's security forces. The Kurdish forces included primarily the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI) and the leftist Komala (Revolutionary Organization of Kurdish Toilers). The security forces consisted of Shia Pasdaran (Revolutionary Guards) and Komiteh.(61)

Beset by international disputes, the new leadership had little patience for Kurdish demands and set about crushing unrest through military mobilization of the Pasdaran andthrough mobile revolutionary courts under the supervision of infamous Islamic judges like Ayatollah Khalkhali(62), who sentenced thousands of men to execution after summary trials without regard for the rights of the accused. Those executed included civilians, suspected Kurdish fighters, and suspected supporters or sympathizers of other armed opposition groups which centered many of their military operations in the mountainous Kurdish region. Such draconian measures only intensified Kurdish grievances against the Tehran authorities.

During the war between Iran and Iraq, armed Kurdish political groups did not side with the Iraqis against their own government, but neither did they align themselves completely with Iran's war effort. Moreover, during the war years Kurdish regions became a battlefield for many armed opposition groups, including the Fedayan and the People's Mujahedin of Iran, inviting government reprisals that caused casualties among the civilian population.

With the end of the Iran-Iraq war in 1989, the Iranian authorities were again able to devote greater military resources to stamping out Kurdish opposition to its policies. Military deployment was stepped up after the Gulf War and the creation of the Kurdish autonomous zone in northern Iraq. More than 200,000 troops are now permanently stationed in the Kurdish areas. In the course of combating armed opposition groups, the Iranian military has reportedly destroyed villages, expelled village populations, and mined broad areas. It has also attacked the suspected bases of Iranian Kurdish rebel groups inside Iraqi Kurdistan(63). The destruction of villages has been centered in areas adjacent to the Iraqi border in an apparent effort to close off supplies of arms reaching the Kurdish fighters from Iraq and to put an end to illicit cross-border traffic of all kinds.

Thus, the civilian population has been a major victim of the armed conflict. According to McDowall, more than 271 Iranian Kurdish villages were destroyed and depopulated between 1980 and 1992. Between July and December 1993 alone, during a major offensive against Kurdish armed groups, 113 villages were bombed.(64)

Kurdish activists complain that the authorities have withheld reconstruction funds for re-building war-damaged villages, directing such funds instead to the construction of housing for non-Kurdish immigrants in what they claim to be a deliberate attempt by the central government to change the composition of the population in the predominantly Kurdish areas of West Azarbaijan and Kurdistan provinces.(65)

In the cultural sphere, in 1985 a Center for the Propagation of Kurdish Culture and Literature was built in Urmia, the capital of West Azerbaijan province by the Kurdish poet Hemin Mukriyani. Kurdish artists and poets can display their work, including books and magazines published in Kurdish, but their content is strictly controlled by the Ministry of Islamic Guidance.

In January 1997, Karimullah Tavahodi, a Kurdish historian, was detained in Mashhad. He was sentenced to one year of imprisonment because of the content of the fifth volume of his Historical Movement of Kurds of Khorasan. Earlier volumes of this history had won official awards, but the fifth volume was banned. The authorities apparently objected to his portrayal of the Kurds' struggle for cultural autonomy(66).

Like others outside the closed circle of Iran's political leadership, Kurdish politicians who have sought to compete in the political process by constitutional means have found their way blocked(67).

Iranian Kurdistan - The Shivan Qaderi incident

On July 9, 2005, a Kurdish opposition activist, Shivan Qaderi [10] (a.k.a Shwane Qadri or Sayed Kamal Asfaram) and two other Kurdish men were shot by Iranian security forces in Mahabad. According to witnesses, the security forces then tied Qaderi's body to a Toyata jeep and dragged it through the streets. Iranian authorities confirmed that Qaderi, "who was on the run and wanted by the judiciary", was shot and killed while allegedly evading arrest.

For the next six weeks, riots and protests erupted in Kurdish towns and villages throughout Eastern Kurdistan such as Mahabad, Sinne (Sanandaj), Sardasht, Piranshahr (Xanê), Oshnavieh (Şino), Baneh, Bokan and Saqiz [11] (and even inspiring protests in southwestern Iran and in Baluchistan in eastern Iran) with scores killed and injured, and an untold number arrested without charge. The Iranian authorities also shut down several major Kurdish newspapers arresting reporters and editors.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Human Rights sitiuation In Iranian Kurdistan", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki