Historical Background

 Until mid nineteenth century, Kurds enjoyed a certain degree of self rule. Kurdish “Mir”s, or local princes, ruled their land and their people. It was under the Qajars of Iran in the nineteenth century, that the last Mirs were crushed and replaced by the government appointed governors.

 But at this stage nobody denied their existence, their culture and their language. It was under the Reza Shah, the founder of Pahlavi dynasty, who ruled from 1925 to 1941, that any appearance of Kurdish culture, their customs and their costume, their language and their history were denied. A process of political and administrational centralisation, which had had begun in the nineteenth century, now had gone as far as the denial of Kurdish identity.

 Reza Shah, himself almost illiterate, propagated the modern education system by which means he suppressed and forbade other languages. Not only education in languages other than Farsi was forbidden, but any written material in Kurdish and other languages was made illegal and those who committed the crime of writing poems or letters in their mother tongue were persecuted. Even speaking Kurdish language in pubic places considered against the law. “To speak other than Farsi is forbidden.” Thus were civil servants in every public office in Kurdistan were instructed. Wearing national clothes was detected and people who disobeyed were fined and punished. The Kurdish national movement rose at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of twentieth century. A pattern of rebellion and brutal suppression has shaped modern Kurdish history. The most well known is the short-lived Kurdish Republic of Mahabad, 1945-1946, which was crushed and its leaders hanged by the second Pahlavi.

 Kurds hopes were dashed when Khomeini ordered a total onslaught on the Kurdish people only a few months he came to power. This gave way to a Kurdish resistance movement that is going on for twenty five years. This has formed a new stage in the Kurdish liberation movement in Iran  

 In the last decade Iranian Kurdistan has experienced a deep cultural and political change. While Kurdish language is still banished from official education in Iranian Kurdistan, parents send their children to private Kurdish classes. Twenty years ago only a political or literary elite could read and write in their own mother tongue, but nowadays reading and writing in Kurdish is very common. Literary societies and circles, theatre groups, green societies, women’s circles, workers meetings, seminars and debates and so on have sprung up .Modern concepts such as democratic values, social and individual rights, political pluralism and cultural diversity, social justice and equal rights for women have made their way into the minds of a new generation of Kurds in Iran.

 What are the problems of the Kurds in Iran?

 Kurds are discriminated against in many ways. They are economically unprivileged; they are systematically and intentionally deprived of big development projects. Non-industrialisation of the Kurdistan is a state policy. Kurdistan has one of the highest rates of unemployment in the country and one of the highest rates of drug related prisoners while twenty years ago drugs were almost unknown in Kurdistan. Kurds are discriminated against in employment, they never get high positions. They are discriminated against in education. Their mother tongue is not taught in schools. Kurds are absent in history textbooks, and if mentioned at all their history is distorted. Kurds are denied any form of self rule or autonomy. They are politically suppressed. No political parties are allowed. No Kurdish newspapers are allowed. (There are a few Kurdish magazines and some Kurdish books are published in a very restricted and controlled manner.)

Kurdistan is the only region in Iran where political executions are still widespread. Killing and torturing dissidents and political figures is still the norm in Kurdistan, carried out by the Islamic Republic of Iran, sometimes taking the form of mafia like kidnapping and killing people in secret. There are several instances of political execution and political murder by the authorities in the last two years.