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Lawmakers Jailed By Kani Xulam
The immediate goals of the vigil are to embarrass the embassy staff and to educate the Massachusetts Avenue commuters in downtown Washington with placards bearing silent witness to the plight of the Kurds. The protesters’ longterm goal is to stay in the park for as long as it takes to spark a grassroots campaign for the passage of a resolution in the U.S. Congress (sponsored by Rep. Bob Filner of California) calling for the freedom of the Kurdish parliamentarians. The Kurds’
Story Imagine strangers coming to your house and claiming it! Imagine further that they tell you may stay, but you will not be able to speak your language—you will have to learn theirs, and if you don’t, you will be punished. But it was not always like this. Three hundred years ago, for example, the lot of the Kurds was relatively quiet. Tucked away in our mountains, we were the subjects of two theocratic governments, the Ottomans and the Persians. We were taxed by administering states, but our language was never banned and we were left alone. Today, the Kurds are still the subjects of Turkey and Iran, successor states of the Ottoman and Persian Empires, as well as of the newly created states of Syria, Iraq, Armenia and Azerbaijan. The freedoms the Kurds of the 18th century enjoyed are no longer ours. Unless we stop our rulers from gassing us (in Iraq), obliterating our culture (in Turkey) and assimilating us into the dominant cultures by the force of law (in Iran, Syria, Armenia and Azerbaijan), there will be no Kurds left 300 years from now.
In his inaugural address to the nation on January 20, 2001, President Bush made a reference to this country’s past and noted, “[Ours was] a slave holding society that became a servant of freedom.” I had to pinch myself to make sure that I had heard him right. Listening to him, I remembered a Kurdish child in the documentary Good Kurds, Bad Kurds, who urges his nearly blind grandfather to rush for shelter from a Turkish-operated U.S. helicopter on a mission in Turkish Kurdistan: “Oh Grandfather, run! Run! This is the Cobra coming.” (See sidebar.) For, make no mistake, the United States is involved in the misfortune of the Kurds, notwithstanding its expressed ideals. Turkey, controlling half of the Kurdish territory and 20 million Kurds, can only keep its tyranny over us because of its access to U.S.-made weapons. The result is not a pretty sight. Kurdistan is drenched in blood. Smoke is billowing to the skies. An entire people are cowed into submission by the power of Turkish “law”—with U.S. weapons as cudgels. The Kurdish
Resistance
Ocalan was tried in Turkey and sentenced to death (his sentence is now under appeal). Ocalan has called for the PKK to lay down its arms and negotiate with the Turkish government. The adversaries of the Kurds would do themselves and their children a favor to seize the peaceful overtures of the Kurds now. The United States could certainly weigh in with its clout and standing as a proponent of liberty. Parliamentarians
in Prison But the practice proved to be an entirely different thing. Eighteen Kurds, dodging insults, beatings and sometimes bullets, were elected to the Turkish parliament. Leyla Zana, the only woman among them, caused an uproar when she took the customary oath of office in Turkish and added in the forbidden Kurdish language. “I am taking this oath for the brotherhood of the Turks and Kurds.” Proceedings that were broadcast live on all Turkish television stations—Turkey had only a few at the time—were interrupted. Eyewitnesses to the event later noted that Zana was almost lynched. Two years later, Zana was invited to testify before the United States Congress about the plight of the Kurds. She did, urging the Clinton administration to side with the forces of freedom and put down the flames of war for the good of both Kurds and Turks. While Washington vacillated, the authorities in Ankara, still hurting from her iconoclastic act in the parliament building, were building a dossier to land her in prison. Zana continued to engage in peaceful advocacy on behalf of the Kurds, and the Turks continued to try to stop her. She was followed wherever she went. Obscene phone calls were always accompanied with death threats. In September of 1993, she survived a bomb attack. That year, the death of a few army cadets after a bomb attack attributed to the PKK (on no evidence) provided the authorities with an excuse to lift her parliamentary immunity. Early in March 1994, Zana barricaded herself inside the parliament building, from which Turkish law bars the police. Two Kurdish members of parliament were arrested (outside the parliament building) on March 2, and on March 5, Zana was lured out of the parliament and arrested as she was leaving the building. One last member of parliament was arrested the following July, and all were charged with treason and sedition. Zana was accused of fomenting hatred for speaking her mother tongue. Her testimony before the U. S. Congress was also cited as one of her acts of treason. On December 8, 1994, Zana and her parliamentary colleagues Hatip Dicle, Orhan Dogan and Selim Sadak were sentenced to 15 years in prison. The vigil at Sheridan Circle aims to free all four who were elected with overwhelming margins by the Kurds but were denied the right to serve in the Parliament. We are calling on the friends of liberty around the world to help us make our vigil a success by either taking part in it or supporting our resolution in the U.S. Congress. We hope our U.S. friends will honor us with their presence as we begin what might be a very long vigil. Kani Xulam, a Kurd from northern Kurdistan, is one of the founders of the Washington-based American Kurdish Information Network. The Background Turkey vs. the Kurds About half of the Middle East’s 25-30 million Kurds live in Turkey, with the rest in Iran, Iraq, Syria and Armenia, Azerbaijan and other republics of the former Soviet Union. In most of those states, Kurds have been subjected to severe human rights violations, including massacres, repression of their language and culture, forced relocation, and disappearances. In Iraq, more than 100,000 died in fighting between Kurds and the government in the 1960s. In Iraq, in the late 1980s, more than 10,000 were killed, many victims of chemical weapons. In Iran more than 15,000 died from 1979 to 1989. Thousands have died in fighting between the PKK and the Turkish military. Turkey is a NATO ally and a major recipient of U.S. military aid (see “More Cobras for Turkey,” opposite). It also produces major weapons under license from the United States—including F-16 fighters—and hosts major U.S. military bases. The United States, along with nearly every country in the world, opposes independence for the Kurds. The Kurdish Workers Party, known as the PKK, began a guerrilla war against Turkey in 1984. In 1999, after their leader-in-exile, Abdullah Ocalan, was captured in Nairobi, tried in Turkey and sentenced to death, he declared a unilateral cease-fire. He is now appealing the death sentence. In 1991, Leyla Zana became the first Kurdish woman elected to the Turkish Parliament. In 1994, however, she and three colleagues, Hatip Dicle, Orhan Dogan and Selim Sadak, were sentenced to 15 years in prison for advocating Kurdish autonomy and for allegedly working with the PKK guerillas. For more information including updates on the vigil and the progress of the Kurdish resolution in Congress, see the American Kurdish Information Network, 2600 Connecticut Ave. NW, # 1, Washington, DC 20008-1558; (202)483.6444; fax, (202)483.6476; e-mail, akin@kurdistan.org; website, www.kurdistan.org. Additional resources:
—Compiled by NVA |
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tarting
March 5, a group of Kurds and their U.S. friends moves into a replica
of a prison cell in a city park in an open-ended vigil for the freedom
of four Kurdish parliamentarians who have been imprisoned for seven years.
The city is Washington, DC. The park is Sheridan Circle, across from the
Turkish Embassy. The embassy is both the object of the protest and the
symbol of one of the great crimes of our time: the genocide of the Kurds.
